DFS Top Plays: Week 3

You don’t have to play cash games to understand why it’s important to grasp them. Players we consider for cash are the ones we believe are the most underpriced, have the best floor/ceiling combo, and feature a relatively tight range of outcomes.

In other words, these are the best plays on the board once price, slate context, and positional depth are accounted for. Those sound like pretty good options for GPPs as well.

The optimal GPP lineup will mix some of these cash-type plays with higher-variance options in correlated lineups. In cash games (where roughly 50% of the field gets paid out), we don’t worry about ownership, game stacks, or correlation. In large-field tournaments, our ACO (average cumulative ownership) should stay reasonably low. Please read this article and listen to Episode 619 of the podcast for more on large-field tournament strategy.

For more tournament content, check out our projections, Gary Hartman’s GPP Leverage Article, and Saturday’s Establish The Million Show with Drew Dinkmeyer and Mike Leone.

With all that said, these are our Top Plays considering the following factors: median projection, matchup, upside, and value. Ownership is NOT considered here. Generally speaking, these players are what we consider to be “head-to-head and 50/50 considerations”.

They are listed in price descending order (NOT ranked by “best play”). At the bottom, you’ll find suggested rankings by site once salary is accounted for.

QUARTERBACK

Patrick Mahomes ($8,300 DK, $9,200 FD) – The Chiefs have far and away the highest projected team total of the week at 30.5, a full three points higher than the next-highest teams (Dallas and Minnesota). While K.C. is a 12.5-point favorite hosting Chicago, Mahomes should have the best floor-ceiling combo on the slate, with the ceiling in play if they hit their team total and cover the spread.

Lamar Jackson ($7,700 DK, $8,200 FD) – Lamar remains underpriced on FanDuel while projecting as our top value there. He has a strong outlook this week in a matchup with a Colts team that was shredded by C.J. Stroud in the second half of last week’s Texans game. It was also encouraging to see Lamar have 12 rushing attempts last week. He’s firmly on the cash and GPP radar on both sites.

Justin Herbert ($7,500 DK, $8,400 FD) – The Chargers-Vikings game projects as the best environment of the week, with a 54-point game total and a tight 1-point spread. Both Herbert and Kirk Cousins are firmly in the mix, with Herbert projecting for a slightly lower floor and ceiling at $600 more on DraftKings and FanDuel. This should keep his ownership in both GPPs and cash games lower than the cheaper Cousins.

Kirk Cousins ($6,900 DK, $7,800 FD) – Cousins has been the top-scoring QB to start the 2023 season, and Sunday sets up a great opportunity for him to continue that hot start at home versus the Chargers. He’ll likely be the most popular option of the week, but the Cousins-Jefferson stacks are hard to resist in any format.

RUNNING BACK