CFB Large-Field GPP Breakdown: Week 1

I have to get one thing off my chest. Apparently, Lane Kiffin trying to bring recently waived NFL players back to college is where everyone has decided to draw the line.

Are we still pretending college football isn’t professional football? These guys are getting paid. Coaches are making eight figures. Rosters are being rebuilt every six months through the portal. Schools and conferences are literally fighting each other in court. But a guy gets cut by an NFL team and suddenly we’re worried about preserving the sanctity of amateur athletics?

Kiffin would recruit a 34-year-old accountant if the guy ran a 4.4 and somehow still had eligibility. This sport is completely insane, which is probably one of the reasons all of us love it so much.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. In other news, we have a massive Week 1 slate to attack. Let’s get it.

What Week 0 Taught Us

Week 0 was a pretty good reminder that we don’t have to fade every strong projection just because it’s popular. Micah Ford was one of the chalkiest RBs on the slate and went for 99 yards and three touchdowns. Eating that chalk was not the problem.

The more important lesson came at quarterback. Jayden Maiava was the clear QB1 in projections and played fine — 286 passing yards, two passing touchdowns, and a rushing score — but he didn’t separate from the other QBs on the slate. Meanwhile, Beau Pribula ran for 110 yards and added two passing touchdowns. That self-contained rushing ceiling is exactly why I wanted to be underweight on Maiava and overweight on the dual-threat guys.

USC was another good example of why I like scripting games instead of just clicking the highest-projected player. The Trojans scored 42, but production was spread around. Trent Mosley went for 7/118/1, King Miller scored, multiple other backs scored, and Maiava never became mandatory. Sometimes the right offense is obvious while the right way to attack it is not.

The other thing I liked from my Week 0 portfolio was how the Maiava lineups that leaned into double stacks held up better than the more natural one-pass-catcher builds. If I’m betting on a pocket passer winning through the air, I want to be willing to tell that story all the way instead of stopping halfway.

That’s what I want to carry into Week 1: Eat the good chalk when it deserves to be eaten, but have a real opinion about how the games — and most importantly, the touchdowns — get distributed.

Week 1 in 60 Seconds

The slate starts and ends with Byrum Brown. He’s $7,800 and should probably be the highest-priced quarterback on the slate. He projects almost six points ahead of the next quarterback and gives us exactly what we want in CFB DFS: rushing, touchdown equity, and a competitive game environment.

Cam Cook is the RB version of Brown. He’s expensive and popular, but the position gets ugly fast behind him. I’m not going to invent a reason to fade a guy simply because he’ll be in half the field’s lineups.

The other major theme is blowouts. Ohio State, Indiana, Texas, Alabama, and Oregon all have massive scoring environments. We’re going to get some of those games right and some horribly wrong. The edge is deciding which position group gets the touchdowns before the starters start disappearing.

My first read: Brown/Cook lineups are completely fine. The slate gets interesting with QB2, RB2, which cheap WRs you pair together, and how aggressively you script the huge favorites.

What’s the Field Going to Do?