The Daily Spin – NFL Edition Week 12

I saw a great meme yesterday with Bill Belichik looking like his usual  stoic self. The caption read, ‘Happy Thanksgiving. We’re on to Christmas.’ After knocking down another winning day in cash lineups, I had the same type of feeling as within a day I find myself back here hammering out another article for the big slate this Sunday. It’s been a great couple of days here. I spent a nice, quiet Thanksgiving at home, with only close family members, the ideal setup. I didn’t have to talk to anyone that I don’t like or banter away with folks pretending to take an interest in my world as I pretend with little enthusiasm to take an interest in theirs. I ate enough at lunch to last me until halftime of the second game, indulged in dessert and then watched the rest of the slate in such peace and comfort that I didn’t even feel the need to sip on a little bourbon to relax. And of course, the best part about hosting Thanksgiving, leftovers for days. I just finished Round 4 of a turkey, mashed potatoes, broccoli rice hotdish and green bean casserole medley that tastes just as good every single time I mash it all together. Of course, there is a price to this as Thanksgiving is a holiday that rotates between our comfortable home and a noisy church gym in Iowa with in-laws, but for now, I am going to bask in the in the glow of what I consider to be an ideal way to spend such a great holiday.

Quickly, let’s look back at my Thanksgiving cash game lineup that I put together from my Turkey Day column to see where things went right. The slate was short with just three games to work with, but some very strong performances assured a higher than expected line that needed to be hit in order to cash for the night. It all came together nicely right at the top as I was very specific about the QB’s that I was considering for the week and I wrote that my preference was for Case Keenum. He took good care of me right out of the gate. We knew his floor was going to be 250/1 with 10-20 rushing yards and he ended up throwing for over 280 yards with two TD’s and one rushing TD, posting over 27 points at a price tag of just $5,300, an absolute steal which helped to open up our options to other high dollar players.

At RB, I mentioned I was going to lock in Melvin Gordon since the matchup with the Cowboys looked really solid and also due to him having received so much of the work against the Bills until garbage time. Unfortunately, Ekeler was a much bigger piece of the offense than expected and the Chargers were also able to throw the ball with ease against the Cowboys so that Gordon again proved to be inefficient for his price. Fortunately, the aerial assault was something that we were able to take advantage of at the WR position. For my other RB, I went back to Orleans Darkwa with the Giants who for the most part, has been trustworthy for cash, but not last night. I just don’t understand why the Giants felt the need to go to a such a mix this week against the Redskins. Darkwa is effective in both the rushing and passing attack, but Gallman and Vereen ate up more touches than we’ve seen in recent weeks and the Giants were largely impotent on offense overall. I really wish I had carved out a few more dollars to get Semaje Perine who was used in the passing game this week for the first time and appeared very capable. He also went over 100 yards rushing, but I had exposure to two Redskins on the receiving side so it felt like potential overkill.

At WR, we hit the nuts with two of three and that really propelled the team yesterday. Keenan Allen continued his incredible play from Sunday with another amazing effort against the Cowboys catching 11 balls for 172 yards and a TD for a two game total of 23 catches, 331 yards and 3 TDs. The Chargers look like the team I thought they could be at the start of the season and are now back in position to make a run at a playoff spot in the AFC.

The second WR that I really wanted ended up being a bit of a bust in Golden Tate. For the second time this season, he did nothing against the Vikings. What was really strange is the Marvin Jones had a huge day for Detroit and put a beating on Xavier Rhodes that we haven’t seen the likes of in recent years. Xavier has been dealing with a calf injury so my thought after reviewing the game is that the Lions wanted to test him out early to see if it was something they could take advantage of and when it worked, they just decided to go after him for much of the game. What was frustrating beyond that is that Stafford was just not very good at all yesterday. The fantasy stat line shows up fine, but the long TD pass was basically just a free play toss up that normally would get picked off nine times out of ten and the first TD was aided by a bad call on pass that wasn’t caught and garbage PI call. Too often, Stafford missed Tate when he was wide open, most notably on a drive late in the 4th quarter when he beat coverage and was running wide open down the field only to be badly overthrown. There were 2-3 plays where Stafford missed him that could’ve easily added another 50 yards to his total on the day, but such is life in DFS.

At the third WR spot, we played the Redskin who I told you to get instead of Josh Docston, who salvaged his day with a late TD grab. Fortunately, I much preferred Jamison Crowder and he showed us why he is the Redskin WR to own now and moving forward for the remainder of the season. He tore through the secondary of the Giants all night, finding space over middle again and again catching seven passes for 141 yards and a TD. The Giants largely shut down the rest of the Redskin’s passing attack and made them grind all night for points, but they had no answer for Crowder.

I mentioned a couple of times in my column that I thought I might stack two TEs together to fill up the Flex spot this week and that was the direction I elected to take. The Giants have been awful against the TE all season long so it felt like Vernon Davis was a no brainer lock play, but of course, logic doesn’t always work when it comes to fantasy sports and Davis went undercover on Thursday, catching no passes after being a key part of the offense since Jordan Reed went out with an injury. He stayed in to block for much of the game, probably in part due to the injuries on the offensive line. Fortunately, my other TE came through in a big way to offset some of Davis’s zero. We knew going in that the Lions were awful against the TE and that Rudolph was getting 7-9 targets per week. Keenum put him to work in the first half, hitting him twice for TDs and helping him to exceed 22 fantasy points.

Finally, on defense, the Vikings were okay, but not great, giving up a few more points than I expected and losing out on an INT for a TD when Andrew Sendejo knocked over Xavier Rhodes late in the 4th quarter. They posted seven points so it was not a total bust.

 

QB	Case Keenum	27.28
RB	Orleans Darkwa	4.90
RB	Melvin Gordon	11.80
WR	Keenan Allen	37.20
WR	Jamison Crowder	30.10
WR	Golden Tate	6.00
TE	Vernon Davis	0.00
F	Kyle Rudolph	22.30
DEF	Vikings	7.00
		146.58

 

Last Sunday, things did not work out quite as well for my team as a late switch at TE from Travis Kelce to Gronk proved to be costly. I thought with the weather as it was, that Gronk might get a slight edge in terms of having better pass catching conditions, but in the end, the Raiders did not show up at all and the Pats did not need to get Gronk involved all that often once they had the game in hand. I missed the cash line by 13 points, and the difference between Gronk and Kelce was 14.3 points.

On the positive, side, Tom Brady played really well. He was an easy pick for cash given the high number of very cheap value plays, but unfortunately, everyone had the same idea so his big effort was largely negated. Defense was another big spot for me with the Jags crushing the Browns and posted a whopping 25 points. It would’ve been 31 had the refs not inadvertently blown a fumble dead that would’ve bee returned for another late TD. Unfortunately, from there, things didn’t really go my way.

There were a couple of very cheap value plays that nearly everyone was in on with Bruce Ellington and Rex Burkhead. Ellington filled in well and easily hit value at min salary for a WR, but while Burkhead started strong, an early fumble knocked him from the rotation for much of the game which is not abnormal for a Belichik coached team and he ended up a few points below value.

The other two value plays at WR did not give us the extra boost we needed to get things moving. Jamison Crowder was right on value with 14.6 points which was fine, but Jeremy Maclin proved to be the wrong Raven WR to roster last week and while he started well, he caught just one ball in the second half and was an overall disappointment in a game where he had a really nice edge in terms of the matchup.

Where I paid up at last week was at the RB spot. I rostered both Kareem Hunt and Melvin Gordon in mathups where both should have excelled. For some reason, Andy Reid just can’t get it through his thick head to pound the ball to Hunt early and often. Into the 4th quarter, he still only had about 10 carries and it took overtime to get him up to 18. They also don’t take full advantage of him in the passing game, preferring to mix in the mediocre Charcandrick West. We watched Semaje Perine chew up the Giants for over 100 yards yesterday so it is inexcusable that Reid didn’t get him the ball enough last week and it translated into a loss.

Gordon, on the other hand, looked good against the Bills overall and did get into the endzone. He had over 70 yards by halftime and looked to be in for a big day, but the Chargers turned it into a laugher so early that he just wasn’t needed all that much late in the game and thus, his points stalled out. It’s what you end up with in dealing with Gordan. He’ll have his share of monster days during the season, but can also be very pedestrian when the whole team is making plays.

 

QB	Tom Brady	28.56
RB	Rex Burkhead	7.7
RB	Kareem Hunt	10.7
WR	Jamison Crowder	14.6
WR	Bruce Ellington	12.8
WR	Jeremy Maclin	7.4
TE	Rob Gronkowski	6.6
F	Melvin Gordon	14
DEF	Jags	25
		127.4

 

Including our triumph on Thanksgiving, that my season long record to 8-3-1 in cash games this season. We’ve got six weeks to go in the regular season and then three more in the playoffs so there is still a lot of time to make some money and the bye weeks are all over so we will have some great slates down the stretch to work with.

 

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