Week 12 Cash Lineup

Here is where I am currently at. I wanted to put the same time and effort into this week and with this week being a weird week this is coming out late.

Current Bankroll: $11,348
Total invested this week is $1,900 (16.7%)

Couple of notes

• Matt Ryan is in a great spot this week he's playing much better of late. He's in a tremendous spot this week against Tampa Bay. 
• With Devonta Freeman out, I want a share of both the passing and rushing matchups in Atlanta as Coleman should get all of the work. Julio Jones is going to be popular and if you follow this blog long enough you'll know that I like Julio, but I just can't do it after being burned time and time again by the lack of touchdowns. He's more of a DraftKings play for me this week.
• Going back to Antonio Brown after being burned two weeks ago. At this point, he's still by far the most consistent wide receiver. 
• Le'Veon Bell is going to be popular this week, but the reality is that Gurley has been better this season and is in a better matchup as New Orleans has given up 100+ yards in three of their last five games to Aaron Jones, Jordan Howard, and Samaje Perine. 
• Kenny Stills with Matt Moore seems like a no-brainer, but it is actually the one spot that might change between now and tomorrow morning. I'm still debating between Stills and Corey Davis if Rishard Matthews is out. 

The Case Against Russell Wilson

I will be giving a full post on the slate breakdown, but here is some background on why you'll see me fading Russell Wilson this week.

Let me start by saying that Russell Wilson will be the clear chalk play in cash. I can't fault anyone with wanting to play him. However, Wilson's track record against San Francisco scares me. The reason for this is that Darren Bevell seemingly won't unleash Wilson unless he has to. In his last three games against San Francisco, Wilson has thrown for just three touchdowns and run for a total of 41 yards including two games where he ran for under 5 yards.

Below is a breakdown of Russell Wilson's last two seasons comparing fantasy points and opponents points scored. The big takeaway here is that in games in which opponents have scored 20 points or less, Russell Wilson is averaging 17.2 fantasy points. At $8.6k, this has me extremely nervous as the Seahawks are a team that rarely blows opponents out and will just grind out the run.

Giving Thanks and Thanksgiving Strategy

Thank You
First of all, before I start this, I just wanted to give thanks.

1) Thank you to Footballguys (Joe and David) for sponsoring this platform, if you aren't a subscriber to Footballguys, please consider it next season if you've had any success this year. There are over 20 articles per week, projections, etc, and without them, this blog would not be kept free.

2) Thank you for following this blog. Our viewership this season compared to last is up 300% which is awesome and I am especially appreciative of the community aspect we have built on here where. I try to respond to every comment and even though I don't get to all of them, I read every single one of them.

Thanksgiving Strategy-

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite slates of the year, but I do treat it a little bit differently. This is a slate in which I go a little bit more GPP focused, and my cash games are designed a little bit more for 3 man contests and 100 man contests than they are head to heads.

Head to Heads-
To be honest, I have no idea how many head to head contests I will be joining for Thanksgiving. Typically, I have a defined dollar amount that I want to get in play each week, but honestly, Thanksgiving is the exception to that rule. What I do for Thanksgiving is I will join any contest where a player does not have an experience badge or if I have never heard of that player. The reality is that there are so many new players that play only on these types of slates that there is a big advantage to be had if you are smart about game selection.

If you are a player without a badge, what I always recommend is never post games as people especially on FanDuel where there are no matchup blockers and other people can join every one of your posted games. I will only take one matchup per player maximum this is a principle I have established early on that I don't want to be the guy who is mass joining players as I feel they're bad for the industry.

Lineup-
I posted my cash lineup as of now, and it entirely changes if Sterling Shepard does play. Two key players, I want to touch on as I don't have a lot of time on this short week, but wanted to touch on two picks that I'm sure are a bit controversial.

Eli Manning- 
The quarterback position on this slate is nothing short of horrible. I could make strong cases against every quarterback on this slate. My favorite quarterback this week is Matthew Stafford as I do not believe that the Lions will be able to run the ball at all this week, but ultimately I have Eli Manning a close second in terms of value. The reality is that his floor is 200 yards and a touchdown as the Redskins have allowed the fourth-most fantasy points this season to opposing quarterbacks this season.

Josh Doctson-
Why Josh Doctson over Jamison Crowder who will be one of the more popular plays on the slate. The answer is that the chance for Doctson to score a touchdown this week is higher as my concern with Crowder is that he has scored one touchdown on the year and is going up against a much bigger cornerback than him in Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie. Doctson has been on the field for 90%+ snaps in each of the last two weeks and he should be in a good opportunity against Janoris Jenkins who seemingly has given up after being suspended three weeks ago. 

GPP-
Players that I like as deep shots this week-
Byron Marshall
Kenny Golladay
Marvin Jones- Tough matchup against Xavier Rhodes, but still believe in Jones to come through and will be under-owned

Thanksgiving Lineup

Running behind this week, so here is my lineup and where it stands at the current moment. A detail breakdown is coming at some point tonight, just wanted to get this in front of you all so that you had it.

Recap of the Day

Overall not bad, excluding the big head to head (which we have excluded the wins and losses in the bankroll tracking.

Final score put up 131.26, which all things considering could have been slightly higher. Won about 75% of my head to head games which part of this was likely due to pure luck as I faced a seemingly abnormally high amount of Alex Smith this week.

Starting Bankroll: 11,024
Amount invested: $1,600
Return: 1,924
Net Profit $324
New Bankroll: $11,348

Looking forward notes:

I don't know what to do with LeSean McCoy. Obviously the game script destroyed him in this game, but even early on when it was close and Peterman was throwing interceptions, they kept throwing the ball instead of handing the ball off to McCoy. He had 70 yards and a touchdown on one drive and then the team went away from him.

High Stake H2H

https://www.fanduel.com/games/21941/contests/21941-213506094/entries/1331248147/scoring

Primary Lineup Change- Apologies for this being late.

Hey guys- First apologies for doing this so late.

I am going to run two lineups out this week, with this lineup below being my primary lineup, I will still be playing my second lineup. Why Tavarres King? After looking into it further, he is the clear beneficiary of Shepard being out and they are going to need someone else to throw to.

Gronkowski gets me off of Kelce in the wind and essentially just stacks Brady and the Patriots.

Week 11 Cash Lineup

Here is where I am at currently. This is subject to change if weather or injuries may pop up.

Week 11 Power Grid Podcast

Will be posting my cash lineup later tonight, but figured I would post this as it was one of my favorite episodes we have done this season. Can get a full view on a variety of different week 11 topics.

https://youtu.be/8zKqNL5fob8

Week 11 Breakdown

Apologies for the late release this week.

Have had to re-write this after Sterling Shepard is a late addition to the injury report. This is never a good sign as he was added with an illness.

With that said, if he plays, I still like Shepard this week.

Weather: 
Two concerns here
The first is in New York. 22MPH winds with gusts up to 40MPH.
The second is in Cleveland where it is 23 mph wind and a wintery snow mix.

Quarterback-

For me, this week it starts with Tom Brady as my top guy this week. Brady has been a little bit disappointing this season, but he is going up against this Raiders secondary that does not have an interception all season and is one of the worst teams against the pass in the NFL allowing 244.6 yards per game through the air. Brady is in a great spot here in Mexico City in a game which is projected to be one of the highest scoring games of the week.

Other quarterbacks I like this week:
Eli Manning
Ryan Fitzpatrick
Alex Smith (Weather has me off of him)

Running Back-

This is a week where I want at least one top running back and possibly two. This starts with Kareem Hunt. Hunt is a player who has struggled after a great breakout start to the season as he has not scored a touchdown in six weeks and is only averaging 47.5 yards over his last four game. So why like him as a player to pay up for? The Giants rush defense has been atrocious in allowing big plays as just last week they allowed three carries for 20+ yards and are allowing 155 yards rushing per game over their last three games.

The only question I have regarding Hunt is whether he is cash viable. Todd Gurley is $600 cheaper, and Melvin Gordon is $800 cheaper. Gordon is in a tremendous matchup going up against a Bills run defense that has been atrocious allowing 298 yards rushing last week.

Gurley is intriguing as Minnesota has been very good against the run as they have not allowed a 100-yard rusher this year, but they are averaging allowing 5 receptions for 40 yards to opposing running backs. Gurley is probably more of a GPP play for me this week

Cheap running backs I like
Jamaal Williams
Joe Mixon

Wide Receiver-
Are there any wide receivers that we feel comfortable with this week? There are not any that I truly love this week. Sterling Shepard was my favorite heading into this week, but with the weather and the illness that I already mentioned, I'm quickly fading on him. DeVante Parker is in a good spot, but he only has three red zone targets this season which greatly limits his upside. Deandre Hopkins is a volume machine but in a tough matchup against Patrick Peterson.

Here's my list of receivers I am considering:
Mike Evans
Jamison Crowder (ugh)
Larry Fitzgerald
Sterling Shepard
Bruce Ellington
Cooper Kupp
Marvin Jones
Emmanuel Sanders

Tight End-
This week, it is either Gronkowski or Kelce on FanDuel. You could potentially make a case for Zach Ertz as well, but this is not a week to spend down at tight end.

Defense
The Chargers are likely to be the most popular this week going up against Nathan Peterman, but I actually think Peterman is an upgrade over Tyrod Taylor. The reason for this is that Taylor would run himself into sacks as he had been sacked 30 times this season.

My favorite defense is Jacksonville, but I don't know if I can spend up that high based on lineup construction.

Other defenses I like:
Cleveland
Kansas City
Green Bay

No way to sugar coat it, that lineup was awful

Simply put, that was one of the worst lineups I've built in a long time. Overall, I scored 80.82, and lost about 88% of my contests, and about 70% of my total investment.

Have spent most of the day trying to look in hindsight what I could have missed. I'm sure most of you don't care about this post, and are only tracking to see the +- on a week to week basis, but on days like today I figured I would share with you the process of what I do instead of just moving on I like to try to learn to see what mistakes I may have made.

Eli Manning 16.92 points, a completely fine play at $6.7k

Leonard Fournette 5.6 points, this is the one one that I completely missed on. He did not have a carry in the second half even though the game was still relatively close.

LeSean McCoy 7.5 points, this one was entirely game script dependent. McCoy had 49 yards in the first quarter, and had 11 total yards in the second. Almost impossible to predict that New Orleans would win this game by 37 and McCoy would only have 8 carries.

Antonio Brown, I could make a very strong case that this was Antonio Brown's worst game of his career. Not really sure what to do with this one, as yes he was awful and had a key drop that likely changes his entire day. I guess with Juju Smith-Schuster emerging, Antonio Brown should not be considered a guaranteed 15 points every week?

Marvin Jones 2.1 points, Looking back, this was the mistake that I made. I tried to convince myself that because the Browns play zone as much as they do that the McCourty matchup did not matter. This was a mistake to learn from.

Week 10 Cash Game Lineup

Here's is where I ended up after several hours have been spent making this one lineup.

A few clarifying items:

1) I'm going extremely risky not going with Le'Veon Bell. If Bell has a big day, I will likely lose all of my contests.
2) Ryan Fitzpatrick will be very popular.
3) I landed on Eli Manning due to the matchup. I still much prefer Roethlisberger or Stafford, but at the end of the day this lineup was the one that continuously projected out the highest for me this week.

QB	Eli Manning		6700
RB	Leonard Fournette		8700
RB	LeSean McCoy		8300
WR	Antonio Brown		9300
WR	Marvin Jones		6400
WR	Sterling Shepard		5700
TE	Cameron Brate		5700
K	Wil Lutz		4900
D	Chicago Bears		4300

What to do with Fitzpatrick

I'm not going to tell anyone not to play Ryan Fitzpatrick this week in cash, as the lineup that you are able to build around it is ridiculous. However, I want to call out some of the risks in playing Fitzpatrick this week.

1) The receiving group for the Buccaneers is absolutely atrocious with Mike Evans out this week.

2) This Jets defense is not as bad as it is made out to be. Yes, they have given up a lot of passing touchdowns, there's no denying that, but have held Tom Brady and Matt Ryan to an average of 250 yards and two touchdowns in two of their last three games.

3) Ryan Fitzpatrick is not exactly good at football. This is a quarterback who really struggled last year with the Jets and had a better receiving corp than he will have next week. Last year, Fitzpatrick had Brandon Marshall and Quincy Enunwa.

If you want to play this lineup below, all you need is Fitzpatrick to not kill you and it should be extremely competitive. Will post my lineup in a separate blog post.

QB Ryan Fitzpatrick 6100
RB Leonard Fournette 8700
RB LeVeon Bell 9400
WR Antonio Brown 9300
WR Marvin Jones 6400
WR Sterling Shepard 5700
TE Kyle Rudolph 5400
K Steve Hauschka 4700
D Chicago Bears 4300

Heading into Week 10

Can you believe it is already week 10? It seems like the season is flying by.

Quick recap of last week, Russell Wilson's second half saved me. Ended up putting up 112.48 with my cash lineup which ended up in about the 55th percentile of lineups in 50/50's and I won about 60% of my head to head contests.

Nothing to write home about as it was a net loss on the week due to my continued lack of success in GPP's (which is why I don't give out a lot of GPP advice)

Total Investment: $2,100
Total Return: $2,020
Net Loss: ($80)

New Bankroll: $12,494

Week 10:

I like this week a lot, and it's time to push the envelope a little bit. Going with 20% of my bankroll in cash which is about 5-7% more than normal, as this is a week that seems a little bit easier than past weeks. Making a huge fade in cash at running back however, so it could come back to bite me.


Quarterback-

There are really only two quarterbacks that I am interested in for cash games, and will be stacking in either scenario as I love. The first is Matthew Stafford who is in a good spot this week going up against Cleveland in a game in which they are projected to score 28 points.With the Browns run defense as elite as it has been, expect the Lions to have a big passing game.

The other quarterback that I like this week is Ben Roethlisberger, primarily due to the matchup going up against Indianapolis. Indianapolis cut their long-time veteran Vontae Davis, and have the second worst secondary in terms of passing yards allowed.

Running Back

I've said it in about 5 places this week that I'm all in on Leonard Fournette. Here is an excerpt from a starting stacks article that I filled in for this week. Not sure I can say it any better but this is a tremendous spot for Fournette.

Leonard Fournette is coming off a suspension for violation of team rules. Fournette should be well-rested for this game as he has not played in almost a month as the team had a bye week and he missed the game prior to the bye due to an ankle injury. Fournette should be good to go and get back to getting a high volume of carries as the team looks to utilize one of their best players. Fournette has one of the highest floors each and every week due to the amount of touches that he gets per game. On the season, Fournette is averaging 21.7 carries per game and a touchdown per game. His 4.6 yards per carry is second only to Kareem Hunt for running backs who have over 100 carries on the season. Fournette is going up against the Chargers who are allowing 135 total rushing yards per game to opposing teams and 125 yards per game to opposing running backs which is the worst in the NFL. Expect a lot of volume for Fournette this week as he should be able to exploit this matchup. 

Other Running Backs I like this week:
Bilal Powell
Le'Veon Bell (See wide receivers below for more comments)
Jordan Howard
Todd Gurley

Wide Receiver:

Antonio Brown is a must for me this week over Le'Veon Bell, as while you could go with both (if you do make sure you play Roethlisberger), I am electing to go with Fournette and Brown. The reason here is simple, the drop off in talent after Antonio Brown is extremely large, while I can spend down at running back and still get players that I really like this week.

There is not another receiver on the board that I pay up for that I feel great about and I can essentially lock in 15 points with 30 point upside. Antonio Brown in each of his last three seasons has three or more games with 2+ touchdowns, he has yet to have one this season and while I normally don't like regressions stats, this is one that I can buy into as when Brown scores, he scores in bunches.

Other wide receivers I like this week:
Marvin Jones
Sterling Shepard
Golden Tate
Cooper Kupp
A.J. Green (GPP only)

Sunday Morning News

Here is a lineup that I want to share with you guys. I'm likely playing this in a lot of my cash games replacing my original lineup. I like Ivory a lot this week and the suspension of Fournette should open up opportunities for Ivory.

QB	Russell Wilson		8500
RB	Ezekiel Elliott		8900
RB	Chris Ivory		5200
WR	Michael Thomas		7600
WR	Julio Jones		7900
WR	Devin Funchess		6100
TE	Jimmy Graham		6200
K	Mike Nugent		4600
D	Seattle Seahawks		5000

Updated Lineup

Current Lineup-

At the moment, I have Parker in over Cooper Kupp who I also really like this week. I am still going back and forth on these players and will likely continue to edit this.

Heading into Week 9

Can you believe it's already week 9? Hard to believe that we are officially half way through the season.

Bankroll last week was a bit rough, I ended up +$125 but that Juju Smith-Schuster 90+ yard touchdown cost me over a thousand dollars.

Current Bankroll is now up to $12,574 so +25% on the season. Not bad so far, but we need to keep this going.

Week 9 Talk

Now that we have gotten a lot of the administrative talk out of the way let's head into week 9. To be blunt, now that the DeShaun Watson news has come up, this week is not pretty. The good news however, is that if it isn't pretty for you, it is not difficult for everyone to build a lineup. So instead of dialing back my bankroll on a week like this which is intuitively what you feel like you should do, I am going to be entering the same percentage of contests as I typically will enter.

Bankroll entered:
Cash: $1,900 (15.1%)
GPP: $200 (1.5%)

Quarterbacks-
Russell Wilson: It's hard not to have Russell Wilson as one of the top guys this week as he goes on these runs where he is just unbelievable at times. Wilson last week had 452 yards and 4 touchdowns. Now the Seahawks offense adds Duane Brown to help protect Wilson's blindside which should only help the quarterback this week. He is in a great matchup against Washington who have struggled against the pass this season.

Other quarterbacks I like:
Dak Prescott

Running Backs:
Kareem Hunt: The Cowboys have been strong against the run with the return of Sean Lee this season, and Kareem Hunt has not scored a touchdown in the last four weeks on the ground. So why do I like Hunt? When Dallas has struggled against running backs, they have really struggled as they have allowed Aaron Jones to run for 125 yards and a touchdown, Carlos Hyde had 4.9 yards per carry, and Todd Gurley had 215 total yards against this Cowboys team. This is a great spot for Hunt this week and while his floor is not as high as some other running backs on this slate, his ceiling is as high as any player.

Other running backs:
Mark Ingram
Todd Gurley

Wide Receiver
Wide receiver is where it gets interesting. I had circled Hopkins as an automatic play, but with the Watson news can no longer trust Tom Savage.

Michael Thomas is likely my top guy this week as this Buccaneers secondary has been struggling lately as they have not been healthy. Thomas' price continues to be simply too cheap at just $7,600 and while he has not been scoring touchdowns, he is still a player that scored 9 touchdowns last season.

Tight End: 
In cash, find a way to fit Jimmy Graham into your lineup and move on. The matchup is too good going up against a Washington team that has been one of the worst against the tight end this season.

Defense:
Seattle: This Seahawks defense was embarrassed last week against DeShaun Watson and the Texans. This is a defense that has a ton of pride and will be looking to rebound. They are going up against a Redskins offensive line that is an absolute mess right now. Brandon Scherff, Trent Williams, Shawn Lauvao, and Spencer Long all appear highly questionable if not out for this game. This defensive line for the Seahawks is in a prime matchup to take advantage in this game.