Jeff’s Hardcore Core- NFL Week 4

While I heard some others in the industry advising to fade most players in the Chiefs/49ers game, including Mahomes at his inflated price in order to be contrarian, I elected to not overthink things and chose to load up on that game and for the third straight week it payed off. Mahomes gave us another huge effort going 4X on his salary. Hunt was another guy I was high on in that game, just because I felt there was plenty of meat on the bone for that offense and although he wasn’t amazing he did get in the endzone twice and went almost 3X. Kelce was also huge posting 22.4 DK points.  The other side of the ball was also good as Jimmy G put up 22.34 DK points and went 4X on his salary as did George Kittle.   I will continue to game stack Chiefs games going forward especially if others are going to try and be contrarian and fade.

My favorite quarterback last week not named Mahomes was Cam Newton. His price confused me being so low and Newton is always such a great high upside GPP play because of his rushing prowess. Newton had two touchdowns through the air and two rushing touchdowns in a monster week.  I owned Newton on  the team I submitted in the Fantasy Football World Championship (FFWC), which shows you just how much I like him in GPP play.  Always keep him on your radar when assembling your core going forward. Other plays that went well last week included DeShaun Watson, Todd Kelce, Sammy Watkins, and Adam Thielen and Calvin Ridley were absolute monsters. Calvin Ridley was one of my favorite plays last week at his measily $3,700 price with a dinged up Julio Jones going up against a Saints defense that had been shredded. More specifically their coverage of number 2 receivers (which I will talk about later in my column) had been lousy.  So we know what went right, but what went wrong? Well, fill in runningbacks hurt me last week as Corey Clement and Latavius Murray who I had large exposure to both laid huge eggs. The Vikings game script was 180 degrees different than I predicted and Murray thus did not get the volume as expected and his carries were ineffective when he did touch the ball. Corey Clement is a very talented back, but it is apparent the Eagles just are not ever willing to make him a high volume type player. Wendell Smallwood took 10 carries and five targets from Clement and we cannot be on Clement again even if Ajayi is out. Another runningback bomb was Kenyan Drake. Last week was the first week I featured Drake in my core as I have been avoiding him due to Frank Gore taking such a bite out of his volume. Last week I felt like the game script and outstanding opponent was enough to produce enough for both, but clearly I was wrong. Other massive fails included Chris Thompson, Nelson Agholor, Keelan Cole, and pretty much every damn defense in my core. Defense is the most variant position and it  is very difficult to predict consistently, so if you are frustrated, you are not alone.  The variables that give a defense a better chance of success include: being the home team, positive game script, a strong pass rush (hurries and sacks), a bad opposing offensive line and quarterback, and good secondary match-ups. A good example of the variance happened last week with the Vikings/Bills game where seemingly all the above variables matched up perfectly for the Vikings and yet we got a pear-shaped, 3 point effort from an inflated $4,300 price, yuk.

Unlike last week where many of the top players had really tough match-ups and I felt like pricing on Draftkings was extremely tight, this week feels a bit looser with some decent opportunities in the lower dollar region. Best of luck this week Team FGI!

Jeff’s Strategy and Hardcore Core- NFL Week 4
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