Here we go! Always a blast to break down some NFL slates as the season gets going. It gets a little less fun in the latter months of the season, but I’m a big-time NFL DFS guy, and I’ll be playing every week.
WHAT WE HAVE HERE
Game-by-game looks
Player pool at the end of the article
Some projections, stats, plots along the way
PLEASE FORGIVE TYPOS AND MISPELLINGS. This thing is over 8,000 words, and I try to get it done in just a few hours of writing during the week. I tend to write the word “here” way too much, so that will get annoying if I don’t remember to go back and delete a bunch of them.
I focus a lot more on CASH in NFL. That’s the way to play. There are a ton more players, and that means a lot more bad players. If we can put together a solid cash lineup full of the best plays each week, we’ll usually come out ahead.
You can and should make “cash” plays in tourney lineups, too. The best plays are the best plays for a reason, and there are way more random pop-offs in the NFL than in MLB. So for a tournament lineup, we just need 1-2 low-owned plays to have a shot at the top of the board.
So that’s what we’re focusing on. We’re finding all the best plays and finding a few spots that we think have huge potential at lower ownership.
Week one is going to be brief due to a lack of time on my end. I’ve spent this week doing normal MLB stuff and preparing all of this football stuff again, so I’m late to start this. I also don’t have any game data for any of these teams to use!
But we have projections and good information from last year, so we’ll do just fine this week; there’s just less stuff to analyze without it turning into me speculating on stuff I don’t really know much about since I didn’t pay a ton of attention in the offseason.
Shootout Games
Game environment is super important in football. Unlike baseball, the teams are correlated. If one team scores three touchdowns in the first quarter, it forces the other to play faster and score more fantasy points. So we like game environments more than just team environments in football.
I’m not saying anything that you DFS players don’t already know! But maybe we have some newbies here trying to learn the ropes. I’ll try to be a little more explanatory in these early weeks.
The top of the board for week one’s main slate:
DET at NO: 50.5 O/U, DET -7
CIN at TB: 50.5 O/U, CIN -3.5
BAL at IND: 47.5 O/U, BAL -3.5
ARI at LAC: 47.5 O/U, LAC -9.5
CHI vs. CAR: 46.5, CHI -3.0
The top implied team totals, then:
DET 28.75
LAC 28.75
CIN 27.0
BAL 25.5
CHI 24.75
JAX 24.5
Jacksonville sneaks in there by being an 8.5-point favorite in a 40.5 O/U game. They won’t get pushed much by the Browns offense, but Cleveland’s defense took a major hit with Myles Garrett leaving, and they’ll probably give up some points this year.
Let’s go quickly game-by-game for this one and put together a player pool at the end. I will often times basically skip over some games, as you’ll see. There are spots every week where there simply aren’t viable cash game options because of the low-scoring game projection.
Falcons at Steelers
We start with MY BOYS, the Pittsburgh Steelers. The “shootout score” there is my own work. It grades each team’s offense and defense and puts a score on how likely the game is to shoot out. But they’re using last year’s data for week one since we have nothing for this week. We’ll start focusing more on those scores after a few weeks are in the books.
Quarterbacks
This is probably the easiest game to skip over for week one. It’s a 42.5-point total with poor QB play. Tua Tagovailoa ($4,800) is probably the worst starting QB in the league, but he is extremely cheap and projects fine (2.81x value). But that doesn’t mean we play him.
Aaron Rodgers ($5,300) proved pretty much unplayable in fantasy last year. It might be better this year with Michael Pittman and a new coaching staff coming in. But no, we aren’t using Steelers in DFS this week.
Running Backs
Bijan Robinson ($7,700) is in play, I suppose. Maybe as an ownership pivot off of Gibbs. But the Falcons are implied for 19.5 points and we think that Brian Robinson ($4,700) could take the Allgeier role and steal some touchdowns a long the way. It will be tough to use Bijan in cash while Tua is the QB, but he could also catch seven balls and score a couple touchdowns, so he’s in the tourney pool.
On the Steelers side, we don’t know who the guy is. We have Jaylen Warren ($5,400) and Rico Dowdle ($5,200) priced the same and they had about the same ADP in drafts. I would prefer Warren and his pass-catching and run-after-the-catch abilities, but neither of these guys can be considered for us this week.
Pass Catchers
Drake London ($6,500) is very good, but there are a ton of great options on this slate and we’re not going to pay that with Tua on the slate.
DK Metcalf ($5,400) is cheap and has some big games and a QB who can at least throw the ball down field if he gets blocking. But it’s a very, very low floor. I think this year will go better than last year for DK, but I don’t think we clicked a Steelers wide receiver at all last year in cash, and I don’t plan to start this week! Michael Pittman ($4,900) will have the higher floor as the security blanket for Rodgers, I think, but the ceiling isn’t going to be there - it never really has been.
Recap
There are no cash plays in this one. NFL DFS is pretty simple when we’re playing for high-floor lineups.
The only play I’d consider is Bijan Robinson ($7,700) in a tourney. He has a huge ceiling, the bad game environment doesn’t really influence that since he catches so many passes and is less reliant on touchdowns for that reason. But he’ll be way less owned than Gibbs and other studs, so he’s in play for that reason.
Ravens at Colts
Pretty good environment. Daniel Jones is back for the Colts, and Indy was one of the most fantasy-friendly teams in the league while he was in there last year. It’s a good squad there and not a great defense.
The Ravens are one of the highest-scoring offenses in the league when they’re healthy, and they’ve all offseason to get Lamar Jackson healthy, so it’s a good time to play some Ravens.
Quarterbacks
Very interested in playing Lamar Jackson ($6,800) early. He was all banged up last year and didn’t run much for that reason. We should fully expect him to run a bunch again provided he’s healthy again, which we have to assume he is.
The cash QB play is usually a cheap guy who runs. That’s a very good general rule. But week one pricing has been out for like a month now, so there are a lot of huge misprices due to preseason injuries. So I’m going to be thinking about Lamar at QB.
Daniel Jones ($5,400) was QB1 for a bit last year before the injury. He ran a bunch around the goalline and was awesome as a passer in this offense. Maybe the injuries and another year of aging will limit his running. But for $5,400 - that’s pretty good in this game environment.
I’ll be curious to see what the ownership projections are. I tend not to look at those until after I’m done writing. I want to put my own thoughts down and then weigh them against the field.
Running Backs
Derrick Henry ($6,700) is rarely a cash play for us. He doesn’t catch passes and stays on the sideline a bunch when the Ravens are playing from behind. That gives him a way lower floor than you like for a $6,700 running back. The Ravens are a three-point favorite on the road, so it’s not likely they end up playing from way behind. But the spot to play Henry is when the Ravens at like a -10 favorite at home.
Jonathan Taylor ($7,300) is similarly game script dependent. He got more pass game action last year, but that’s really not his bread and butter. There’s nobody threatening behind him on the depth chart, so he’ll probably do just fine, and his ceiling is sky-high with his big-play abilities. But it’s more for tourneys than cash.
Pass Catchers
The Ravens have not been a team to pick wide receivers from for a long time. Zay Flowers ($6,400) has done his best to change that, but he’s not finding it hard to get there with how much the Ravens run. He’s like a 5-6 target guy who doesn’t hit on the price unless he catches a touchdown. So the Ravens pass catchers are off the board for cash, as per the usual arrangement. This stuff is calling back to me as I write this. I wrote 18 weeks worth of these last year, so the knowledge is in there somewhere.
The Colts added Keenan Allen ($4,700) who had some DUI trouble. Or he was parked or something? PUI? Isn’t he a little OLD to be getting DUIs? I feel like you should be over the DUI-risk phase of life once you’re like 26 and have some money.
But Keenan will play in this one, which takes the allure off of Josh Downs ($5,200). Downs was previously looking like a dude who could grab 6-7 balls a week as a low-ADoT target for Jones. That could still happen if Allen is washed, but we don’t know that yet and we cannot use Downs.
The only play then is Tyler Warren ($4,900). He was awesome with Jones last year.
Targets from Daniel Jones, 2025
Pittman 87
Warren 80
Pierce 62
Downs 61
Pittman is gone, so Warren just might lead this team in targets this year! Who knows! Could be a huge season for the second-year tight end. He has a 12.9-point projection for a nice 2.6x value.
The problem for his chances of being in our lineup is that there’s an obvious smash TE play in another game… but I’ll put Warren on the tight end list.
Recap
Both QBs in play, with my preference going to the cheaper option in Daniel Jones. Jonathan Taylor for tourney lineups, and Tyler Warren in consideration on the tight end side even though I already know who my guy will be.
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