GPP Leverage: Week 14

Let’s dive right in this week — looking back at last week’s optimal lineup: 

Takeaways here:

• Credit to Brock Purdy — who was the cash-game QB and got the job done on the road in Philadelphia. If there was any doubt that Philly is a pass funnel this year, that door should now be shut, as Purdy traveled East as the QB of the road-favorite 49ers in bad weather and eclipsed 30 DK points. He was paired with Deebo Samuel, who continues to get it done on limited work but incredible efficiency. In my opinion, this coming week feels like a Brandon Aiyuk week at home versus Seattle.
• You did need to spend down at RB last week, but if you had the stones to put a big fade on Zack Moss and go to some contrarian pieces, that would have paid off for you. James Conner reminded us that his role is always worthy of GPP consideration, while Chuba Hubbard seems to be a potential RB1 for the stretch run here.
• Nico Collins! Tank Dell’s injury sucked, but Collins is a legit alpha WR and I always wanted pieces of that game. He was one guy I got right last week.
• The chalky defense hits again. The sims have been telling us this, but contrary to my prior beliefs, perhaps it is not the case to always fade chalky defenses. We should trust the projections to an extent, although I’m still a big believer in ramping up variance a lot on the defense front.
• Sam LaPorta continues to have the best rookie TE season of all time. He should be considered on every slate. 

However, what I wanted to talk about here was something I hinted at last week — the fact that again on a smaller slate, we saw two skill-position players from the same team appear as optimal without their QB. Last week, it was two wide receivers, Michael Pittman Jr. and Alec Pierce. We saw this last week, too, with Kyren Williams and Tyler Higbee. This made me want to research how often this is optimal. On The Solver, we even have an “easy” button to limit your runs to one skill-position player per team unless with QB, which is something I did for many of my MME runs throughout my years. But is this actually correct? Of course, every slate is different, and sometimes there’s an insane value that should always be considered without rules or correlation. But, for the most part, it has seemed counterintuitive to go in this direction. Let’s find out.

Since the start of 2021: