DFS First Look: Week 2

DFS First Look is back for Week 2. As a reminder from last week, every projection in this article is my own, and those projections come from a simulation of every game on the slate run 10,000 times. The optimal column in each table shows how often a player landed in the best possible lineup under the salary cap across those sims, and when a player's chance of playing is below 95 percent, it shows under his name. For GPPs, comparing these optimal percentages to our percent rostered projections (assembled by Devin Knotts) is the best way to find the players who are overvalued or undervalued for the week.

Week 2 is also the first week we get to work with real usage data. Several of the notes below lean on snap counts and target shares from the opener, and many of the best values on the Week 2 slate are due to injuries that happened in Week 1.

Keep in mind, this article is meant to be a snapshot taken on Wednesday morning. Injury news that comes out after this article goes live will impact projections, which impacts the sims and leads to changes in top plays for both cash and GPP. Doing this early in the week, I have to make some judgment calls on which players will be in and which will be out. The two injury assumptions that are most impacting my early projections are that Ladd McConkey (ribs) and Brock Bowers (knee) will both be out. I'm estimating each to have something like a 40% chance of playing, so I'm not at all confident that one or both won't ultimately end up playing.

Slate Overview

One week of games is not enough to say much about positional matchups, so the slate overview is still built around implied team totals and how each one compares to that team's average implied total for the full season. I’m looking at Week 4 to start including real defense vs. position numbers once we have a chance to start calibrating across opponents. 

The first thing to notice is that this is a massive 13-game slate. These early weeks with no teams on bye and only three primetime games give us the largest slates of the season, meaning we are inundated with a huge number of viable player options. However, even with 26 teams on the slate, only four have an implied team total north of 25, so those teams will naturally be a focus of the slate.

The 49ers are 13.5-point home favorites against Miami. Their 29.5 implied total is the highest on the board, and that number is 17 percent above their season average (based on my estimated lines for the rest of their games). Christian McCaffrey, Brock Purdy, George Kittle, and the San Francisco defense all land at or near the top of their positions in the sims, and with De'Zhaun Stribling out for at least a month, Mike Evans should have even more of the passing game to himself.

Baltimore is second at 28.0 as an 8.5-point home favorite over New Orleans. The Ravens' new-look offense was dominant in Week 1 against Indianapolis and could end up being one we want to be heavy on every week.

Dallas against Washington has the highest game total at 50.5, and the Cowboys' 27.5 implied total makes Dak Prescott, Javonte Williams, George Pickens, and CeeDee Lamb strong options. 

Chicago at 27.0, despite facing a tough Minnesota defense, is an eye-opening number. Ben Johnson talked before the season about wanting to break the all-time NFL scoring record. If he puts up 30+ against the Vikings, we need to start taking that talk seriously.

DraftKings

Quarterbacks

As noted in the slate overview, the four teams with implied totals of 27 or more stand out as the top spots to target this week. It’s no coincidence that the top three quarterbacks by optimal share all come from those four teams, and Caleb Williams is not too far behind. It is worth noting, however, that the top ten quarterbacks are separated by less than four percentage points of optimal share, so this is a position where you can follow the game stacks you like rather than force one player into every lineup.

Brock Purdy at $6,200 leads the way at 8.6 percent because of the matchup.

 Dak Prescott at $6,400 has the highest mean quarterback projection on the slate at 22.1 points in the highest-total game, although he doesn’t bring the rushing upside of the more mobile quarterbacks.

Bo Nix at $5,700 is the best value by points per dollar. 

Lamar Jackson is the most expensive of the group at $7,300, but he threw for 324 yards in Week 1, the Ravens are big favorites, and Jackson looks fast and healthy after not being as big a threat with his legs last season, which is why he still ranks third.

Running Backs

Christian McCaffrey is the top play of the slate at $8,000 and lands in 20.3 percent of optimal lineups, more than any other player. His lower-than-expected 10 carries in Week 1 were partly the result of cramps, but he still drew eight targets, and San Francisco should be playing with a lead for most of Sunday. There is some risk that he gets pulled early if the game turns into a blowout, but in tournaments there are also plenty of game scripts in which he puts up a massive score.

Ashton Jeanty is the best value among the top backs at $6,800. He played 74 percent of the snaps in the opener with 23 carries, six catches, and two touchdowns, and even in a likely trailing script against the Chargers, his receiving work gives him a high floor. 

Bijan Robinson at $8,200 had 10 targets in Week 1 and may be the one piece of this Atlanta offense benefiting from the lack of a downfield passing attack.

Derrick Henry ran for 144 yards and three touchdowns last week. He looks like a tremendous fit in Declan Doyle’s offense.

Wide Receivers