The Daily Spin – NFL Cash Game Focus – Week 10

Some weeks, it all just comes together and you just get to sit back and enjoy the games on Sunday without having to check your score after about the first two hours of the day. Last week was one of those weeks where everything seemed to work out early and I had such a big lead in my cash games that I was regretting not having played GPPs last week. Usually, I play a good mix of around 75% cash games and 25% GPP contests, but last week, I put my main cash lineup in on Saturday and lazily woke up on Sunday morning and listened to Fantasy Football Now on ESPN as they read off the inactives for the day. As I have said many times before, anytime I get my lineup together the day before the games and never have a second thought, it almost always means I am in for a big week.

We are hitting the part of the season where there are some great value plays each week to work with and that helps out with building projections throughout the week. Early in the season, we are forced to rely on previous years statistics and a limited number of observed games where we try to build a bridge between what we knew from the previous year and what we anticipate for the current year. Many times, the results are just as we had projected, but there are other times when the extrapolation does not work out so well and we find out that we completed misjudged a situation. We are still not immune from those types of mistakes at this point, but at this point in the year, generally speaking, Denny Green’s quote is applicable more often than not in the fact that, “They are who we thought they were”.

Each week, the first two charts that I focus my research on are the Defensive Efficiency chart which gives me all of the DVOA rankings followed by our WR Matchups chart which gives a detailed breakdown of where WRs lineup for their routes and how the opposing team lines up their respective CBs.  At the start of the season, I still operate under the assumption that if a CB was bad last year, that they are still bad this year as well as the opposite scenario. It always takes some time to get used to seeing improvement out of players and even tougher when a perennial Pro Bowler is suddenly beatable and you start to see them highlighted near the top of the list as a matchup to attack for the week. By the time Week 10 arrives, you have to accept the reality of the situation. It’s no longer an anomaly to see Malcom Butler, Janoris Jenkins and Marcus Peters as players to specifically attack each week. On the other end, if you did not know the name Tre’Davious White at the start of the year, you should know now that the Bills top CB is not one to mess with.

These factors all played into our success last weekend. The key move that sealed the win was in finally getting paid off with the defense that I selected. Typically, the move in cash games is to pay down for defense in order to spread extra funds around up top. Sometimes, that works out, but this year has not been great for that strategy. The issue that we are running into this season with defenses is that scoring is way up this year compared to recent years. With rule changes in place to protect QBs and open up the offense, teams are putting up a lot more points than what we are used to which means that great defenses are now only good and average defenses are now mediocre. We are not getting away with playing cheap defenses this year.

On the other end, paying up has not always worked either. Even with the tough defenses that are out there, we do not have the dominant units this year that we’ve seen over the years. What we need to be playing each week are the matchups. That was the gift we were given last week when the Bears traveled to Chicago to take on one of the worst starting QBs to ever take the field in Nathan Peterman. I felt like a defensive TD had a high probability and we ended up getting two on the way to a massive game. I am going to make it a focus for my cash games the rest of the season to play the best matchup each week, even if it means paying up a few extra dollars. I just do not enjoy taking zeroes or scoring one or two points for my defense. We are not always going to get the upside like last week, but I don’t want to lose ground there either if at all possible.

The rest of the team fell into line without much work. Fitz was really cheap at QB and the Bucs are almost a pass only offense due to a lack of a running game and a terrible defense. We will continue to chase Fitz even if there are stints where he can be maddening to watch with the way he turns over the ball. At running back, I stayed in the same game and took advantage of the Bucs defense in using Christian McCaffrey who was one of many RBs to play great ball last week. The other RB slot went to Nick Chubb even though the projected game flow was not too favorable. In fact, the new offensive coordinator figured out that Duke Johnson can still catch the ball and he had an even bigger day than Chubb. Fortunately, Chubb got going in the first half and found the end zone on his way to a very solid day.

The wide receiver position had our ‘free space’ of the week in Courtland Sutton who was stepping up to a starting role for the Broncos after trading Demaryius Thomas. He was cheap and we knew he would be 80% owned so there was no reason to fade him with the extra cap space he helped to clear for us. He did not do a lot, but we did not need much and at that level of ownership, it did not matter. The other cheap play that I made for the week was to use DJ Moore for the Panthers. He had seen his usage in the offense grown over the last few weeks and with injuries to other players, it looked like he would have a key role again last week. Unfortunately, that never came together as Curtis Samuel swiped a TD and Moore did almost nothing all day on his way to a 5.8 point output. He was my one real bust for the week, but he came very cheap and also had 35-40% ownership so it was not a killer for my team. On the side of good chalk, Cooper Kupp returned to action and showed no signs of rust in catching five passes for 89 yards and a TD. He was up against PJ Williams of the Saints who is consistently one of the worst CBs in the NFL so it was great to have it work out as expected as I do get a little nervous using players coming back from an injury.

At TE, we’ve been pretty fortunate so far this year. We’ve only had one or two weeks where we did not get big production (Hello Vance McDonald) and last week was not different. OJ Howard continues to get better each week and is establishing himself as one of the better TEs in the league at a position where there have not been a lot of great performers this year. He caught two TDs last week and is becoming a red zone favorite for Ryan Fitzpatrick so we’ve been able to take advantage of it at a cheap price, but it is starting to rise so it may not be long before he gets to be out of cash game range.

With all of the savings that I was able to pick up in a few spots in the lineup, I easily had enough to afford Todd Gurley to finish off my team. This was an important move as the pricing allowed for flexibility last week so I knew Gurley would come in at a high ownership number. When he’s priced high and the pricing is tight, you can afford to fade him, but when he is going to be on 60% or more of cash game lineups, it is just too dangerous to be on the other side of the trade, especially when his floor has been in the 25-30 point range each week. He ‘only’ put up 19.9 points last week which for him represented a rare game of unerperformance, but considering how many people owned him and the success I had in other spots, it did not matter much as my position in the standings barely moved at all even as Alvin Kamara and Michael Thomas ran wild late in the afternoon.

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