Jeff’s Hardcore Core- NFL Week 15

Its funny how the topic I discussed in depth in last week’s column was  game stacking because we saw a perfect example in one of the biggest shootouts of the season with the Steelers and Ravens combining for 77 points and 986 yards on Sunday night.  Despite the fact there were guys in that game that have a high ceiling, both defenses had been relatively strong and I personally did not see such a shootout taking place.  Those that stacked Roethlisberger, Bell, Brown, and added Collins on the other side of the ball got paid off large.  With the main slate on Draftkings not including this game we did not see this stack outside of the Primetime slate, but it was a perfect example of how one game can win you a huge GPP if you correctly identify it.

My core smashed last week on the main slate and I was able to have some high finishes in GPPs and I hope you did as well.  You needed Deandre Hopkins and his 39.9 points and we did in the core as his match-up against the overmatched 49er secondary was fantastic.  It was certainly necessary to eat the chalk last week just because of the extreme value and I did with my core.  I ended up with 70% Bernard as the price was just ridiculous at $3,100 for a bell cow back.  I also loaded up on Theo Riddick when it was confirmed that Abdullah was out.  Josh Gordon’s presumed volume for his $5,500 price was just to good to fade as well.  I have talked about it before in my columns, but chalk plays in football are much different than in golf.  When high volume intersects with a great match-up, most of the time you need to just eat the chalk.  With Bernard last week, it was almost impossible, barring an injury that he did not put up at least 4X value on his price. The only thing that can derail the outcome is an injury, which does happen occasionally, but we certainly cannot plan for that.   It turned out that Bernard completely smashed, which was huge, but we did not need him to do that much to make it a good pick.

Outside of the chalk, guys like Thielen, Henry, McCoy, Freeman, Drake, Prescott, and Kizer were all huge and not that highly owned.  There were certainly others that hurt some of our rosters as there usually are including Alex Smith, Derek Carr, Larry Fitzgerald, and ALvin Kamara.  Of course in Kamara’s case, it appeared that he was on his way to a monster night when he put up a quick 5 points on the first drive, but then had to leave due to a concussion.  This my friends is simply bad luck and it is going to happen, we just need to live with it.

This week is an interesting one because the main slate only includes 11 games (2 Saturday games plus the normal Thursday, Sunday, and Monday night games).  It is also interesting because the pricing is extremely tight.  I believe Draftkings was very diligent in creating the pricing this tight, because of the their Fantasy Football World Championship this weekend. I will be heading down to Miami to participate this weekend and hoping I can put together a roster that can contend for the massive prizes.  Since I am leaving on Thursday, I am getting my column out early this week.  Often times injuries play a key role later in the week, so I have made note of the situations I will be watching closely with injuries.

The problem with the tight pricing this week is it does not appear that there are those super low priced high value plays that we had last week with Bernard, Riddick, Burton, and Gordon.  It is very difficult to build viable rosters while owning the high-priced guys this week.  There simply are not enough games to offer us many low-priced options to offset the cost of the big guys.  It is certainly going to be interesting.

Best of luck this week Team FGI!

Jeff’s Strategy & Hardcore Core- NFL Week 15
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