GPP Leverage: Week 12

Welcome back for the 12th NFL GPP Leverage column of the season. If you missed the Week 1 edition of GPP Leverage, I recommend you take a minute to read the intro from that week to get a feel for the goals of this column.

The Week 11 slate was a fun one for me, as I was honored to be the #HonoredGuest on Establish The Million and followed it up with one of my best slates of the season. The key to success in Week 11 was rostering a Cardinals double stack or onslaught, but that was one of the chalkiest stacks we’ve seen all season, and the Cardinals-49ers matchup was in the late window of games. As a result, it was crucial to have a late-swap plan in place and to ensure you were playing from ahead entering the late window of games if you wanted to play one of the chalky Cardinals stacks. Looking through opponents’ lineups after the slate was over, it was clear that many DFS players were playing from behind after the early window but continued to roster Cardinals stacks anyway, preventing themselves from even having a chance at earning a min-cash on the slate. As many of us have suggested with regularity across all ETR content, properly using late swap remains one of the biggest edges in DFS.

Unfortunately, the upcoming Week 12 slate does not set up especially well for late swap to be a significant factor, but we can always find ways to gain leverage against our opponents. This week, we’ll go game by game through a handful of matchups on the main slate as we consider where we can find leverage opportunities.

NYG @ DET

• We’re expecting this matchup to carry a significant amount of ownership, and it could reasonably be the chalkiest game of the slate by Sunday morning. Despite the anticipated ownership, this is one of my favorite matchups to attack. The Lions’ offense has been especially strong for fantasy purposes when playing against weak opponents at home, and this matchup should be no different. In addition, the Lions’ offense is more condensed than usual with the removal of Sam LaPorta due to injury.
• One way to attack this game without playing into the ownership of Jared Goff, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams, or Jahmyr Gibbs is through Detroit’s D/ST, whose elevated salary should keep its ownership in check. The Lions’ defense has been up and down this season, but they now get a dream matchup at home against Jameis Winston. The expensive price of the Lions’ D/ST can be offset by pairing them with the discounted David Montgomery, who should theoretically benefit from a dominant performance by his defense. Although Montgomery will also carry a non-trivial amount of ownership this week, I expect his ownership will still be lower than that of Gibbs and his teammates from the passing game, which leaves him as a solid leverage option. 
• As I noted in last week’s edition of GPP Leverage, we often see condensed offenses leading to the field rostering the same combinations of players at outsized rates. For example, in Week 10, even though Jared Goff was only 11.6% owned in the Power Sweep tournament, 2.4% of all lineups in the entire contest rostered the combination of Goff, St. Brown, Williams, and LaPorta. Now that LaPorta is removed, I wouldn’t be surprised if over half of all Goff lineups were double stacks with St. Brown and Williams. As a result, I would consider stacking Goff with at least one of Gibbs, Montgomery, Isaac TeSlaa, or Brock Wright. TeSlaa is probably too thin for small-field tournaments, but he will be nearly unowned. He has big-play upside, and he fits the mold of a WR archetype that I like to take shots on against the Giants’ secondary.