Cash Game Strategy

Welcome the the 2019 NFL season! Most of you are familiar with my work which is nice. You know that I can be maddeningly deliberate in piecing together my thoughts which is why I am kicking off writing my column this week on Thursday night as opposed to waiting for the final injury report on Friday afternoon. There are injuries to be aware of this week, but since it is Week 1, this is the cleanest that we are going to see the injury report be all season. I am going to break it up into two pieces to give you a primer on how I approach cash games broadly and then tomorrow I’ll be back to hit you with the plays for the week.

My focus for you with this column is going to be cash game play. Most of you have been reading my columns on golf for the last couple of years and if I have learned anything in that time, it is that my identity is as a cash game player. This is something that I want you to think about as we enter the season, getting ready to kick it off on Sunday. What is your DFS identity? Are you here for fun? Are you like my dad who wants to put in $10 a week, split between a $5 cash team and a $5 GPP team to give him something to keep his interest up on Sunday? Or are you more like Jeff who wants the excitement of having the opportunity for a six (or even seven) figure payday or live final spot? Or maybe you are like me and you know that with discipline, you can grind out a profit season after season in cash games, even if that means forgoing the glory of a massive payday.

This may sound trivial if you are not worried about making money, but if you do not have a consistent approach to your DFS play, this game will crush you very quickly. Everyone learns some tough lessons in their first year or two in any style contest. I still remember back in 2012 when I started to play on FanDuel for the first time. I would make dozens of random lineups to throw into various tournaments. There were not a lot of resources to help me with my research back then so I was learning by trial and error….mostly just error that year. Sure, there were weeks where I won money, but there was no method to it. I was loading up a shotgun and letting it spray which kept my results from being replicable in a profitable manner. Stacking? Bringing it back? Chalk backup RB plays? I was oblivious to all of it and gleefully kept depositing again and again until I realized that there might be a method to the madness.

Of course, it took some time for things to click for me as far as figuring out who I was in the DFS world. Having started a PGA site at the beginning of the golf boom, I chased my fair share of tournaments in our early years and had some success, but was always chasing a bigger and bigger prize which required an ever increasing buy-in which left me with fewer bullets to fire at the biggest contests which left me either just breaking even or falling behind little by little. Though I studied GPP contests of all sizes and put together the first comprehensive reports on aggregate ownership targets for PGA contests, I always felt like I was fighting against my instincts when looking through the player pool each week. When it comes to building lineups, I am a ‘connect the dots’ type of guy. With golf, that is really easy to do. You see a golfer that is priced below where their odds would indicate, they have good form and good course history and like a magnet, I know I am going to get drawn in every single time, even though I know that those players are going to be heavily owned.

With the industry best lineup generator that our IT wiz, Aaron Johnson built over the last couple of years, I can mitigate some of my bad GPP habit when building my lineups by putting parameters around aggregate ownership and allowing it to do its work. That works for the smaller contests, but to be elite at the top dollar buy-ins, it takes a certain mindset to put together contrarian lineups and I am constantly struggling to force myself to do that.

After some time, I settled into my identity as a cash game specialist in both PGA and NFL contests. It’s not glamorous and those weeks where Jeff, Statboy or Aaron are celebrating massive five or even six figure wins, I’m usually along for a couple thousand dollars and happy to grind along each season. My goal in playing on DraftKings and FanDuel is to be profitable above all else. When I stick within my system, the profits arrive slowly, but steadily. When I step outside of what I am best at, I usually end up kicking myself over it later.

All of this is not to say that you should not play GPP contests. By all means, jump in and go for it. As I was walking a subscriber through how I use the lineup generator for NFL GPP contests, I found myself assembling ten JAX/KC teams this week and now I do not think there is a way that I end up not playing them. It would be agony to have them sitting on my desktop if one actually hit. And there will be weeks during the season where I like to have a little fun when there are some particularly interesting match ups that I feel strongly about, but for the most part, you will find me in cash games for a couple thousand dollars each week. The goal is to be ahead 5-7 units on the year. Coming off of a really special summer for PGA, I have a little extra in my bankroll to get things started so it should be an exciting season.

My goal here each week is to help you win in cash games for the NFL games each Sunday, but I want to do it by educating you about the process. Anyone can throw out a list of names, a couple stats and be done with their column each week and for a lot of people, that it enough. Being in this world of PGA and NFL, it means my mind is constantly spinning on how to best optimize my play each week so I am always going to look to share my ideas to help you to become a more complete DFS player.

There are a few things that I try to do each week when putting together my teams that I will run through here and likely add to during the season.

1. QB – I lean towards playing home team QBs throughout the season. It is not a hard and fast rule, but more often than not, this will keep you out of trouble. A few consideration on QB play demonstrate this well. When you are looking at warm weather or dome QBs that have to travel anywhere outdoors, on grass or in the cold, it just makes sense that their game will fall off. Look at guys like Drew Brees or Matt Ryan who are significantly better when playing at home in a dome than when they are out on the road. West coast to east coast travel is another factor that can be a stumbling block for teams trying to acclimate. Going into Denver at altitude presents a key challenge for the stamina of the road team, giving Denver a solid home advantage each year. There are even some that do not make much sense to me like Tom Brady going down to Miami every year. Miami is routinely mediocre if not downright awful most years and yet, almost every year, Miami is a house of horrors for the greatest QB of all time where he sports a losing record of 7-10 in his career. The only place he’s been worse over a significant number of games? You guessed it, Denver where he is 4-7. Given that salaries of QBs have become really compressed over the last couple of years, we are always going to have several good options available that line up on paper similarly. Use home turf as your tiebreaker.
2. Defense – Stick to home team defenses most of the time. Have you ever had someone break down the point spread for you in games? Let’s look at the Falcons/Vikings game this week for our example. The game is in Minnesota this week and the Vikings are favored by 4 points. Generally speaking, home field is worth about three points for the home team so if you played this game at a neutral site, you would expect the spread to be 1 point in favor of the Vikes. If the game were played in Atlanta, you would expect the Falcons to be about a 2 point favorite. Now, this is not true across the board and for some teams like the Vikings, home field is actually worth a little over three points, but you get the idea. You are sacrificing an advantage by going on the road. There are times to play a road defense. If the star QB goes down for a mediocre/bad team and we know that the backup is inexperienced  or just terrible, that’s a great spot to pounce. Even this week with Baltimore going to Miami, there is every reason to jump on that match up, but again, for the most part, try to play defenses at home.
3. Running Back – This is spot where I am going to look for value every week of the season. By the end of the first weekend, a big name RB is going to be injured and we will likely get a shot at playing a very inexpensive backup. It is important to capitalize on these situations when possible. If you can get a $3000 RB who is going to get 15-20 touches in a game, especially if they have any pass catching ability at all, they are an auto lock for cash. That’s what made this week so tricky in waiting for Zeke to sign his deal. We were not going to be able to get away from a $4500 Tony Pollard who was going to get 20 touches against the Giants in a game where the Cowboys are a decent sized favorite, presenting an amazing script. Yes, these player can be 60-80% owned in cash games, but go ahead and take the free space. If that player whiffs, it does not hurt you much. We are focused solely on the salary cap savings so it is going to be the next move that makes or breaks you. I need to find value here or at WR each week in order to pay up for one of the top RBs most weeks. If we can get exposure to one of the true horses at RB each week, we are going to do it. We want three down backs with pass catching ability, the type of player that can put up 30+ points on a big day. We are shooting for these players since it is so much easier to project touches when a team is not in a committee situation. There are teams where the share will be 70/30 or 60/40 most weeks, but the script can tilt that quickly and suddenly you find yourself in a vulnerable match up where their team gets down and shifts to a change of pace back. I want to start RBs that are getting the ball on 1st and 10, 2nd and 5 and in to catch the ball on 3rd and 7. I want the RB that gets the first carry of the drive at his own 20 and then gets the last one to punch it in at the goal line. Stud RBs are the easiest to project for touches and just like golf, we want to limit our guess work as much as possible.
4. Wide Receiver – Typically, I find that each week of the year presents a different script for building my roster. Some weeks, it makes sense to pay up at RB and others the value is at WR. Over the last few years, it seems like more and more my rosters are built around a high end RB rather than a WR. Back in 2015, it was not unusual for me to be able to work three stud WRs into my lineup. I tracked down this team from Week 17 of the 2015 season: Matt Ryan, Eddie Lacy, Rashard Jennings, ODB, Julio Jones, Antonio Brown, Zach Ertz, James Jones and the Cowboys defense. I can’t imagine building a cash lineup like that again now, but given the deep value that was at RB and with how consistent those three WRs were that year, it more than made sense for the week and won with ease. Of course, it was also Week 17 so there were plenty of cheap backups to work with which is usually not the case right out of the gates to start the season. For wideouts, we will not look to force a stud into our lineup. We want an ideal situation to play one of the stars. The first thing I do is consult the WR/CB tool. This chart is gold and improves throughout the season as the weeks pile up and we get a sense for who has improved, who has dropped off and what rookies to watch out for as they gain experience. I start each week by circling the best match ups at the top and then working through the game script. You can have a great match up, but if the script is poor or if the WR is not highly targeted, it does not help us much. What we want here are reasonably priced #1 WRs with clear mismatches in high point total games or games where our WR is likely to be in a game script that will force his team to pass the ball often as our ideal. A great example this week is someone like Tyler Boyd. He’s the top dog for the Bengals with AJ Green injured. Check. He’s priced really well at $5800. Check. He’s matched up against rookie Ugo Amadi or journeyman Jamar Taylor in the slot so no experience on the one hand and poorly rated on the other. Check. Finally, the game script for this one is that the Seahawks, at home, should blow out the Bengals this week. It is mismatch on both sides of the ball and the Seahawks should be up big which means that Boyd could easily see 10-15 targets and likely a lot of garbage time action when the Seahawks are not pressing quite as much late in the game. Check. There are situations where I pay up for a star WR, but typically this does not happen until the middle of the season when there is enough value at RB to give me more flexibility.
5. Tight End – It is rare that I am going to pay up for a tight end in cash. There are only a couple of stars that are worth considering each week and they need the perfect match up for me to use them. What does that look like? Typically, if I am going to use a big name TE in cash, I want their team to be going up against a defense that has really good corners that can lock down on the WRs. This week is actually an instance where paying up for a guy like Travis Kelce fits that scenario pretty well. The Chiefs have a lot of weapons and spread the ball around really well. Kelce is capable of a big week almost any time he is on the field, but the Chiefs do not always need him to play a big roll. This week is a little different. The Jags have really strong CB play in Jalen Ramsey and AJ Bouye which should make it a challenge to get the ball to Sammy Watkins and Tyreek Hill. However, Telvin Smith, a star LB for the Jags in recent years, suddenly stepped away from the game this year and the Jags will be working new safeties into the mix. To top it off, last season Kelce caught 8 balls for 100 yards against the Jags while Tyreek Hill struggled. However, typically, I am paying down at TE. Since I am looking to pay up for predictability and consistency, it’s tough to pay up at TE often. Typically, my TE selection revolves around finding a TE from the mid to low $4k range and down who has a regular roll in the passing game for his team. There are plenty of starting TEs that are below $3k, but if they do not get used often in the passing game, I do not care how much they are on the field. The other resource that I consult is how well teams are ranked in covering the TE throughout the season. After the first 4-5 weeks, we will start to get a good sense for which teams to go after that leave the middle of the field open. There will be a handful of repeat offenders that just do not get the job done during the year. Tampa Bay seems to be chronically awful every year in this area, but the names tend to be the same as teams usually scheme a certain way each year based on who is running the defense. My main goal at TE is to avoid taking the dreaded zero. Do not get too cute here. I would rather see you pay up rather than rolling the dice on a hunch. If I can get 5 catches for 50 yards, I’ll take it.
6. Flex – More often than not, this tends to be a RB for me. I like being able to project touches which I can then use to easily project points and as I have already discussed, that takes some of the guess work away which is the goal every week. The one thing you want to remember to do with this player is to make sure that whoever you slot into this position is the guy playing latest on Sunday. So if you have three RB and two are playing at noon and one at 3:30, use the one at 3:30 in the flex position. You do this to give yourself maximum flexibility during the day if you have to swap that player out for any reason. If you put your 3:30 RB as an RB and your noon RB as the flex, if you need to swap out the 3:30 player from the RB slot, you have to replace him with another RB where as if you had him as your flex, you could swap in a RB, WR or TE so it gives you a little more room to maneuver. Why would you ever need to swap for a cash game? An injury would be the most obvious reason, but there is one other consideration as well. If you are into the middle part of the day and things are not looking good for your cash team and you know that your flex player is going to be ultra chalky, there is no reason to sit back to go down with the ship. At that point, you need to flip the switch in your head from cash game to GPP player. It makes sense in this situation to swap over to a low owned player with high upside. This should not be a normal move in your playbook, but one to store away in your mind for a special situation. This worked for me back a few years ago in 2014 when the main slate still contained the Monday night game. The Cowboys were playing the Redskins and I was just out of the money in cash. I could calculate that the players that I would need to beat to get into the money all had the same player as myself, WR Dez Bryant. It did not matter that Dez had a great matchup. If I did not make a swap, I was going to lose my money for the week. I looked over my options and ended up pivoting to DeSean Jackson. The Redskins were terrible that year, but with D-Jax, you always have high upside potential if he gets loose for one big play. Things ended up working out as D-Jax went for 6/136 and 22.6 DK points while Dez was 3/30/1 and just 12 points. I made it into the money for the week and stashed that play away in my head for future use, though the situation has to be just right for you to consider it.

Okay, that’s around 3,500 words so I am going to cut off my brain right here or we’ll be at 10,000 rambling words before I know it. We still have some other ideas that I want to discuss, but I will get into those throughout the season. I need to keep a few ideas handy as we go through the season. Also, if you guys have questions or specific topics that you want me to address here in my column, shoot me a note and I’ll be sure to include my thoughts on it for you. Also, we just opened up our chat room here on the site. Pull up our tools in the drop down menu and you’ll see it. Let’s try to get some chatter going this weekend. We’ll decide on a schedule soon for when Jeff and I will definitely be in there, but always look for us in the couple of hours leading up to the games on Sunday morning.