The Lineup Lowdown: NFL Week 9 Edition
As one of the editors here at RotoGrinders, I can tell you what a pleasure it is getting to work with Andy Means, aka meansy53. He provides great content each and every day and works as hard as anyone (well except maybe Notorious; that dude is a machine) in the DFS industry. His NBA content, including his daily core plays that you can read Monday through Friday, is top notch.
It’s not a surprise for the guy who made the famed Duke basketball team as a walk on and has been playing DFS professionally since 2016. Means is a top 200 ranked Grinder who plays the three major sports and plays them well. We asked him to share his tournament lineup with us from Week 9 – it’s one he entered in the $333 Wildcat, and he was kind enough to share his thought processes with us as to how he constructed it.
Russell Wilson – I usually play a lot of cash games but was interested in going after some tournaments today due to how the industry was treating Seattle. All the chatter leading up to the game was how bad the weather was, yet the Seattle team total continued to climb. My number one priority in this lineup was stacking Russ with at least one pass catcher.
Todd Gurley – I thought Gurley was in as good of a spot as any running back this week against the Giants, a team that ranks 24th in rush defense DVOA. Yet Gurley appeared to have much lower projected ownership than the likes of Mark Ingram and Ezekiel Elliott. As a result, I liked making him my high end spend at running back.
Chris Ivory – The Leonard Fournette news opened up some value for me with Chris Ivory. Since we got the news only 90 minutes before lineups locked, I didn’t think he’d be too chalky. In addition, he didn’t do too well in this same situation in Week 7, so I figured that would help keep his ownership in check as well.
Doug Baldwin – Like I said, I wanted to pair at least one pass catcher with Russ. With his underwhelming performance last week and being only $300 cheaper than Michael Thomas, I thought I could get him at depressed ownership. And despite not doing much fantasy-wise last week, he still had 10 targets (and 12 the week before). I never ended up feeling comfortable with either of the cheaper wide receiver (Richardson, Lockett), so I just paid up for Baldwin.
T.Y. Hilton – At this price tag, I was locking in Hilton no matter what I thought the ownership would be. The game is indoors and the Texans defense has been getting gashed lately. Not to mention that the Colts have been hammering home all week about how they need to get him the ball more. I buy into coachspeak more when it involves the team’s best player.
Ryan Grant – I wanted to bring it back on my Seattle stack with some Redskins. The line moved all week in favor of Seattle, so I expected the Redskins to trail in this one for a lot of the game. That made it an easy decision to target pass catchers here, and Ryan Grant made a ton of sense at this cheap price tag given that Jamison Crowder and Jordan Reed were ruled out. Even if he didn’t get in the end zone, I thought he could crush this price tag.
Jimmy Graham – Graham is the first pass catcher I knew I wanted to pair with Russ. No team had given up more yards to tight ends at this point in the season, and Graham has been remarkably consistent the past five games or so despite leaving some points on the table. He and Russ were the first guys I locked into this lineup, along with Hilton.
Chris Thompson – The other Redskin I was bringing it back with was Thompson. Everything I said about Ryan Grant applies to Thompson as well, as he sees a ton of involvement in the passing game. Factor in the team saying that Rob Kelley would have his workload reduced, and Thompson was for sure the other guy I knew I definitely wanted from the Redskins to add to this game stack.
Eagles – This is where I had the most trouble deciding because I had the money to get the Jaguars if I wanted to. There were two reasons I ultimately landed on the Eagles. The first was basically a gut call in that I thought they would score more points than the Jaguars. I thought they had a better chance at creating turnovers against Brock than the Jaguars against Dalton. Sure the Jaguars probably record more sacks, but I thought Brock offered more hope for a pick six. The second reason I chose the Eagles was because I thought it would leave me with unique roster construction given that I left $500 on the table. It pretty much ensured no one would have the exact same lineup, even though the chances weren’t that high to begin with even if I went up to the Jaguars.
Andy went with a full on game stack as he attempted to leverage public perception that the game was one to avoid due to some bad weather forecasts. Wanting to ride the hot hand of Russell Wilson and expecting a bounce back from Doug Baldwin, his lineup had a solid core with those two and Jimmy Graham and the three certainly put up respectable, albeit not GPP-winning, numbers. Unfortunately for Andy, the two Redskins he brought it back with didn’t do quite as well as Ryan Grant and Chris Thompson combined for just 14 fantasy points. I think both of those plays were fine given the roster construction, they just came down on the lower end of their range. The Chris Ivory play was interesting – not one I love and I faded him myself, but I get the basis for it as the news did break late meaning his ownership was not going to be out of control (and it wasn’t at 10.1% even in a “sharp” tournament like the Wildcat). The T.Y. play was obvious, and we all know he didn’t disappoint and was likely the difference between Andy cashing and not cashing as he put up 37.5 fpts at 34% ownership. Gurley, along with Elliott, seemed like the lock RB play of the day and the choice between the two (Gurley had the better day) also played into Andy’s ability to cash. He wasn’t as low-owned as Means thought he would be though as he came in at 37.8% ownership. DST is so hard to predict and the Eagles were definitely one of the top options. They had a good, but not great, game that did enough to contribute a bit to the final tally (and they at least outscored the Redskins tandem he utilized). The score was good enough for a $650 cash – a nearly 100% ROI on the day – that beats grinding 500 $1 H2H’s any day!
Bonus Lineup Review
Since Andy shared his tournament lineup, I thought I’d share my best DraftKings tournament lineup of the day – it was one I entered in the $4 Cover Four contest (three max entries) and the $3 Play Action contest (twenty max entries). For what it’s worth, my cash game lineup did cash again… just barely though as I was just points ahead of the cash line. I’m a much better GPP player than I am cash player (in my opinion), so let’s take a look at this 190 point lineup.
I started it off with a Goff-Watkins stack as I thought the absence of Jenkins from the Giants secondary and their recent lack of success defending anything made them both reasonable plays, especially with their price tags allowing you to pay up for other players. Watkins really did absolutely nothing other than one play, but that play was enough to put up a reasonable 13.7 fpts. I thought about including Gurley in this lineup, but decided three Rams was too many and decided to go to Zeke, who was solid but didn’t put up the difference-making type performance I was hoping for. I threw him in the flex because I wanted the ability to jump off him to another player if the spot was right and went with two pass-catching backs in my two RB spots in Alvin Kamara and Christian McCaffrey. They were both in spots I loved and were among my two highest owned players of the slate.
I was actually underweight on T.Y. Hilton and Jack Doyle for the slate but due to having what I thought was already a contrarian lineup I felt I could play them here just fine and it’d give me both safety and upside. Doyle was solid again and if he had found the end zone it’d have been another huge game while Hilton smashed. My last two picks were the new defacto #1 WR of the Panthers Devin Funchess who I thought would see 8-10 targets at a good price and the Jaguars DST who I thought had the best matchup facing a punchless (hmmm maybe that’s a bad choice of words) Bengals offense.
Thanks for taking the time out this week Andy with your lineup – for those of you not familiar with his work, I highly recommend checking out his daily NBA Core Plays – the players he highlights each day can often be the difference between a winning and losing day in NBA DFS.