Noto’s NFL Positional Breakdown & Expert Plays: Week 14
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Slate Updates
This section will be updated through lineup lock with injury news and thoughts on the slate.
Week 14
This is the time of year when we are all amazed by how fast the season has gone by and by how close we are to Christmas. It honestly feels like once Halloween is over, it’s a full sprint to the end of the year. Perhaps it’s the fact that it gets dark at 6:00 PM each night or the fact that I turn into a hermit due to all of the snow outside. Regardless, I can’t believe we only have five full NFL slates left this season.
Before we get into this week’s slate, let’s quickly recap how things turned out in Week 13. Overall, the picks were solid. By the time lineup lock rolled around, I had the following players tagged as Tier 1 plays: Joe Burrow, Samaje Perine, Travis Etienne, Amon-Ra St. Brown, and Garrett Wilson. While Etienne was a let-down, the rest of the picks performed well. Unfortunately, I ended up using George Kittle and the Titans defense in my main lineup on DraftKings. The two combined for 2.2 fantasy points and I ended up finishing between one and two points shy of cashing in every tournament that I entered the lineup in. While winning a tournament is the best feeling in DFS, the second has to be finishing just inside the cash line. The stone worst feeling is being the last lineup that’s not above the cash line. I felt good about the process as a whole, but the two filler positions (TE & D/ST) ended up being my downfall.
We now turn our attention to Week 14. Outside of a few cheap receivers on DraftKings, there aren’t a ton of obvious value plays on the slate. Ownership is certainly going to concentrate around the Vikings and Lions game, but rightly so. Chalk becomes chalk for a reason. The game is indoors, it features two very good offenses, and it features two very bad defenses. It reminds me a lot of the Seahawks and Lions game from earlier this season. You can always play chalk in tournaments, but you have to be careful as to how you build around it.
Quarterback
Tier 1 (Expert Plays)
- Jalen Hurts: $8,100 DraftKings / $8,700 FanDuel
- Jared Goff: $5,600 DraftKings / $7,100 FanDuel
I was sitting there on Sunday morning thinking, why isn’t anyone playing Jalen Hurts and A.J. Brown in a pass-funnel matchup against the Titans? Unfortunately, the thought didn’t linger very long and I felt good about using Joe Burrow instead. Burrow was solid, but the Hurts and Brown stack won tournaments. Hurts has now topped 20 fantasy points in 10 of 12 games this season and has topped 30 fantasy points four times. With a lack of value on the slate, I expect most to save at quarterback this week. This should leave us with a relatively low-owned Hurts once again. He should have no problem moving the ball against the Giants, who are ranked in the bottom six in DVOA against the run and the pass this season.