The Daily Spin – NFL Cash Game Selections – Week 5

Welcome to Week 5 of the NFL season. By this point, we are starting to learn the identities of most of the teams in the league. Some teams are exactly what we expected while others look like outright frauds (hello Vikings). Though we only have four weeks of data, we can start to use the data for each team on offense and defense to see areas of strength and weakness. The matchup charts should start to be increasingly useful as well. Coming in to each season, there are CBs that are known household names that start to fall off and former rookies who struggled that rise up to the top. It happens dramatically at the position almost every season so it is one of those positions where we constantly need to be looking back at the grades each week to try to stay ahead of the curve to exploit the best matchups available before the rest of our competitors catch on.

Week 4 proved to be a challenging week for my projections. For the lineup I put together, there were some solid performance. At QB, the most popular options by far were Daniel Jones and Russell Wilson. I ended up taking the extra savings and using Jones for the week. Fortunately, Wilson did not have a big game and those folks that paid up for Mahomes did not see their investment pay off so the position overall was a wash. At RB, I opted for the very popular Christian McCaffrey and Kerryon Johnson. CMC had another great day and Johnson went over 100 yards and could’ve had an even bigger day had he not fumbled the ball away at the goal line. Yeah, Wayne Gallman was popular and ended up getting two goal line touches that turned into TDs so he hit value pretty easily, but I am not unhappy with my move to use Johnson who is a far superior player and will outscore Gallman nearly every week and was priced really well.

The WR position is where I just could not get things going. With Terry McLaurin out, I thought we would be in a great spot with Paul Richardson to pick up some extra targets in a game where I thought the Redskins would need to throw a lot to keep it close. Unfortunately, Case Keenum was ineffective and then got hurt and rookie QB Dwayne Haskins looked overwhelmed in his first action and couldn’t get him the ball. Christian Kirk was another disappointment for us. Just a week after being targeted 12 times, he was held to a 5/4/37/0 line and hurt his ankle against Seattle in a matchup where he should have had an advantage. Finally, I decided to use Keenan Allen against the Dolphins as my decision came down to Allen or Ekeler for my Charger. Obviously, that did not work out as he was held to 6/5/48/0. What killed us was that he had a 69 yard TD called back during the game due to a penalty which would have taken a 9.8 DK point effort and turned it into a 26.7 point output. He was also stopped at the goal line on another short pass in the 4th quarter so we were very close to a monster day, but it just did not work out.

At TE, I again used Darren Waller who caught 6 passes for 50 yards in the first half….and then only 1 for 3 yards in the second half. I probably should have just gone with Will Dissly and taken the savings and matchup with the Cards, but was attracted to Waller’s volume and potential upside. Dissly got in the endzone so we lost some ground and dollars there. At the flex spot, I used Tyler Lockett which also did not work out as he was targeted just four times for 51 yards after being targeted 21 times in the previous two games. The Cardinals just were not competitive at all last week which allowed the Seahawks to grinds the game out on the ground without having to be too aggressive in the second half. Finally, I used the Panthers on defense which worked great as the kept the pressure up against a terrible offensive line and generated six sacks, an INT and a fumble recovery for 14 total points.

Unfortunately, it was not enough to get me a win for the week as poor production at the WR position held me back just enough to keep me out of the money. Fortunately, as the season wears on, we get a chance to wipe the slate clean this week and to get back to work towards being profitable for the season!

 

To read the entire article, become a premium member of Football Insider Edge by clicking here, or on the JOIN NOW button on the homepage