Hello fellow fantasy football fanatics - welcome to the seventh installment of Old Dog Learns New Tricks.
Week 6 turned out to be a mixture of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly for my Daily Fantasy Sports lineups as I went six-and-seven at FanDuel.
An aside: I highly recommend the linked scene from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, by the way. I'm a huge Sergio Leone/Ennio Morricone fan and think this amazing scene directed by Leone accompanied by Morricone's stupendous soundtrack is one of the very best ever to appear in a Western. I'm a sucker for trumpet solos and Morricone composes some of the most memorable trumpet solos (he was a trumpet player before he was a composer, so he knows his stuff with that instrument in particular). Enjoy! Now, back to fantasy football...
The Good: I cashed in a 57,471 player tournament with my weekend's top lineup, which scored 150.54 points (this is also my best lineup of the year so far). Joe Flacco's insane first 17 minutes at vulnerable Tampa Bay powered that lineup, which also took second place in a 20-team 50/50 league. This was the first time I've paid to play in a big tournament (I've tried the freeroll each week, of course), so I'm excited that I managed to finish in the money!
I also had a second lineup score fairly well (124.08) and that lineup went four-for-four in one 20-player 50/50 and three 100-player 50/50's, finishing from 21st-26th among the 100-player tournaments. I liked the Peyton Manning/Demaryius Thomas/Julius Thomas stack visiting the Jets' horrid secondary, and my less-expensive players came through too, especially Mohamed Sanu and Antone Smith (see ROSTER 2 at the bottom of this page along with my other three lineups from last week).
The Bad: My third lineup was a disappointment, only notching 92.54 points, and that array of players went 0-3 in 100-player 50/50 leagues. There were simply a lot of blah, so-so performances on ROSTER 3, which featured players from that "power-house" of an offense nicknamed the Giants! They were smaller in stature than giants last week, for certain.
The Ugly: My worst lineup of the entire year scored 74.24 (a complete disaster sure enough) and went 0-4 while finishing between 94th to 100th in four 100-player 50/50 leagues. This roster had egg-laying Andrew Hawkins as one of the three receivers, and the anemic one point performance from Washington's D/ST as well. Ooof.
One of my takeaways from Week 6 is that I feel confident enough in the DFS space that I am now ready to try a few more of the big tournaments at FanDuel each week, employing the lineup that I feel most optimistic about. We'll see how that goes in Week 7, I will update everyone in this space next week...
My second takeaway (or LESSON) is that I'm going to limit myself to playing three lineups - the fourth (and worst) was an experiment based on some research I thought would yield a near-fool-proof lineup, but it failed miserably. Oh well, so much for that idea. The sample size was too small - I see that now in hindsight, but I missed the forest for the trees on the awful 74.24 scoring lineup.
My current methodology based around utilizing the weekly matchups has been generally getting better as I add other sources to inform my decisions (as I've chronicled in earlier issues of this article), so there is no need to go chasing wild hares all of a sudden. Live and learn.
Finally, I also see in retrospect that I repeated a few players in my lineups last week as I worked to min-max my salary cap in each particular lineup. I need to be more mindful of keeping each lineup unique from the others. In some cases (Antone Smith) the repetition was good, but in others the choice was a clunker (Owen Daniels) - this is a situation I have been striving to avoid but in the heat of Sunday morning I slipped up.
Heading into Week 7, I'd like to highlight Bob Henry's weekly article Offensive Sleepers - this is a resource I use to cross-check my initial list of weekly prospects in the DFS space, and I commend it to your attention. If Henry and I agree that a particular player has good prospects for the upcoming games, then I feel more certain about the direction the lineups are heading. This week in particular, I think Henry is on target about Cleveland's and Buffalo's Defenses/Special Teams. I had them down in my initial list of weekly prospects and I am now planning to play both units in DFS lineups this week.
As I have mentioned previously, I write the weekly rushing and passing matchups around here - so one of my guideposts for DFS at FanDuel is to only consider players that do not have tough or bad matchups heading into Week 6. Looking at the matchups this week, the two most favorable pairings I see are:
1. BAL Rushing at ATL: The key fact for me in this matchup is that Atlanta has allowed, by far, the most rushing TDs this season, with 12 surrendered over six games - several teams are tied for second-worst in the league, with seven rushing scores allowed. The Falcons' defensive front is particularly generous in allowing six point plays, which is an edge I want to exploit for one of my DFS lineups.
2. WAS Passing vs. TEN: Tennessee allowed Blake Bortles 32/46 yielding 297 net yards, one TD and one interception last week despite Bortles taking six sacks for -39 yards; Brian Hoyer threw 21/37 for 284 net yards, three TDs and one interception at LP Field two weeks ago (one sack taken for -7 yards). Kirk Cousins knows his time under center is dwindling as Robert Griffin III III gets healthy, so he'll be highly motivated for what may be his final "NFL starting quarterback audition" this season - and the Titans are increasingly vulnerable in the passing phase of the game. One thing to watch here, though, is the weather as high winds are a possibility at FedEx Field on Sunday.
As I will be taking breaking news and updated injury reports into consideration while crafting my Week 7 DFS squads right up until kickoff on Sunday (I am putting my own money on the line here, after all), I will post my Week 7 results and lineups in next week's edition of Old Dog Learns New Tricks. I hope that you, the reader, will check back in to see how a fellow DFS beginner fared in the seventh week of the 2014 season, along with sharing some thoughts about DFS in Week 8.
Good Luck everyone, I hope you win ALL your leagues this year!
ROSTER 1
| Position | Player Name | Salary | % Owned | Points |
| QB | Joe Flacco | $7,000 | 2.7 | 32.24 |
| RB | Matt Forte | $9,000 | 20.9 | 32.7 |
| RB | Antone Smith | $5,800 | 1.6 | 14.9 |
| WR | Steve Smith | $7,200 | 10.9 | 19.5 |
| WR | Golden Tate | $6,400 | 34.1 | 7.9 |
| WR | Julio Jones | $9,000 | 17.1 | 8.9 |
| TE | Owen Daniels | $5,300 | 7.9 | 4.4 |
| K | Phil Dawson | $5,300 | 3.7 | 9 |
| D | Detroit Lions | $5,000 | 7.8 | 21 |
ROSTER 2
| Position | Player Name | Salary | % Owned | Points |
| QB | Peyton Manning | $10,200 | 15 | 21.48 |
| RB | Antone Smith | $5,800 | 5 | 14.9 |
| RB | Jeremy Hill | $5,000 | 5 | 11.5 |
| WR | Mohamed Sanu | $6,000 | 30 | 23 |
| WR | Sammy Watkins | $6,500 | 5 | 3.7 |
| WR | Demaryius Thomas | $9,100 | 25 | 23.4 |
| TE | Julius Thomas | $8,200 | 5 | 19.1 |
| K | Patrick Murray | $4,500 | 10 | 6 |
| D | Washington D/ST | $4,500 | 20 | 1 |
ROSTER 3
| Position | Player Name | Salary | % Owned | Points |
| QB | Eli Manning | $7,200 | 21 | 6.34 |
| RB | Andre Williams | $6,300 | 27 | 5.9 |
| RB | Matt Forte | $9,000 | 31 | 32.7 |
| WR | Golden Tate | $6,400 | 51 | 7.9 |
| WR | Jeremy Maclin | $8,000 | 8 | 2.6 |
| WR | Brandon Marshall | $7,900 | 8 | 14.3 |
| TE | Heath Miller | $5,000 | 7 | 2.9 |
| K | Brandon McManus | $5,000 | 5 | 7 |
| D | Tennessee Titans | $5,100 | 8 | 13 |
ROSTER 4
| Position | Player Name | Salary | % Owned | Points |
| QB | Matt Ryan | $8,700 | 16 | 13.74 |
| RB | LeVeon Bell | $8,600 | 11 | 12.5 |
| RB | Andre Ellington | $7,200 | 12 | 12.3 |
| WR | Julio Jones | $9,000 | 19 | 8.9 |
| WR | Kelvin Benjamin | $6,600 | 8 | 14.4 |
| WR | Andrew Hawkins | $5,300 | 3 | 0 |
| TE | Owen Daniels | $5,300 | 13 | 4.4 |
| K | Robbie Gould | $4,600 | 38 | 7 |
| D | Washington D/ST | $4,500 | 8 | 1 |
