The Football Diaries: Week 7
This week I break down my lineups at both FanDuel and DraftKings from Week 7. 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, 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.
FanDuel Team
Aaron Rodgers – Some say that Russell Wilson is the safest QB floor in fantasy. I disagree vehemently. Rodgers has the highest floor and has big upside as well. I played him a good bit on Sunday. The blowout hurt, and seeing Wilson run for 100 yards and puting up huge numbers sunk any GPP hopes I had. Sometimes you fall victim to game flow, and in this case Rodgers was well short of reaching his potential because of it. Meanwhile, Seattle got down by three scores and Wilson benefited.
Justin Forsett – Really the only thing Forsett didn’t do was get in the end zone. The carries were there and the yardage was nice. He seems solid moving forward
Andre Williams – Fool me once Andre, shame on you. Fool me twice and shame on me. I’m a donk for playing thunder thighs, and I will fully accept my punishment of minimum cashes because of it.
Jordy Nelson – He’s easily the premier handcuff for Rodgers, so this wasn’t a tough choice.
Randall Cobb – Here’s where it got a little tricky. I’m not a huge believer in Cobb, but the matchup was nice and I thought maybe Rodgers would throw for four touchdowns and that they wouldn’t all go to Nelson. It’s a decent GPP play in case of a shootout and also a fairly safe cash-game play, as Rodgers is so good that to lock him in with his best two WRs should create a high floor.
Sammy Watkins – I had a feeling that this was going to be Watkins’ biggest game of the year. In looking at his ownership percentages and final stats, I am very disappointed that I failed to really take advantage of this situation. Now that ship has sailed and everyone will be on him moving forward.
Jermaine Gresham – Well, I’m not thrilled about only 48 total yards for Gresham, but the volume of catches made up for it. The main thing for me was that Jimmy Graham was hurt and I didn’t like Julius Thomas’s matchup, so therefore I wanted to go near minimum salary on my TEs this week.
DraftKings Team
Aaron Rodgers – A lot of the design that went into my FD team carried over to DraftKings. Rodgers had a similar price point here, so I rolled him out in both.
Jamaal Charles – It’s tough to be discouraged when you get nearly 100 yards and a TD from a RB, but I was a little let down. I expected a monster day from Charles. He is usually phenomenal in the DK scoring format with the PPR, but he just didn’t get the catches I thought he would Sunday.
Ben Tate – For as bad as the Andre Williams pick was on FanDuel, this was worse. Williams, though, has an excuse. He’s a rookie and we haven’t seen him run effectively for the Giants yet. Tate has had monster games with the Browns this year and he was playing Jacksonville, so I’m not really sure what to make of this stat line. It will be hard for me to pay over $5K for Tate anytime soon on DK.
Randall Cobb – In hindsight, this is a bad pick on DK. Cobb isn’t a volume pass receiver and should have been left out for this price.
Jordy Nelson – Nelson is great in any format, for any price. However, in the end, it’s a bit disconcerting that he gets these long TDs to start the game and then goes silent for the rest of the contest. It’s happened a couple times recently. Once again, it’s a product of game flow — when the Pack finally get in a shootout, Nelson should be gold.
Roddy White – This was such an easy play over on DK that I’m kicking myself for not rostering him more. He’s really only serviceable anymore on PPR sites, and when they threw out a bottom-barrel price tag of $4,100 on DK it should have been an insta-play.
Dwayne Allen – Continuing my game plan of minimum priced TEs paid off with a decent game from Allen.
Odell Beckham Jr. – The Cowboys defense is not a joke anymore. I’m done picking on them. My thought was that someone had to pick up the slack for Victor Cruz, and Beckham Jr. has looked decent in his short time on the field so far. He saved his fantasy game here with two TDS, but let’s be honest: it was a lucky outcome. He only caught four passes for 34 yards on the day. The Cowboys play very tough pass defense, and I don’t care what the metrics say about how they are “due to regress”. I will tread lightly from this point forward when it comes to playing offensive players against them.