The Daily Spin – NFL Cash Game Focus – Week 6

Much as we expected, the cash line dropped fairly dramatically last week as much of the cheap chalk dried up and a couple of bombs dropped on rosters. It’s always discouraging to get taken in by bad chalk, but that is exactly what happened to my cash game team last weekend. At least a couple of times every year, it sneaks up on all of us and punches us in the mouth. When we look back at it, it seems oh so obvious, but at the time, nothing could have made more sense.

Two players hurt me last week in a big, unforgivable way that kept my team out of the money. The first mistake was in playing Vance McDonald against the Falcons. On paper, it was a favorable matchup. McDonald had a long TD against the Bucs and then five grabs against the Ravens and the industry decided that one big game and one average game, that Vance was the man for the Steelers. The problem, of course, is that the Steelers have two pass catching tight ends as Jesse James has also had his moments over the last two years. Another big drawback in this plan is that the Steelers are full of high profile threats, making Vance no higher than the 4th or 5th most likely player to get any meaningful touches. He is never going to be mistaken for Travis Kelce, Gronk or Zach Ertz. While we may roll the dice on a player if he is the only TE getting snaps for his team or has a very well defined role in the offense, that is not going to be McDonald in the Steeler offense this year so the bust potential for him was much higher than it first appeared.

The other player that sucked me in last week was Doug Baldwin in his matchup against the Rams. What was crazy about this game is that we got exactly what we had hoped for at the outset in that it ended up being a high scoring affair with the Seahawks making enough big plays to keep the game close all the way to the end. Somehow, in a 33-31 game, Baldwin received just one target, which he converted into one reception, for one yard. Now, Baldwin has been battling a bum knee since training camp and more than likely, it won’t be 100% all year, but he had seven targets the prior week and five catches the previous week so I thought we would at least be working with a good floor. My thought is that the knee is not quite up to full speed yet and also that Tyler Lockett has stepped up as the top threat so far. However, given the way that Adam Thielen lit up the Rams the previous week out of the slot, it sucked me in hook, line and sinker. I think my mistake here was in getting back in on Baldwin before seeing him reestablish his place in the Seahawk’s offense. The price was certainly tempting, but Baldwin is the type who can show up or disappear depending on the week so adding in the recent return from injury, that probably should have been enough to push him to a GPP option.

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