Taking Advantage of Injury Situations on Thursday Locks
When looking to win GPPs you should be looking for the most upside possible. If you can get that upside when others aren’t taking advantage of it then all the better. One of the best ways to combine both of these principles is during the Thursday locks on Fanduel. I like to do this by seeking out players that are a scratched player away from being one of the best plays of the week. Typically I only do this with one or two players in a lineup. However, this week there were a couple of really great opportunities that I loved so I mixed and matched those players into a couple of lineups. One of the resulting lineups is shown below.
Here you can see that I really like the idea of taking a shot with three guys with upside as well as Antonio Gates. In order to come up with this lineup I started with the players that I thought had a chance to be the top values at their position but aren’t heavily owned right now due to possible situation changes.
Donte Moncrief – This was my favorite play and was in all the GPPs that I entered on Thursday. You can see this in my call my shot write up on the roundtable. At kickoff I was feeling pretty certain that T.Y. Hilton was not going to be playing and that there was a pretty good shot that Reggie Wayne wouldn’t play either. My rationale was that the Colts already have a playoff seed wrapped up and need a lot of luck with the Patriots or Broncos losing to move to a bye. Why risk their two wide receivers that were banged up for nothing? If neither of these guys play then Moncrief is in one of the best positions possible as one of the best targets on a team that loves throwing the ball and has one of the best QBs in the league. Dwayne Allen or even Coby Fleener would make for good options in this situation as well.
Joseph Randle – He makes for a more risky option and one that I didn’t use quite as much since it was looking more and more likely that Demarco Murray would suit up. However, if Murray doesn’t suit up Randle becomes possibly the best value play in the league and is probably 40-50% owned. If Murray sits out even 10% of the time this is a good value play and are the types of plays you should take a shot on occasionally.
Roddy White – White is my favorite type of play in this situation. I would have played White in this situation already because my stack was going to be the Saints stack of Kenny Stills and Drew Brees. In this case, a wide receiver from the other team makes for a great positive correlation stack. White is also already fairly priced and is an acceptable play even if Julio Jones were to play. Harry Douglas would have made for an alternative play here as he is also fairly priced. However, he came with some injury risk of his own and wouldn’t have as much of an impact if Jones does play.
Antonio Gates – Gates wasn’t so much of an injury risk chance as it was playing the tea leaves a little bit that the injury to Keenan Allen would open up some intermediate routes and additional scoring opportunities for Gates. As such I think Gates was priced lower than he should have been and was a great opportunity. I actually thought he would be higher owned than he was but at this ownership level would have been one of my favorite plays in my write up below.
All of these deals allowed me to go strongly after Drew Brees as the anchor of my Saints stack and Le'Veon Bell whom I think is a great anchor to your roster each week. Since I went contrarian with a couple of these injury upside picks I didn’t have to worry about the ownership levels of Bell and Brees. Finally, I had enough money left over to round out my team with the Lions defense who gets to matchup against Jimmy Clausen led Bears. I like their chances in that matchup.
When setting your Thursday GPP lineups you should always think about which players could see the biggest uptick in production in the next few days due to injury and plugging some of those guys into your lineups. If the player ends up not getting that uptick then it is fine because odds are you weren't going to win a big GPP anyway. But when they do play you have a very good opportunity to overtake a lot of the other contestants and finish at the top of the standings. Remember, in GPPs we aren't looking for a solid score. We are looking for some of the best scores. Taking risks is how you accomplish that.
Fanduel GPP plays
Below are my weekly GPP plays at Fanduel. Throughout the season I will be employing strategies mentioned in Week 1 about contrarian plays. My goal will be to highlight players owned less than 10% to give you a contrarian option unless the player is such a good value that you should play him anyway. But remember that if you think a player will score three times their salary at a higher rate than their ownership level they are still a good buy. It is also important to remember you don’t need to go contrarian on everyone one of your positions. Additionally I will take the approach outlined in my preseason article about the best approach to allocating money in my lineups. In this article, I showed that in general it was best to spend on studs at wide receiver and to a lesser extent quarterback and save your money at running back and tight end.
Drew Brees $9,100 (11%) – Brees gets a home matchup against the Falcons who are giving up 23% more yards per pass attempt than the league average team! This is the worst in the league by a decent margin. Surprisingly teams tend to be more run oriented against the Falcons despite this fact. I don’t suspect Brees to follow suit though. Vegas projects the Saints to score more points than anyone this week with a team total of 31 and I suspect that Brees will throw for several of those points. All of the Saints recievers and Jimmy Graham are in play as stack candidates.
Lamar Miller $6,300 (6%) – Miller gets a favorable matchup against the Vikings where the Dolphins are 6.5 point favorites. Being such a favorite should allow the Dolphins get back to running the ball a bit more. Over the last 5 games Miller has been only averaging 13.6 carries and 60 yards. But a lot of this has been due to game situations and tough run defenses, both of which should flip in Miller’s favor this week. With the need to get some salary relief this week Miller makes for a good option. If you have more money to spend Le'Veon Bell as I used in the lineup above is a great option as well.
A.J. Green $8,600 (4%) – As mentioned above I really like Moncrief this week as a GPP play but his ownership will likely sky rocket over the weekend. As such, like last week when I recommended Demaryius Thomas, A.J. Green should be a staple in your GPP lineups any time his ownership levels hit a paltry 4%. Green doesn’t have the best matchup of the week as he will see plenty of Aqib Talib but there are very few defenders who can truly shut down Green and I don’t think Talib qualifies. Additionally, Vegas has the Bengals as 3 point underdogs in a game with a surprisingly low total of 47.5. If the Bengals fall behind or the game becomes a typical Broncos shootout Green could see lots of upside. Everyone will be on Dez Bryant who blew up last week at the same price but Bryant gets a tough matchup against Vontae Davis himself so when everyone zigs towards Bryant you should zag towards Green.
Travis Kelce $5,600 (10%) – Over the last 4 games Kelce has been averaging 84% of the team snaps and 5.75 targets per game. While this still isn’t to the level that I would like to see it has resulted in scores of 12.4 and 12.5 in the last two weeks. We already know that Alex Smith is captain checkdown and will only look for the safe play. With the way that Kelce has performed the last few weeks there is reason to believe that Smith has finally gained trust in Kelce and will look his way more often. The Steelers have given up a lot of points this year and Vegas doesn’t expect this to be much different with a projected total of 22 for the Chiefs who have yet to throw a TD to their wide receivers on the season. Kelce could be the guy to jump in for two TDs this week.
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