NFL FanDuel Lineup Walkthrough - Week 8
First off, I’d like to say thanks to everyone that reached out and congratulated me on having my first child. It was a truly amazing experience and the last week has been a whirlwind. The idea of taking care of and raising another human is a bit daunting, but I’m absolutely thrilled for the what’s in store.
Even though it has only been a week since my little man was born, I’m now fully realizing how much time I actually devote to daily fantasy sports. A newborn is a lot of work and the time spend with him has to come from somewhere. So far, I’ve chosen to take that out of my sleepy time rather than my DFS time. We will see how long that can last. If you happen to see a typu typo or two, blame baby Noto.
This week’s lesson is that sometimes it’s just fine to go the contrarian route in cash games. As long as the opportunity and matchup are there for a player and you feel that they are a better play than some of the “chalk” picks, don’t hesitate to trust your research and your judgment. That’s not to say that you should ever take a completely contrarian route with your entire cash game lineup, but if I’m confident about a pick, I will hesitate to use him just because I expect him to have a low ownership level.
Week 8 FanDuel Lineup
This is one of those contrarian picks that I was referring to above. I always try to do my research and post my initial FanDuel expert picks before I look at any other expert picks or advanced matchup columns. I wrote about Manning this week in a great spot against the Saints at only $7,300. Not only was he going back to Louisiana, but he was facing arguably the worst pass defense in the entire NFL. I was surprised how low his ownership was in the Thursday slate and even though most people had him pegged as a tournament play, I thought he had both a high floor and a high ceiling in this matchup.
Gurley was the chalkiest chalk of all chalk this week, but even at a 60% ownership rate, I didn’t hesitate to roster him in cash games. Gurley has been a workhorse back since taking over the starting gig and so far he has been outstanding, both running the ball and catching it out of the backfield. I generally like to target running backs that both have a good matchup and are on a team that is favored. Gurley had both in his favor this week against the Niners.
Hillman was by far my most contrarian play of the week. I already had Justin Forsett locked into my DraftKings lineup and even though I loved his spot, I didn’t want to have 100% exposure to him in cash games. I debated between paying up for Le’Veon Bell, or saving some cap space with Hillman. I decided on the latter, as it allowed me to roster three high-end receivers. The reasoning behind the Hillman pick was relatively simple. He was named the starter over C.J. Anderson and the Packers have not looked great against the run this season.
When Ben Roethlisberger is in the lineup, Brown is one of the most productive fantasy receivers in the NFL. His price had come down over the last few weeks with Michael Vick and Landry Jones at the helm and this gave us a nice opportunity to buy low on Brown. He had a nice matchup against the Bengals in what was expected to be a shootout. The game turned into a defensive battle somehow, but Brown still had a decent fantasy outing thanks to an early touchdown.
There are basically two camps when it comes to Diggs. There are those that think he is in for regression and that he offers a bit of fool’s gold and there are those that are seeing the increase in snap rates and targets and chalking him up to being the real deal. I was a floater between the two camps earlier in the week, but at his price point on FanDuel, it was hard not to take advantage of the value against those beatable Bears’ cornerbacks.
This is where my lineup went from being really great to really good. I was debating between Evans and Alshon Jeffery in this spot, as they only had a $100 price difference. I couldn’t decide on the two and was going to split them in my cash game lineup, but unfortunately I ran out of time. Evans didn’t have the best matchup against the Falcons, but with Vincent Jackson and Austin Seferian-Jenkins out, he was expected to dominate the targets in a game where the Buccaneers were expected to be trailing. While he did see double-digit targets, game flow did not work in his favor. The Buccaneers got up big early and were trying to protect their lead the entire second half. He didn’t kill my lineup, but I would have placed a lot higher in the few tournaments that I played with Alshon Jeffery.
With Rob Gronkowski playing in the Thursday game and with Antonio Gates being active on Sunday, tight end was a tough position to fill this week. I settled on Eifert, as he has seen a lot of redzone looks and he was facing a Steelers’ defense that didn’t have the best track record against tight ends. He finished with a very quiet day, but so did a lot of the high-end tight end options.
He is a kicker and he was cheap. I’d love to say that more thought went into it, but I needed a min-priced kicker and he fit. The Texans were also favored in this game, which helped.
A defense is a great correlation play with that team’s running back, because the two need similar game scripts to succeed. When teams are ahead, they are looking to drain the clock with their run game. Additionally, opponents become predictable on offense and defenses are able to gear back and put pressure on the quarterback. With a matchup against the Niners at home, I went with the chalk defense this week.