The Daily Spin – NFL Cash Game Edition – Week 8

What a wild week. The swings of NFL DFS can get pretty crazy, but seeing the cash line leap to nearly 200 points last Sunday was one of the wilder days in recent memory. I typically do my best to not take a look at my team throughout the day on the DK app as it can drive me crazy and takes my focus away from the games which I enjoy very much and need to take in so that my takes from week to week are the best that I can offer as I am much more of a visual DFS player than one that relies on projections or algorithms.

Last week, however, I found myself in a peculiar situation that I am rarely a part of in DFS. When I opened the app late in the afternoon on Sunday, I noticed that my lineup was tied with about 100 other lineups on DK. I am sure that a lot of folks looked at the leaderboard and were irritated with the results, which I completely understand, but I also want to write about it today so people can see how a week like the last one comes about.

There are weeks every season where the plays come together so easily that it allows for little variation from lineup to lineup if you are playing any sort of optimal strategy. The game has evolved in the eight years that I have been playing so that there is far less room for error than ever before. When mid week injuries present big opportunities, passing them up is nearly always going to kill your chances of being successful. This is particularly true at the running back position where a top back on a good offense getting ruled out in the middle of the week can flip the entire slate.

There were two plays that were nearly mandatory if you wanted to have a chance to make money in cash game contests last week. If you skipped over playing Giovani Bernard or Jamaal Williams, you were putting yourself into a negative EV (expected value) situation. This is not always going to be the case for a backup RB and every situation is unique, but both of these guys became strong plays by the end of the week due to a combination of their incredibly cheap salaries, the matchup against teams that are poor defending against the run and the fact that both guys are really good at coming out of the backfield to catch passes. Both games also had shootout potential so when we analyze all of these factors together, it pointed towards a clear spot to use both guys which immediately opened up huge possibilities for the rest of your roster. There are going to be weeks each year where there are two cheap backup RBs that get the start and you need to be ready to move on them when it happens. This will increase the overlap with a lot of other lineups as it then allows you to select from the obvious elite players at higher prices.

My lone worry on Williams was in trying to gauge his split with AJ Dillion and if he would lose a lot of short yardage touches or down near the goal line. What kept me in on Williams is his pass catching abilities. We knew Dillon would have no role in the passing game, which meant that we expected 4-5 catches for Williams and a very reliable floor, especially at a salary of only $4k. Of course, we did not get the Aaron Jones news until late on Saturday night so if you put your lineup together on Friday and did not check back until after kickoff on Sunday, you missed out on this play.

I cannot emphasize enough that the two most important hours of every week for NFL DFS are the two hours prior to kickoff. If you are just here for fun or to gain a little edge on some group of friends that you play with, then maybe it is not that big of a deal. However, if you want to be competitive with the people who do this for a living and who spend their entire week preparing for Sunday, then those hours need to be devoted to the news that comes out Sunday morning. Every week I usually have my team set to go long before Sunday morning, but it is so rare that I do not make a change or two on Sunday when finalizing my roster.

The other RB that was in play for me last week was Alvin Kamara. The Saints were missing their top two wide receivers and were playing at home against the Panthers, a team that has been notoriously bad against running backs the last two years. With inexperienced WRs, it was obvious that the Saints would need to work the short passing game to be effective and Kamara and Cook would likely benefit, which was the case. I was going to play him regardless of cap space issues even before the news on Aaron Jones hit. He ended up playing well and the only thing that has kept his numbers from being extraordinary is that he’s missed out on scoring any TDs the last two weeks as he’s seen a few opportunities vultured away.

On defense, I locked in Washington early in the week at 2500. This price came out before the completion of the Monday night game between Dallas and Arizona where the Cowboys showed just how bad they are without Dak at the helm. With a depleted offensive line going up against a very strong defensive front and not having a very mobile QB in Andy Dalton, it spelled bad news for the Cowboys. When you factor in that the turf at FedEx Field is absolute garbage this time of year, you have all the ingredients you need for value with a defense and Washington smothered the Cowboys all day.

At that point, I needed to add some WRs and went back to the Saints game. Now, in no way am I a Tre’Quan Smith fan. He’s been pretty inconsistent and has not developed into the #2 type of WR that the Saints had hoped for when they drafted him a couple of years back. He’s shown signs of life here and there, but never substantially enough  to get excited about….unless the guys in front of him get injured and he becomes the de facto #1 WR as was the case last week. At $4k, there was not a lot of risk in playing Smith. Remember, we are only looking for 3x point production out of players based on salary each week so as long as we felt like he could be anywhere in that ballpark, the risk was low. While I would have loved to have seen more targets go his direction, he still ended up with four, caught all of them and had 54 yards to show for it, generating a 9.4 point output. That’s nothing to get that excited about, but the whole point of the move was to generate cap space.

Some people get really hung up on playing two players from the same team, usually where one is a receiver and the other a running back. I am here to tell you that there is nothing wrong with this move at all. It’s just math folks. You figure out how much a player is going to be used, give yourself reasonable parameters in terms of estimating point potential and then work from there. Why ignore some of the best matchups of the week just because they involve multiple players from the same team? You look at a game like Green Bay vs Houston last week with a point total of 57 and is your first thought that if you play Jamaal Williams that Davante Adams might somehow not get enough touches? That’s absolutely insane. Especially in a situation with a backup RB that is so cheap. We knew going into the game that Williams was going to get 15 touches at a minimum with 4-5 of those being catches. We also knew that with Aaron Jones out, that the Packers would be likely to rely a little more than normal on the passing game and particularly Adams who is obviously the top WR for the Packers who do not even have a true WR2 with Alan Lazard still out with an injury.

If you figure 15 touches for a $4k RB and 10+ targets for a WR in a game with a 57 point total, why wouldn’t you play them together? Once Williams becomes a chalk play, we do not even worry about underperforming. His floor last week was probably 10 points, far from a dagger to our cause and with 60% ownership, not something to worry about. What we gained by dropping down was access to Adams, who is always in play, but even more so without Jones. The math gets tougher if Jones plays and has his normal role in the offense. Then you are looking at $7600 for Jones and $7900 for Adams. While it is certainly still possible to hit the point total goal you need to make that play work, it’s a much tougher task and it restricts your spending in other areas. Don’t get hung up in the nonsense. When a cheap running back in a high powered offense moves into the starting role and will get the bulk of the action, just consider that a free space for the week and move on, keeping all of your options open for the rest of your roster. This works with cheap TEs as well. If you pay $3k for some starting TE and ignore the rest of the team just to avoid having two players from that team, you are only hurting yourself in ignoring a good situation.

Obviously, this play worked out very well last week as I used Adams and Williams together against the Texans. Adams is already a target magnet, but with Jones out, we knew we had a chance to hit a massive game for him with the script altered just enough to tilt the flow more towards the passing game. With Adams, you are never having to guess if he is going to lose targets to another receiver the way you do with the Seahawks or Bengals or Vikings or any of the many teams that have a couple of good receivers to work with. In Adams, he’s almost always going to be the target leader every week. Early in the week, I did not think I would have the funds to pay up for him, but by Sunday, there was a clear path.

Terry McLaurin was on my roster at the beginning of the week and never moved. The Cowboys are getting killed through the air every week and McLaurin, like Adams is the WR1 for Washington, which lacks a real second pass catching threat at the receiver position. Considering how productive and how active McLaurin has been in the offense, $5800 seemed about $1000 too cheap and he rewarded us with a great game which would have been even better had a review not ruled him down at the one inch line in the first quarter.

This left me with plenty of funds to get my top QB and TE options for the week. Kyler Murray was a lock against a Seattle team that does not play much defense, especially against the pass and he shredded them as expected. At TE, Kelce was a big disappointment, but the position in general was a bust, so we did not lose out against any other chalky options. In the end, the lineup more or less built itself for me once Aaron Jones was ruled out. It will likely be the only time my team aligns with the optimal lineup that the big name pros run, but it worked out well so I’ll take the win and move on to Week 8.

 

Week 7 Team	Salary	Points
Kyler Murray	7100	41.1
Alvin Kamara	7900	22.8
Giovani Bernard	4500	20.6
Davante Adams	7900	47.6
Terry McLaurin	5800	22
Tre’Quan Smith	4000	9.4
Travis Kelce	6300	6.1
Jamaal Williams	4000	21.4
Wahington	2500	17
	50000	208

 

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