The Daily Spin – NFL Edition – Week 10

It’s hard to believe that it is already Week 10 of the NFL season. As always, it feels like the fall goes by way too fast. The college football regular season is winding down, the swing season for golf is in the home stretch and now we’re just a couple of weeks from Thanksgiving and the final run towards the playoffs and holiday season. Fortunately, that still gives us plenty of weeks to keep winning some money in NFL cash games. It’s been a really good season so far and I do not see it letting up now that teams are forced to put backups into skill positions for big roles in many offenses. This is the part of the season where each week, an injury or two unlocks a lot of value in our lineups and allows us to pay up for a few extra stud players.

Last week was another solid, winning week for me in cash games as my one lineup free for all came through big late in the day to surpass 160 points and easily cashed across the board in all contests. The key again was in dropping down at running back to save a few dollars and then picking off the best values on the board in other areas. Dak Prescott continues to be matchup proof for DFS purposes and again looked strong against the Chiefs all afternoon. Even with Marcus Peters, a top notch CB, the Cowboys were able to target the other side of the field from where he lined up which helped Terrance Williams to have a huge day. If it were not for a rolled ankle for Dez, I suspect he would have broken 100 yards as well. Dak consistently gives us the dual threat we like to have for a QB and he’s only going to get better in the passing game. He threw for two TD’s and ran another one in himself in producing over 26 fantasy points.

At RB, I used Orleans Darkwa and Lamar Miller, certainly about the least sexiest combo of backs available. I’m a Darkwa guy as he’s been incredibly cheap and is eating up most of the touches out of the backfield for a punchless Giants offense. One of these weeks, probably this one, he’ll accidentally tumble into the end zone and deliver an excessive amount of value for his price. He actually started the game very strong against the Rams and had 48 yards rushing in the first quarter. Unfortunately, the Giants are a terrible football team and the game got out of hand which limited his role later on. Still, he posted 9.9 points at just $3,800 so it was a very workmanlike effort and saved us some money. Miller never got going against the Colts on Sunday, mostly due to a lack of usage as the Texans for some reason put the game into the hands of Tom Savage. He didn’t kill us in exceeding 12 points for a 2x effort, but it certainly wasn’t the big effort we had hoped for and seen in previous seasons against the Colts.

At WR, we saw that TY Hilton was badly underpriced in a nice matchup against the Texans. He’s very hit or miss, but in the right spot, on a fast playing surface, it only takes one big play for him to hit value many weeks. Fortunately for us, he had several huge plays in him lat week and ended up posting 37.5 DK points, good for more than a 7x effort and providing the necessary spark needed to put the team over the top. This again is a huge lesson for cash games, especially in NFL. We knew Hilton was going to be chalky at the beginning of the week. In essence, it made the decision to play him very easy. It’s one of those situations where when over 40% are going to own him at such a low price, it just makes sense to go along for the ride. If he whiffs, like Hilton has done many times, or even if he plays just average, it won’t hurt you to be along. However, if you fade him and he has a monster day like he did last Sunday, and you’re not a part of the chalkfest, your immediately behind the 8 ball in so far as trying to claw your way back into the money. The lesson here is that when we identify a very chalky play at a very low price, making a defensive play in cash games is usually the best play.

My other two WRs were Michael Thomas and Dez Bryant. Neither one was great, neither was awful. The Saints jumped way out in front of the Bucs and didn’t really need to press to get the ball to Thomas which I had been nervous about, but he was also a big enough part of the offense to still have 8 catches for 65 yards, a decent 2x day for his price. Dez was in the middle of having a very good day before departing with an ankle injury against the Chiefs. He caught six passes for 73 yards and could have conceivably gone over 100 with another catch or two. For his price, it did not really help or hurt us.

At the TE spot, I used the very reliable Jack Doyle and while he did not post a 12 for 120 effort like the week prior, his 8 catch, 63 yard effort was very reasonable and exceeded 3x for us. In fact, I was so excited about playing a TE that I decided to go with two for the week and inserted Travis Kelce into the Flex position for the week. I was very close in deciding between Tyreek Hill and Kelce and ended up using Kelce as a guy that I can usually trust for volume over Hill who is more big play dependent. When Hill scored that miracle TD before the half, my heart sank as that was the big play he needed to make value, but fortunately, Kelce grabbed a short TD in the second half on his way to a 20+ point effort that helped to keep the squad moving late in the day.

Finally, on defense, I locked and loaded the Jags who are a scoring machine on defense almost every week. They again posted a double digit performance, getting into the end zone and largely kept the Bengals in check. It just makes a lot of sense to lock in a solid defense each week given how dominant certain teams are and how poor other teams are on offense. Last week, the best defenses were again getting into the act in terms of scoring actual points for their teams which can often be the difference for us in fantasy between a win and a loss.

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