Jeff’s Hardcore Core- NFL Week 2

Week 1 of the NFL season is in the books and before you know it we will be saying the same thing about Week 17.  Every week I will talk a little bit about the previous week’s strategy, what went wrong, what went right, and what we could possibly take away  from it to make us a better DFS player.

Week 1 was certainly a very nice week for my core and I have heard from so many of you who had profitable and in some cases giant weeks.  Personally, I was net positive, but only slightly in GPPs, with no big scores. Let’s start with what went right- Alvin Kamara and James Conner, although highly owned were must owns if you were to make a killing in GPPs.  This is a case where you know certain players are chalk and especially at the runningback position, you simply have to go along with the masses because the volume and match-up are too great.  As I talked about in my article: 10 Essential Strategies to Make You a Winning Fantasy Football Player.   It is much easier to fade a receiver then it is runningback, because there are other factors (weather, quarterback efficiency, etc) that can prevent a receiver getting the ball whereas the runningback will have it handed to them.  In situations like this, lock in those players despite their ownership and try and be contrarian elsewhere.  At the wide receiver position we nailed Keenan Allen, Emmanual Sanders, and Kenny Stills. The Ravens defense was dominant as expected and outperformed their lofty price.  Phillp Rivers was also a great play as was Jordan Reed.  The Patriots stack was sort of a mixed bag.  Brady, Gronk, and White all produced, but Chris Hogan was an absolute bust.  I am hoping this was an aberration, because I invested in Hogan in several season long teams, but we will have to monitor closely.  Goodwin went down early with an injury against the Vikings and as we know, there is nothing we can do about that.  Derrick Henry was a miss for me straight up.  I knew he had to split carries with Dion Lewis, but those carries he did receive he was not that effective against a terrible Dolphins run defense.  I will not be rostering Henry again, unless Lewis were to go down.  I still will be targeting the Dolphins run defense in coming weeks.  Alex Collins was another massive disappointment.  He scored an early touchdown and everything looked great, but then he fumbled in the 2^nd quarter and apparently was benched for it. Then he never saw the field much in the second half probably because the game was so out of hand. This is crazy to me why you would bench your lead back because of one fumble.  It really sucks because Kenneth Dixon and Javorius Allen both had goaline carries in Collins place of which they both converted for touchdowns.  I am hoping Collins will be the guy to get those opportunities going forward, but again we will have to see.  Of course the big difference maker was the Saints/Bucs game.  Personally I missed it.  I of course had Kamara, but the outcome was far different from the game script that I had in my head.  I really thought that the Saints defense would build upon their nice year last year and easily be able to shut down Ryan Fitzpatrick and the Bucs at home on opening day.  I beat myself up over a lot of decisions, but this one I can’t do it.  I cannot say that I would ever include Fitzpatrick stacks into my core in this situation.  Some people were able to hit it even though it did not make much sense.  There were also a lot of people who went against the grain and rosterd Jimmy G in Minnesota, Eli Manning against the Jags defense, and Cam Newton as contrarian plays that did not work out so well.  The Saints/Bucs game does bring up an important point about rostering multi-dimensional runningbacks, which I also wrote about in my 10 Essential Strategies column.

If Alvin Kamara was a one dimensional back who was not an excellent pass catching back out of the backfield, his owners would have been out of luck as he rushed 8 times for 29 yards and would not have played much as they were down for most of the game.  But because he is great in the pass game he remained in the game and caught 9 balls for 112 yards and was able to get in the endzone twice after they were behind.  Even though we were completely wrong about how the game would play out, we were still able to prosper because of the multiple skills.  This gives us much more room for error and needs to be considered every week.

Overall, it was a good week, but not great week to kick off the season.  Naturally our goal in GPPs is to hit a huge payday, which I have fortunately been able to do the last few years.  We will continue to research like crazy and give you the absolute best information and advice possible.  As we go with the season, more and more injuries will be popping up requiring us to be on top of news and formulating opinions on how to play the news.  Onward we go!

Jeff’s Strategy & Core- NFL Week 2

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