The Daily Spin – NFL Edition Week 2

When Jeff and I talked about doing NFL coverage this fall for DFS, my first instinct was not to do it. If you’ve been with us for a little while, you know the drill. Pari gets his work done faster than I can imagine and we have his previews for PGA posted by Monday night…usually for PGA and the Euro Tour. Jeff is next with his article which goes up by the middle of the day on Tuesday which leaves me with the Daily Spin, which I love to write, but I do tend to be, well, let’s call it deliberate when it comes to doing my work. When you combine this knowledge with the fact that I tend to be, oh, just a little bit long winded and up at crazy hours doing my writing and research, I knew what I would be in for with the NFL article. Of course, Jeff coaxed me along. He told me to keep my articles shorter, mentioned that the article could be written on the weekend and that I did not need to go as in depth in terms of strategy or players. Of course I was going to agree to it. I love the NFL and have had great success in cash games over the last few seasons. Considering that I have been watching as many games a humanly possible since the age of 5, it’s a passion for me and this marks the culmination of years of close study and work. It did not surprise me in the least when my first article topped out at roughly 5,000 words for Week 1. I texted Jeff as soon as I posted the article, ‘I think I wrote too much’. He responded with a laugh and ‘you just can’t help yourself’. And with that, let me begin my screed for Week 2. I hope you have as much fun reading my work each week as I do in putting it all together.

We need to revisit Week 1 for a moment to discuss everything that happened as far as how the recommendations worked for the first week. I tried to take the pulse of folks on Twitter to see if it went as well for you as it did for me and it sounds like the results were mixed to positive for the most part. Roster construction went very close to what I anticipated with most owners paying up for DJ, LeVeon or both together. Being able to overcome Bell’s stinker of a game is what brought you either victory or failure on Sunday. For myself, I played three total rosters in cash games last week with my main lineup receiving half of my entries and the other two each picking up 25% a piece. One of my 25% lineups did in fact contain a mix of DJ and Bell at the RB position. I managed to cash in all of my lineups, but the big key across the board was in grabbing the deep value play of Zac Ertz at the TE spot and the Rams defense. I emphasized that Ertz was the play last week, but probably should have put the Rams in huge capital letters so that the other options would not distract you. I had watched Scott Tolzien, live in fact, with the Packers and knew just how inept he was as a QB. I’m not a Colin Kaepernick guy, but Jim Irsay trotting out Scott Tolzien as a viable backup is an absolute joke and the Rams were stout enough to make them pay for it in the most embarrassing fashion imaginable in returning two interceptions for touchdowns before the Colts mercifully benched Tolzien in favor of former Pats third stringer, Jacoby Brissett.

The other player who was key in my success was LeSean McCoy. There were a lot of folks advocating playing both DJ and Bell, but McCoy’s matchup at home versus the hapless Jets was about as good as we are going to see all year. Once the Jets traded Sheldon Richardson to the Seahawks, this was an easy play. Were it not for a vultured TD due to a minor hand injury, McCoy would have been right near the 30 point effort I figured was possible for the week. I just made sense for most of my rosters to drop down from the top to get him with the same or greater upside as the top two most expensive plays. Other than that, there was not much that I did that should surprise you. Gurley made an appearance on one my rosters and received the expected volume we wanted against a bad Colts defense. Mariota and Rodgers hit value, but did nothing dramatic to the upside. All in all, I felt like I played it well and limited my mistakes. Here are the three teams I had in play last week:

In no instance did we achieve our 3x goal for the week, but we stayed heavy towards the chalk and pressed for value where it was available. Even with a meager 6.4 points, Kendall Wright, who was owned by 58% of the field still gave us 2x, Larry Fitz was over 2x and Rishard Matthews was just a shade under 3x. Doug Baldwin let us down, but we were not alone and had plenty of value overall to get us to the green. I am not going to say that last week was easy as it was anything but that with all of the offenses out there underperforming and many sloppy games all around, but it gets to the heart of my philosophy each week: Seek out value where it is available, capitalize on great matchups and minimize foolish mistakes. We are going to miss out on some of the bigger upside guys during the season. Our worry is not to be at the top of the board each week, it is to get into the green. If we avoid silly mistakes, we’ll get there more often than our fellow competitors.

Moving on to Week 2, I am hoping that the offenses had time to work a little more this week to put out a better effort than what we saw last Sunday. A few folks asked me why there were so many poor performances last week and while I can’t put my finger on anything definite, I do think that it is a trend that we may see continue in the years ahead. If you grew up playing football up to at least a high school level, you will remember those summer practices well where you hated life and could not wait to get to that first game of the year so you could actually punch someone in the mouth with all of the aggression that builds up during those brutal two-a-day practices. It was always a pain that first week or two as the coaches installed the offense. The defense always came out of the box on fire and generally speaking, they dominated play as the lineman and skill players all worked to get on the same page while the defense simply went into attack mode.

Over the years in the NFL, as one collective bargaining agreement after another began to limit the amount of practices that teams could have, teams have taken longer to build cohesion offensively. When you mix in a strategy during the preseason that revolves around injury avoidance, you end up with offenses that have not played together all that much in live action until the start of the season. After a few games, things start to click and I expect offensive output to climb again, but it does take time to develop the right chemistry and last week demonstrated that well.

In looking ahead to Week 2, we have a number of intriguing games on the schedule that should attract your attention. New England is travelling to New Orleans which will pit Hall of Fame QB’s against one another. Tom Brady has already expressed his frustration with having a few days off after a shocking Week 1 loss at home to open the season against the Chiefs where they seemed to have the game in hand until the fourth quarter where the collapsed in a way that you do not see often from the Patriots. The defense of New England looked really out of sorts. I suspect that the retirement of former defensive leader, Rob Ninkovich had something to do with the lack of awareness on the field, but they were poor in a number of areas and really let the Chiefs control the line of scrimmage on the offensive side of the ball.

I anticipate that things will be much different this week as the Pats head down to the Big Easy to take on the Saints who were throttled by the Vikings on Monday night. At this point, I get it, Sean Payton is a Super Bowl winning coach so he gets a lot more rope than other coaches, but how long is Tom Benson going to let this continue before he finally capitulates and allows for an all out rebuild? Year after year the Saints ignore the defensive side of the ball and in particular its secondary. Drew Brees can throw for 5,000 yards, but this is a sub .500 club with the defense that it is going to put on the field this year. There is no pass rush, no dominant LB play to step up to stop the run and the CB situation is as bad as any you are going to see in the NFL. Adam Thielen was not just open on Monday night, he was running free over and over and almost every pass he caught was an explosive play, of which the Vikings had about a dozen (almost as many as they had all of last season). This should shape up nicely as the track meet we are looking for with a ridiculous point total of 57.

The other big game that should produce a lot of fireworks will be the Packers taking on the Falcons in a rematch of the NFC Championship from back in January. The Packers looked a little shaky against the Seahawks on Sunday, but the Seahawks were again exposed as having a really poor offensive line. It took a second half fumble recovery deep in Seahawk territory along with a very heads up play by Aaron Rodgers catching the defense with too many men on the field that he converted for a Jordy Nelson TD, but against a tough team, you take a win any way you can get it.

The Falcons, on the other hand, played down to its opponent on the road in Chicago and barely escaped with a win after the Bears dropped a couple of potential game winning TDs in the waning seconds. Don’t get too down on the Falcons over the effort. The Falcons are an indoor team that plays on a fast track at home and is going to be slower on the road playing on grass. This happens to teams at Soldier Field on a regular basis where the Bears are able to make it an ugly game and keep the score close for a lot longer than people expect. Plus, its defense is starting to turn a corner with some solid young players starting to flash some talent. Once Atlanta gets back home, they are going to be just fine. I am also discounting the Packers defensive effort against the Seahawks who have no offensive line and were it not for the dancing feet of Russell Wilson would see several QBs carried off the field this year. The point total on this one is 55.5 so keep this one in your sites as well this week.

I bring up games like this as the numbers are so off the charts this week for these two games that doing what you can to incorporate players from each of them is important this week. On DraftKings, they did a really great job with the pricing again this week. I prefer that they make the puzzle complex enough so that I have to run through it for a few hours before it all comes together and I am happy. However, over at FanDuel, I am still not sure what is going on. Last week, they made it way too easy to get DJ and Lev into the same lineup. Even given the fact that Bell faltered, it was still so easy to put other quality players onto my roster that I managed to win my 20 man league with a score of 132.94 points. Unfortunately, the pricing really did not tighten up at all this week. I punted on my kicker, but other than that, it is full of fairly obvious plays and I had no issue getting the exact players that I wanted. It should be pretty easy to build solid cash lineups this week over there for sure.

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