The Daily Spin – NFL Cash Game Focus – Week 2

As always, Week 1 had its share of surprises around the NFL and for DFS cash games. There were a lot of exciting games and plenty of scoring to enjoy. Although all of the rule changes were the talk around the league in the offseason, when the hitting started on Sunday, there were not quite as many game changing penalties as I was expecting. I am still not a big fan of the fact that merely landing with your body weight on top of a QB is enough to qualify as a penalty, but overall, it was not as painful as I had feared during the preseason.

What was shocking to me last week, more than anything else was just how many points it took to win in our cash game lineups for the week. I am glad that Jeff took the time earlier in the week to discuss it as it was something I wanted to bring up today, but there were some really crazy things going on in the scoring last week. For the Millionaire Maker, the cash line ended up being around 181 points for the week. In the $25 Massive Double Up, the cash line ended up being just a hair under 205 points, higher than I can ever remember, and a remarkable 24 points higher than the Millionaire Maker.

This is startling and definitely something that you should be thinking about as the season begins to unfold. Although the contest is labeled as a ‘massive double up’, the reality is that this type of contest is also flooded by big time players who may be posting as many as 150 lineups. It does not take a lot of high level professionals getting involved in order to make up a significant portion of the entries for a contest like that in a given week. In order to combat this, we need to be thinking about other alternatives in order to avoid getting bogged down against the same players and lineups over and over again. The single entry contest work as a starting point each week and presented a far lower cash line than the larger multi entry events.

While the massive contests may have frustrated some owners last week, the biggest reason for the higher cash line was a combination of a few factors. First, much like teams around the league have all spring and summer to prepare for their first opponent, DFS owners had over a month with the prices listed to start working through their rosters. Obviously, the industry likes to make a point of building some buzz before the season each year, but this does end up distorting the salaries fairly dramatically. As soon as a couple of key players get injured, or when LeVeon Bell holds out, it creates and immediate opportunity for a low priced backup.

Last week, these factors converged in that not only did Bell hold out, but Conner was more or less blessed as the featured back in Pittsburgh, taking over the full load of both carries and targets in his absence. This made him an automatic play in cash as I discussed, and he performed in a big way. If you neglected to drop down to get Conner in cash, it probably ruined your chances of winning for the week. This is one of the most important things that you need to keep in mind for cash games: RB chalk is usually worth chasing. If you get the chance to pay $4000-5000 for a featured RB who is going to have a chance to touch the ball over 20 times, just go with it for cash games. It does not take much for that type of player to pay off their salary and ownership is going to approach 70% much of the time. Even if that player does underperform for one reason or another, it is not going to sink you for the week, but if they play well, or extremely well in the case of Conner, you do not want to be on the other side of the trade as it almost certainly will be the nail in your coffin. This is not something that is always true at the WR position. Remember Rashard Higgins last year? He had a great Week 2 and looked like someone that the Browns were going to work into their offense immediately moving forward…until they did not do that at all in any meaningful way and owners paid the price in Week 3. With the WR position, touches are never guaranteed and matchups are much more meaningful so just because a star wideout goes down to an injury, do not expect that this will automatically mean big things for his backup.

The other major chalk that played well at RB was Alvin Kamara. With Mark Ingram suspended for the first four games, he was a player that I also locked in to cash games for the week, especially with a great matchup against the Bucs who he continues to torch. With Kamara and Conner each producing 30+ point performances, the stage was set for some higher than normal point totals for the week. Let’s do a quick recap of how my picks performed at each position.

At QB, we had elite performances from Philip Rivers and Tyrod Taylor. Although Taylor was incredibly sloppy by QB standards, his additional rushing yards and TD via his legs helped to get him up to 24.58 fantasy points, which given his cheap salary was more than a 4x return. Andy Dalton and Andrew Luck were both solid in a game that I thought could have shootout potential. While neither player reached what I would consider a ceiling type of week, they were both above 3x so I do not have any complaints. The only real disappointment here was Deshaun Watson in his first game back from injury against the Pats. He looked okay and he move well, but the Pats executed well and the Will Fuller injury seemed to slow down the air attack. Fortunately, I think bigger things are ahead for Watson this week.

At RB, I hope you did not get fancy and just stuck to Kamara and Conner as I had discussed with you. They both smashed and easily earned value. The only unfortunate part was that they were each about 70% owned for the week so it did not give us a big bump. Melvin Gordon and Saquon Barkley were both very good last week. It made me a little nervous to throw out Barkley in his first pro game, but against the Jags, teams must attack on the ground and we were very fortunate that Barkley was able to bust off a long TD run as a result. Christian McCaffrey was good against the Cowboys last week in rushing for 50 yards and adding 45 receiving, but couldn’t break loose or find the endzone which kept it from being a big week. Leonard Fournette went down with an injury against the Giants which is unfortunate, but there is not much that we can do about that. Alex Collins was disappointing after a great start against a terrible Bills defense. He got into the endzone early, but then did not carry much after fumbling which was frustrating given the fact that the flow of the game was perfect and should have allowed for him to have a huge day. Finally, Rex Burkhead got the touches we wanted last week, but did not score and was not a big part of the passing game for the Pats. Overall, I was pleased here as the emphasis I placed on who to start made for easy decisions at RB.

At WR, we got great performances from Antonion Brown, Keenan Allen, AJ Green, Michael Thomas and Jarvis Landry. Even with the bad weather in Cleveland, I was fine with using Brown as he is someone who is just going to get targets no matter what the circumstances around the game. For Landry, I actually thought the weather put him more in play as it forced the Browns to throw shorter passes which is where Landry makes his money. For the others, both Hopkins and Fitz had double digit targets and both were over 75 receiving yards, but neither scored or got the bonus. Although the fantasy points did not quite get to where we wanted, I am still happy with the picks as all we can do is to try to play receivers who are involved with the offense. We can’t control TDs, but targets are generally fairly easy to project. Keelin Cole did not do much last week. However, at $3800, his three catches and 54 yards were not a huge disappointment, but in a week where scores were so high, it was not enough to help us meaningfully. The big letdown at WR and where you could have been derailed for the week was with Chris Hogan. The Pats continue to play musical chairs at WR and it seems like it will work again this season. Gronk was the focal point of the air attack and Dorsett and Patterson were each involved as well. With James White adding some receiving yards out of the backfield, there just was not enough to go around and Hogan was the odd man out. Moving ahead, I will probably only be targeting Gronk out of Brady’s receiving options until we see some consistency from his wideouts.

The TE position was pretty simple for us last week. I listed three, but really, it was either going to be Gronk or Doyle. It worked out about as expected with Gronk posting monster numbers and Doyle putting up his usual week. It was a little discouraging to see Eric Ebron get the TD instead of Doyle, but for the price, he still worked out well.

Defense worked well if you were in on the Ravens and Vikings last week and terrible if you played the Saints. The Ravens were the surest play on the board and the only surprise there is that they did not manage even more points. The Vikes took advantage of Jimmy G and forced him into three picks and a defensive TD. I still do not know what to make of the Saints last week. Journeyman QB, Ryan Fitzpatrick had the game of his life against a defense that seemed to have turned the corner last year. Again and again he hit deep passes against what had been an improved secondary. If you made the last second tweak of swapping out Landry/Ravens for Hogan/Saints (yep, that was me), it just was not your week to win in cash games.

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