Identifying Trends for FanDuel - Week 9
Identifying trends is extremely important to daily fantasy football and online sports betting success. If you want to win your weekly contests and bets, you have to be proactive in identifying trends and figuring out how those trends influence the value of that player and his teammates. This weekly article will attempt to help you in that process by highlighting a couple of players whose values may be trending up and a couple of players who are trending down.
Trending Up
Jaylen Samuels ($5,000)
The Steelers pulled out a Week 8 victory after falling behind 0-14 to the Dolphins but did so at the cost of James Conner and Benny Snell. Conner exited Monday’s game late with a mild AC joint sprain and his availability for Week 9 is unknown this early in the week. Snell left Week 8’s contest with a knee injury and the severity is still to be determined.
Regardless of Conner and Snell’s Week 9 availability, Mike Tomlin stated Jaylen Samuels is ready to go. Samuels was somewhat of a surprise Week 8 inactive as he practiced in full leading up to the game but was ultimately held out. The extent of Samuels’ Week 9 workload is to be determined but the versatile RB could see anything from a featured role if both Conner and Snell are out to a complementary role if Conner is able to suit up. Ultimately, Samuels price tag is way too cheap if he’s Pittsburgh’s lead back against the Colts and he still holds some appeal if one of Conner or Snell is active.
David Montgomery ($6,600)
After a Week 7 loss in which David Montgomery only carried the ball twice, Matt Nagy was quoted as saying, “I know we need to run the ball more. I’m not an idiot.” Well, Nagy and the Bears did, in fact, run the ball more in Week 8. Montgomery racked up 27 carries for 135-yards against the Chargers and should continue to see heavy work moving forward as Mitchell Trubisky has proven completely incompetent at throwing the football.
Chicago’s Week 9 matchup against the Eagles isn’t a good one for the ground game but Montgomery will remain relevant on a weekly basis for as long as Nagy remains committed to the run.
Trending Down
Ty Johnson ($5,500)
Ty Johnson’s fantasy value was at an all-time high following Kerryon Johnson’s injury but it fell back down to earth real fast after Detroit’s Week 8 game as four different RB’s – Johnson, Tra Carson, J.D. McKissic, and Paul Perkins – received snaps against the Giants. While Johnson led the way with a 38.7% snap-rate he was out carried by Carson 12-to-7 and lost work on passing downs to J.D. McKissic. Johnson remains extremely cheap and could easily pay off his price tag in a strong Week 9 matchup against the Raiders but it’s clear that he’s not going to be the workhorse back that Kerryon was.
Zach Ertz ($6,000)
Dallas Goedert is a nuisance. Throughout the majority of the last two seasons, Zach Ertz was able to maintain his fantasy value even when Goedert was active, but that hasn’t been the case over the last handful of weeks. Since Week 6, Goedert has nearly doubled Ertz’ fantasy production on one less target yet Ertz remains $1,000 more expensive. I still have faith Ertz will provide a few spiked fantasy performances this season but his production has been much less consistent and more difficult to project.