The Daily Spin – NFL Cash Game Edition – Week 15

Welcome to the the COVID portion of the NFL season. These last couple of days have been an absolute whirlwind of adventure as one team after another was hit with positive COVID tests pushing at least two games to be delayed until early next week. This put me in a bit of a bind as I had to restructure much of what I had built going into yesterday when I left for Florida for a week to visit family in the Tampa area. Even now as I am putting the final touches on the article and player pool I am still hesitant as I am fully expecting even more news today from teams around the league that will put many more names on the sidelines for Week 15.

In the fantasy world, we have to look at this through an opportunistic lens. If you are here reading this column, you are already ahead of the novices that put in a few lineups with little to no research and then sit back on Sunday to watch the games and check out their respective DFS teams in action. That is a perfectly reasonable approach for those who are looking for entertainment value alone, but we want to actually profit from this venture so we do our best to get locked in and stay there throughout the weekend. While this column is devoted to cash games, I do see opportunities in weeks like this one to get more aggressive in GPP contests. With so much scrambling going on over the final couple of days and a trickier slate than normal to work with and a lot of key players inactive, there are going to be some lesser known names that step up this week and put up massive numbers.

Let’s do a quick review of Week 14:

DraftKings					FanDuel
Taysom Hill	5600	26.3			Josh Allen	8800	36.22
Josh Jacobs	6200	11			Josh Jacobs	7100	7.5
Antonio Gibson	6000	5.1			Antonio Gibson	7400	3.1
Chris Godwin	7100	23.5			Mike Williams	6900	9.1
Mike Williams	6000	12.1			Jamison Crowder	5500	3.4
Jamison Crowder	4700	4.9			Stefon Diggs	8200	10.9
Austin Hooper	3400	14			Travis Kelce	7500	4.2
Austin Ekeler	8300	16.4			Jeff Wilson	4900	5.6
Browns	2700	14			Chiefs	3700	24
	50000	127.3				60000	104.02

 

It was a frustrating week where I salvaged wins in about half of my DK contests, but came up about 6-7 points short over on FanDuel. The RB position turned into an ugly chalk bust for my first couple of plays with both Josh Jacobs and Antonio Gibson badly underperforming their projected point totals. Washington fell way behind against the Cowboys and Gibson just never got into the flow and after losing a fumble, was not in the mix much in the second half. The Raiders decided that it was a good idea to stomp on the Chiefs logo during pregame warmups. Jacobs then started off the game with a fumble which the Chiefs returned for a TD and the route was on. I was a little surprised that Jacobs did not get more run in the passing game during the second half with the Raiders so far behind. With both players in every down roles and priced around $6k, I was not going anywhere else in the early games at RB.

Taysom Hill was the chalk QB play over on DK and though it looked like he was going to be a bust, two late game rushing TDs propelled him to be one of the higher scoring QBs on the slate. When you play Taysom, you know it will not be a thing of beauty to watch, but generally, when given the chance as a fantasy QB, he’s come up big the last two seasons and for a salary that is usually tough to beat. On FanDuel, where salary cap constraints are not as big of an issue and the QBs are priced more tightly together, I paid up for Josh Allen against the Bucs. He started out sluggishly, but put together an amazing second half and ended the game with over 100 yards rushing and a TD along with over 300 yards passing and two more TDs.

At WR, I walked myself into ruin again. I know I should just ignore any and all buzz around the Jets when it comes to WRs. Time and time again I have been burned by talking myself into using a low cost option from this beleaguered squad and I cannot think of one single time where it has paid dividends. With Elijah Moore and Corey Davis out last week, I thought I would bang my head into the wall yet again and used Jamison Crowder. The results were predictably poor, three catches for 19 yards. I have to play better than this if I expect to be able to win each week. These are the types of plays that I should be able to avoid by now. I had better option with the Chargers, but had concerns about Guyton and Palmer as I just was not sure which would get more usage with Keenan Allen out. Well….they both caught a TD. I also knew that I was going to use Mike Williams as he’s had some enormous games this season so I was a little apprehensive about stacking two Chargers WRs. In looking back, I need to be more focused on salary than stack. Both Palmer and Guyton were extremely cheap. Even if I had used one over the other and had come up with a bust, the price point is so low that the other options it would open up would be really valuable. Plus, when looking at low cost options, it is almost always better to look at the QB for each team as the final factor in deciding on which punt play WR to use. Justin Herbert vs Zack Wilson is a total no brainer…or it should have been. In any case, I will say it for the 100th time: do not chase punt play receivers for the Jets. Hopefully, I can follow my own advice this time around.

Beyond Williams and Crowder, I landed on Chris Godwin for DK and Stefon Diggs for FanDuel. The extra cap space on FD really hurt me last week. I liked this game quite a bit and it played out much the way I thought it would with Godwin again getting peppered with targets. This always puts him in play on DK where there is a full PPR and the 100 yard receiving bonus. He does not get into the end zone as prolifically as other WRs so his value on FD is not quite as high which is what drew me to Diggs in a game where I correctly figured that the Bills would be behind and throwing often (RBs had just 7 carries). Diggs ended up with 13 targets (yea!!!), but caught only 7 passes for a pedestrian 74 yards and no TDs while Godwin put up a 15/10/105/0 line. It was a solid result on DK, but the line was Diggs was poor for the price.

At TE, the extra salary cap space again proved to be detrimental as I had room to pay up for Travis Kelce. The Chiefs absolutely pounded the Raiders from the opening whistle onward and Kelce was not needed much throughout the day. The real killer was watching him annihilate the Chargers on Thursday night for a 30+ DK point effort which he is capable of any given week. Over on DK, the punt option paid off as Austin Hooper was the only real target for the Browns at TE and paid off early with a first half TD before disappearing in the second half. At a salary of only $3400, his 14 points were exactly what we were looking for last week.

For RB, I made an error last week in ranking Ekeler over Kamara. Perhaps I was a little spooked in that it was Kamara’s first game back from injury in missing the previous four games, but there were a few factors that should have led me to favor Kamara over Ekeler for cash games. The matchup against the Jets is an obvious point, though the Giants also presented a good opportunity for Ekeler. The Saints were using Taysom Hill who was dealing with a mallet finger injury which tilted the Saints towards more of a running attack. With Ty Montgomery and Mark Ingram both sidelined, that also meant that Kamara would see around 80-90% of all RB touches (Tony Jones had 6 carries and one catch, mostly in mop up duty).

Of course, Ekeler getting hurt after a strong start colors my analysis to a degree, but even before he went down with an ankle injury, the Chargers were playing a RB by committee game that only slightly favored Ekeler who was getting around 50% of the touches out of the backfield before he left the game. Considering that he’s never a 20+ carry per game kind of guy, this should have played more into my decision making process. Ekeler did have 16.4 points and likely would have been over 20 had he avoided injury, but I think I was too hung up on Kamara returning from injury and ignored a clear discrepancy in likely volume which proved costly

On FD, I thought the price for Jeff Wilson was just too cheap to pass up at 4900 and just prayed he could get a couple of red zone carries and maybe fall into the end zone. He finished with 13 carries for 56 yards, but had no role in the passing game and once again, it was Deebo Samuel who found the end zone on a carry and not Wilson. Can we go back to Wilson again this week against an even better matchup against the Falcons with Eli Mitchell still inactive? That might be tough to stomach.

Both plays on defense worked out really well. The Browns got a break early with Lamar Jackson going down with an injury, but still nearly squandered it away late in the 4th quarter and had to hang on for the win. They did get a defensive TD and plenty of sacks which got them to 14 DK points. The Chiefs continued to be a strong DFS defense as they mauled the Raiders, scoring and early defensive TD, recovering four fumbles, intercepting a pass and sacked Derek Carr four times for 24 massive points.

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