Photo: Brad Rempel, USA Today Sports
Footballguys has partnered with FanDuel and as part of that deal, I will be penning a weekly piece that tries to cover some of the finer points on beating their contests.
My approach to FanDuel's Daily Games
In salary cap games where other companies are determining prices, I like to see where their thoughts differ substantially from my projections. My value chart below matches up my projections against FanDuel's prices:
Some explanation of my Excel manipulation is in order:
- Everything is sorted by position
- I have converted my projections to FanDuel Fantasy Points. These figures appear in the FP column.
- The Price column reflects FanDuel's Week 19 Price
- The Points per $K column reflects the expected points per $1,000 of salary allocated (the higher the value the better).
- H-Value represents our own proprietary formula that matches price and expected fantasy points (the higher the value the better).
- I have highlighted player's names (in green) that should be strong considerations for your lineups. They generally reflect the most bang for the buck at their respective positions. Players in yellow also are worth consideration when building your roster.
Situations that stand out to me this week.
- It's all about the home teams this week. They have been practicing for two weeks to get their execution perfect. The way the NFL awards these 1st round byes gives a considerable edge to Carolina, Arizona, New England and the Denver teams.
- The Steelers will be without WR Antonio Brown and RB DeAngelo Williams. They also will be playing with an injured Ben Roethlisberger who will not likely be able to zing it as deep as he usually can. Although the Pittsburgh players (Bryant, Wheaton, Miller, Toussant) all should get extra looks because of these scratches, I just don't see this offense doing enough against an elite Denver defense. I am fading everyone on the PIT roster except WR Markhus Wheaton. I like Wheaton because Denver's shutdown corner (Talib) should be on Martavis Bryant most of the day. Wheaton looks to get a lot of Brown's usual targets.
- Vegas is predicting the highest scoring game of the week to be between the Packers and the Cardinals. The Cardinals come into the game at essentially full-strength with three healthy wide receivers and David Johnson (who has been dominant the last month of the season). The Packers finally got their offense rolling last week, but should find the sledding much more difficult this week. I prefer taking nearly all players from teams at home, but punting to cheap GB options like Reggie Cobb or James Jones makes a lot of sense as well.
- Watch the news Saturday morning to see if any of the banged up Kansas City WRs are going to scratch. If Maclin scratches, Albert Wilson becomes a sneaky play
Sample Roster 1 ($60K) - Projected Points = 117.1
- QB Cam Newton, CAR - $8,700
- RB David Johnson, ARI - $8,500
- RB CJ Anderson, DEN - $5,900
- TE Greg Olsen, CAR - $6,500
- WR Michael Floyd, ARI - $6,500
- WR Demaryius Thomas, DEN - $8,100
- WR Markhus Wheaton, PIT - $6,000
- TD New England Patriots - $4,700
- PK Chandler Catanzaro, ARI - $4,800
