The Football Diaries Week 2
This is going to be a weekly segment in which I break down a cash game lineup I used and a GPP lineup. It’s an effort to show what my mindset was heading into the games and how those decisions ultimately turned out. I believe the decision making process is the most important thing in DFS and not necessarily the actual outcome. Hopefully reading this can help with roster construction in some way, either through my good rosters or even learning from my bad ones.
Cash Game Team
Quarterback
Jake Locker Words can’t express how disappointed I am with this pick. Not that Locker underperformed but rather that I rostered him in this cash lineup. This is one of the perils of playing 50 GPP lineups and then trying to turn off that switch Sunday morning and make 3 cash game lineups. You start building those high upside lineups for GPP’s and you forget that some of these guys have very low floors. Locker is one of those QB’s. Every single cash game lineup should have had Aaron Rodgers in it because that price will never be that low again.
Running Back
Montee Ball I’m still waiting Montee. Any day now go ahead and feel free to break out. I know he has talent and I know it’s a good situation (being Denver RB). However I haven’t seen that off the charts performance yet. 2 things can say though with certainty; Knowshon Moreno was also a very talented RB, dating back to his days at University of Georgia, and secondly, week 3 will probably be the Ball outburst we have been waiting for and I, for one, wont roster him because he is playing in Seattle. That is the way these things work, you know?
Shane Vereen On a PPR site Vereen should have been one of the safest plays out there for a sub $6K price tag. Freaking Bill Belichick, man. If Vereen gets shut down and records 1 reception and 40 total yards that’s fine. You deal with it because you made an error in judgment. However week 1 saw Vereen not only play a ton, but also get goal line carries. I thought that was huge. Then week 2 Billy Camcorder decides to play Vereen only 19 out of 67 offensive snaps. This obviously becomes a situation you shouldn’t be touching in cash games going forward.
Wide Receiver
Demaryius Thomas this price tag was too low and I couldn’t avoid getting him on cash games on DK. I normally don’t pair a RB and WR but I wanted Ball and couldn’t resist a $7K tag on DT. 5 receptions for 62 yards and a TD is decent value for that tag.
Kendall Wright Unlike Locker, Wright makes for a fine cash game play on DK because he has a nice floor of receptions in a PPR format. Throw in this game being against what has been called the worst defense of all time and I wanted him on this team with Justin Hunter so I could monopolize all the catches. Weeeeee. I air-balled them both as it was mediocre Delanie Walker who struck gold while Hunter and Wright were left out there yanking each other’s crank.
Justin Hunter Oh this is where Chopper gets tilted. Not tilted because Hunter put up a rowdy 2 catch 26 yard performance, but tilted because I used him in this cash game set of 60 matches. This just wasn’t sound judgment on my part. He was the hot ticket everyone was eyeballing, but the truth is that he has had 2 good games his entire career. 2 solid games out of 15 career games do not equate to a solid cash game play. I blame myself. On a side note, eventually Dallas will have some really bad defensive games but Rolando McClain is a real playmaker at LB for them and if he stays healthy and his head remains in football they are not the worst D in the NFL. They’re really bad, just not the worst.
Tight End
Kyle Rudolph honestly for $3.9K I can live with the 5 receptions for 53 yards. Sure it would have been nice to get Jimmy Graham’s 36 points, but Tight End’s are unpredictable from week to week and this could have very easily been $6K for 7 points from Gronk.
GPP Team
Quarterback
Aaron Rodgers This is just an easy call to make considering his reduced price tag on DK this week. In hindsight I could have rolled him out on every single lineup over there and been fine with it.
Running Back
Montee Ball as I said before, I loved me some Montee, in what I thought would be a blowout. Instead, he was very average-looking in this game.
Jamaal Charles Oh man, what a bummer. A top-two RB coming into the season has an incredible price tag in week 2 in a game where he should be trailing and record a ton of catches. Then leaves in the 1st quarter with an injury. This is a bad beat all around and very much on par with the way the day went in the NFL in general.
Wide Receiver
Vincent Jackson His price looked juicy at $5,000, and he always has big-game potential. From what I’ve seen early on this year McCown needs to play better to give Vjax and Evans and chance to shine. In a GPP, for this price, I am playing him every time with the only negative though being is his ownership percentage.
Jordy Nelson Just an easy choice to handcuff with Rodgers and it showed with him being 22% in a 32,000 payer field in the DK Sunday Million.
Justin Hunter His performance was so nice I had to use him twice! NOT. Actually I used him on a whopping 47 out of 72 unique lineups throughout the industry on the day. Here is where I went wrong though; I wasn’t incorrect in the thought process that he could have a big day against the Cowboys, I was wrong to play him so much because I KNEW everyone else was going to be all over him in GPP’s. I couldn’t flip through a website and watch a webcast where someone wasn’t touting Justin Hunter this week. So, I knew he was going to be highly owned with the ability to put up a bad game and I still played him in 65% of my lineups. Sometimes you get sucked into a play like this and you can’t reverse course in time. It especially happens when a guy has a price tag like Hunter’s and freed up so much space for other studs.