Hittin' The Nuts - Squirrelpatrol's Lineup Advice for Wild Card Weekend (Saturday Slate)
Want to hit the nuts and take down 1st place in these massive contests posted by FanDuel and DraftKings? Who better to walk you through their favorite NFL DFS picks than Squirrelpatrol! Undoubtedly one of the best DFS players in the game today, Squirrelpatrol has accumulated 90+ Live Final seats, took 2nd place in the 2023 DraftKings Fantasy Baseball World Championship for a $600,000 prize, and most recently, took down the NFL Milly Maker in Week 2.
The NFL playoffs kick off with two games on Saturday starting at 4:30PM ET with the Browns favored by 2.5 points in Houston in a game with a 44.5 total. That game is followed by the Dolphins in Kansas City as 5.5-point underdogs to the Chiefs in a game with a 43.5 total at 8PM ET. One of the big story lines this weekend is the cold weather in different parts of the country. That isn’t a factor for the Browns and Texans playing indoors, but the game in Kansas City should see temperatures below 0 degrees and winds at 10-15 mph. The playoffs should provide some memorable moments all the way through mid-February, so let’s dig into the slate and figure out what to do with our lineups.
NFL DFS Picks: Lineup Advice for Squirrelpatrol’s ‘Hittin’ The Nuts’ (Wildcard Weekend Saturday Slate)
Anyone for Some Frozen Dolphin?
One of the most interesting dynamics on this slate is that we have two games with similar totals – 44.5 for Cleveland vs. Houston and 43.5 for Miami vs. Kansas City, but the games are in very different environments. The first game features the resurgent Joe Flacco and rookie sensation C.J. Stroud, and with the Texans allowing the 10th-most passing yards per game and the game being played indoors, it’s not surprising to see the Browns favored by 2.5 points. Joe Flacco is getting some attention at QB, particularly on DraftKings where he is only $6,100, the cheapest player on the slate at the position. I think the ownership on Flacco (currently projected at 23% on FanDuel and 25.5% on DraftKings) could even go higher along with the other players from this game, particularly Devin Singletary and Nico Collins.
I plan to go in a different direction, and it will start at the quarterback position. The narrative surrounding these two games is all about the weather and how it could suppress offense in the second game, but the correlation between temperature and points isn’t as strong as most people think. The cold weather narrative should keep ownership on the Dolphins particularly low, and I’ll gladly aim to be over the field on the team that leads the league in yards, was second in points, and features the QB who passed for the most yards this season and the receiver with the most receiving yards on the season. I’ve been talking up Miami all season, and this week on the two game slate, I’ll happily be over the field if they look like the lowest-owned team of the day, and that starts with Tua Tagovailoa. In my multi-entry builds, I won’t fade the other QBs, particularly Patrick Mahomes playing in the same game, but my goal this Saturday is to be over the field on the second game of the day.
As always on a smaller slate, after I select the QB for my roster, the rest of my lineup will depend heavily on the QB that I select. To capture the upside from either game blowing past its total, I’ll make sure to pair my QB with 4 or 5 RB/WR/TEs from the same game, and I’ll also likely pair my QB with at least 2 of his own pass catchers.
How Nuts Do We Get At Running Back?
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