The Daily Spin – NFL Cash Game Selections – Week 9

We are up to Week 9 and the race is beginning to crystalize now that most teams have reached the halfway point. At this point, I think back to Denny Green and his ‘they are who we thought they were’. You know by this point what each team is all about. You know who is still the player they were a year ago and you know who is falling off a cliff. What gets challenging is that so many players have access to so much information that you really need to have your process locked down in order to stay ahead of the game throughout the season.

Last week was another up and down battle for me with my cash game team. I felt like the research was pretty solid and I had a good feel for the big name players that I wanted to roster. At QB, I felt like DeShaun Watson against the Raiders was a lock, but Stafford ranked closely to him and paying down to Tannehill was reasonable even though I have been on the end of some bust games from him in the past. In the end, I stuck with Watson and although he started slow, he had a nice second half and put up about 27 points for the week to get me rolling.

At RB, once Kamara was ruled out, Latavius Murray became an automatic play against the Cards and rolled again putting up a massive day. Unfortunately, anyone with a brain owned him (close to 90% in most contests) so his 39.7 point effort was largely washed away. My other RB was Leonard Fournette who is an opportunity machine this season. He had 19 carries and 7 catches and 136 total yards. Once again, he was held out of the end zone. What was brutal was that in the 4th quarter, the Jags had a 1st and goal at the 1 yard line. They gave the ball to Fournette who hit the ball and was grinding at the goal line and just as the pile moved into the end zone, the refs whistled progress stopped and took away our TD. The next play, the Jags inexplicably ran a pitch play to Fournette to the right and he lost 5 yards…..ouch. There is just not much we can do about that. He had 20.6 points, but 27 would have been oh so nice.

At WR, I wanted to get Michael Thomas into my lineup. He is matchup proof right now and Patrick Peterson did not worry me in covering him on short passes and did not really follow him into the slot. Thomas went for 11 catches, 112 yards and a TD in Drew’s return to the field which gave me 30.3 points.

At WR, I had a real tough time picking up points for the week after Thomas. With Will Fuller out, I thought Kenny Stills was in a great spot to get an uptick in targets, but was badly mistaken as he caught just 3 passes for 22 yards, all of which were in the first half which was very frustrating. The Raiders are awful in the passing game so he had an advantage, but the Texans really never took a shot deep for him which is where he usually gets his points.

The other WR slot went to Mike Williams. I knew the risks with him, but he was so cheap that we did not need a lot out of him. Keenan Allen ended up playing which I do not think hurt him as the Bears had to account for him rather than doubling up on Williams. It was tough to watch Williams as he dropped a TD on a long pass and had at least one other drop that I watched. He did catch 3 passes for 69 yards, so not all bad, but he was right there on hitting value so it was irritating that he could not close the deal as he was so good in the red zone last year.

At TE, I wanted to find the dollars to pay for Evan Engram against the Lions after having watched the Vikes catch 10 balls with the TE the previous week. He caught 4 balls for 40 yards and did score a TD so it was a decent effort though I am still not sure why the Giants are not using him even more each week.

At the flex, I had the dollars to pay for Ty Johnson which was where I made a mistake. The Lions ended up having 4 RBs active, which probably should have tipped me off that Johnson would not get as much action as I had hoped. It’s disappointing that no beat writers were able to figure out and relay that Tre Carson would get the start and the most carries for the day. Perhaps it was a Bill Belichik special from Matt Patricia in hiding how he’d use his backs for the week, but my assumption was that Johnson would get the start and McKissic would be the third down back and the others were active in case of injury or fumbles. Stafford did miss him when he was wide open on a deep ball, but he just did not get the touches I thought he would.

Finally, on defense, I went back to the well with the Carolina Panthers. We had not seen a lot out of the 49ers on offense this season, but they broke out in a massive way and exposed the Panthers for being the bad defense against the run that they are this year. Tevin Coleman had the game of his life and the Panthers were torched for 51 points. They did have 3 sacks, an INT and a safety, which would usually be a great week, but 51 points means -4 points so 3 total points was not a good result when the Jags for just $500 more put up 15 points and were heavily owned.

I ended up with 155.26 points, which was not bad, but only cashed in some of the events I entered and came up just a hair short in others so I am back to the drawing board this week to try to get back on track.

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