Noto’s NFL Positional Breakdown & Expert Plays: Week 1
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h2=. Week 1
First of all, I want to wish everyone a happy and merry Week 1! In the past, I’ve been in charge of writing the NFL Core Plays article. The nature of a core play in DFS is one that is viable in all formats and that offers a solid floor and ceiling. This was a tough article to write for NFL because the range of outcomes for players is wider than most sports and the “safest” plays usually end up being the most popular. I often found myself tagging the chalk plays as core plays even though I didn’t have a ton of conviction behind them. For this season, all of the tags in LineupHQ are “Expert Plays” and we can essentially go in any direction that we like with the picks.
The goal of this article is to give a positional breakdown of each main slate and walk through my favorite plays of the week.
Quarterback
It’s funny to look back at how much quarterback strategy has changed over the years when it comes to DFS. I’m aging myself by saying this, but in the olden days of DFS the strategy was to pay up at quarterback and secure that high floor with players like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. A few years later, the strategy was to pay down at quarterback and to use the bulk of your salary cap on the skill position players because their individual outcomes were more volatile on a week-to-week basis. Heading into this season, my strategy is to focus almost entirely on dual-threat quarterbacks. Rather than honing in on a specific price point, I’m honing in on a specific skillset. This doesn’t mean I won’t target a pocket passer in a good matchup every now and then, but I expect that to be more of an exception than the rule.