Last Minute Research: NFL Week 10

by Ethan Haskell (Ethan) Last Updated 2013-11-10 00:06:32

It’s Week 10 and one of the biggest questions facing daily fantasy is which defense to play on Sunday? There are a few shootouts expected, and a couple of the best defenses have tough matchups. We’ll try and figure that out as well as go through some of the other interesting stats to take into account for the 10th week of NFL action.

Last Week’s Targets

All receivers and tight ends with at least 10 targets in Week 9 shown below

Other Cheap Notables: Cole Beasley – 9, Griff Whalen – 9, Marlon Brown – 9, Mohamed Sanu – 9, Juron Criner – 8

Notes:

• Lots of value plays seeing heavy targets last week. Doug Baldwin stepped in for Seattle and was targeted an impressive 9 times, along with the bolded options shown above
• It can go forgotten just how much Green was targeted in Wk9 since they played Thursday, but the 19 targets was one of the highest numbers for any receiver all season
• Emmanuel Sanders has seen double digit targets for back to back weeks
• TY Hilton is the real deal and Luck is going to be relying on him heavily from here on out
• Tight Ends stepped up last weekend, with 5 seeing 10+ targets

Links:

• Weekly Targets Breakdown

Defense Projections

Shown below are the top-5 team defense projections from our DST projections page for Week 10

Notes:

• Targeting turnover prone teams is clearly the most important way to hit on a defense on most sites, except DraftStreet where defenses who hold their opponents to less points flourish most
• Tennessee is probably the safest defense of the week, but Buffalo has been able to pressure the QB all season and could get after Roethlisberger and a struggling Steelers O-Line for a bunch of sacks
• Miami’s pass defense has been much improved over the past few weeks so if they can contain Mike James they should be able to have a nice defensive day.

Links:

• Defense Projections

Vegas Odds and Lines

Notes:

• If you target QBs who might be trailing in high scoring games, Rivers and Romo are good bets.
• The high O/U and even spread in the Detroit/Chicago game makes almost every relevant DFS player there an option.

Links:

• Vegas Odds

Chasing Peyton Update

Shown below are opponent passing games vs. Peyton Manning and the Broncos

Notes:

• As 7 point road underdogs, Rivers is likely to be playing from behind vs. Peyton this weekend
• Their defense has actually been better the last couple of weeks, but they were trailing the game vs. Indy and the Colts sat on the ball at times in the 2nd half.
• They’ve still allowed at least one pass TD in every game except vs. JAX

Running Backs vs. The Titans

Shown below are the last 4 RB1’s to face Tennessee’s rush defense

Notes:

• So what’s the point of this? To show that MJD might be a worthwhile risk this weekend.
• Not only have they been ravaged by the running game, they’re also giving up 50 yards per game to RBs through the air on 6 targets per game. MJD caught a few balls out of the backfield vs. SanFran before their bye
• Every back in the last 4 weeks has accounted for at least 100 total yards.

Best and Worst of Running Back Pricing

Below are some notable pricing differentials for this week that stood out to me in my research

• Trent Richardson is the 10th highest starting RB on FanDuel, but no higher than 24th on any other site
• Mike James has the lowest salary rank on DraftKings, where he’s the 26th highest salary RB of all projected starters
• Ben Tate is the 26th ranked RB on both FantasyFeud on StarStreet, much lower than his average ranking of 20th
• Chris Johnson is in the top 10 most expensive backs on each site except FTD where he’s 17th

Links:

• RB Salary Charts

NFL Cheat Sheets

Shown below are the 5 players with the best Week 10 matchups based on Defense vs. Position stats at QB,RB,WR and TE

Links:

• NFL Cheat Sheet

Have a great week Grinders!