The Daily Spin – NFL Cash Game Focus – Week 8

We are nearing the halfway point of the NFL season and as always there are lessons to be learned every single week. Last week, it looked like we had some great value plays available to us based upon pricing, injuries and matchups, but I think I pushed a little too far with it and ended up on the outside looking in.

The mission last week was to figure out the best way to fit Todd Gurley into our lineups. We knew he was going to be owned in almost every cash game lineup which made it important to find a way to squeeze him in as it presented us with a situation where if we pivoted, and Gurley smashed, it would mean we’d be trying to dig our way out of a large hole.

I also wanted to find a way to fit Adam Thielen onto my team for the week. Having watched every game he has played over the years, I’ve had the chance to see him evolve as a player and this season has been special so far in that he has now gone over 100 yards in all seven games this year. It’s really a record that he can share with Stefon Diggs who deserves a lot of credit as he is drawing the top CB for opposing teams every week while Thielen has faced a number of terrible slot corners or secondary corners on the outside which opens up the field for him while Diggs battles on the other side of the field. This move worked out well as Thielen eclipsed 100 yards and caught an early TD.

With some of the cheaper options at RB and WR, I also thought there was a good chance that I could add Zeke Elliott to my team. He had a nice matchup against the Redskins who rank near the bottom of the league against the run and he was getting more and more involved in the offense over the last few weeks. In looking at his projected ownership numbers, I wanted to work him into my lineup in case he had a monster day. Unfortunately, things did not work out at all and the Cowboys continue to by one of the more frustrating teams in the league to deal with for fantasy purposes. What I am learning about them is that they are really a Jekyll and Hyde operation based upon playing at home or on the road. At this point, I think it is prudent to focus on using Zeke or other Cowboy players when they are at home. They just are not the same team when they travel as they have looked lethargic in all four road games this season.

The automatic play of the week was Nick Chubb for the Browns against the Bucs. At $3600, he was someone you should have played regardless of your feeling about him a player. Knowing ahead of time that he was going to get a lot of touches against a bad team, you needed to just take the salary cap relief there and hope for the best.

At TE, we picked on the usual suspect with the Tampa Bay defense. It was scary to have two Browns on my roster last week, but the overriding factor of facing the Bucs defense was simply too much to pass up. Both Njoku and Chubb played well for us and easily were above 3x for week based off of their salaries.

To get all of the high priced players that I wanted, I needed to make sacrifices at other positions and most of them did not work out for the week. Jermaine Kearse looked like an easy value play in filling in for Quincy Enunwa against the Vikings. The Vikes have been awful against slot receivers this year and with Xavier Rhodes focusing his attention on Robby Anderson, it seemed like Kearse would be the obvious beneficiary. He had caught 9 passes for 90 yards the previous week on 10 targets so I felt like everything was lining up well. Naturally, he was targeted just twice and caught zero balls, posting a fat goose egg. He was 50% owned in cash games so it did not kill me, but it definitely put me into a corner.

The other value play that hurt was in using Willie Snead for the Ravens in a revenge matchup against the Saints. He has been steady so far this season and even last week, he had seven targets, but a couple of key drops held his numbers down and he just never got into gear, scoring only 6.6 points. It was frustrating as the Saints have the third worst defense against the pass and their slot CB, PJ Williams has been terrible all year. Once again, I think the rationale was solid for making the play, but we just did not get the result we needed.

I usually pay down at QB each week so it was not unusual to drop down last week, but I knew there was extra risk in going with CJ Beathard. He had played extremely well in his first three starts this year despite all the injuries to his fellow skill position players, and seemed to have made good progress from what we saw of him last year, especially in how he went into Green Bay and nearly knocked them off. At home, against the Rams, I did not think that he would have a monster game, but thought the script would keep him throwing the ball and that the 49ers would be able to fight the whole way to keep it from getting out of hand the same way they had with the Chargers and Packers. It did not work out and he turned the ball over often and did not get anything going in the second half. Given the solid options at the $6k range, it would have been better to just take the sure thing and move on. My desire to get Zeke into my lineup pushed me into this move. I think the lesson here is not to stretch too much just for the sake of getting an extra star onto a roster.

Finally, the last dagger that did me in was my defensive selection of the Bills against the Colts. The Bills, to their credit, have actually been pretty strong this season on the defensive side of the ball. They rush the passer well and Tredavious White has become a true shutdown CB. Unfortunately, they were routed on both sides of the ball last week. I think I really need to stick to the rule of thumb of utilizing home team defenses each week. This is not something that is always 100% true, but more often than not, it really pays off to stick with the home team, even if the matchup is not quite as good on paper.

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