I play around 60% of my action each week in “cash games.” Cash games refer to any contest in which roughly 50% of the field gets paid out, such as head-to-head, double up or 50/50. I try to get as much head-to-head action as I can every week and then supplement that with other cash games.
Each week, I’ll review my cash-game lineup in this space. Sometimes I’ll lose, but hopefully I’ll win more often. Either way, I’ll post it here and give you my thought process.
The good news for this slate is we had a real sub-$4K WR option on DraftKings to open things up. The bad news is that once again, our most important job was to pick the right three RBs. I thought there were seven really strong RB options on DraftKings and six on FanDuel.
Note: Unless stated otherwise, the discussion below is about DraftKings.
MY MUST PLAYS
* The Bears D/ST was home against the Patriots at just $3000. Note that they were $5000 (near the max) on FanDuel. The only sub-$3K option on DraftKings I thought was in play was the Patriots, but I did not want to show up without Bears here. The Pats checked in with the NFL’s No. 32 offensive line in Brandon Thorn’s midseason rankings.
MY WANT PLAYS
* I only considered two quarterbacks for DraftKings cash: Brock Purdy and Justin Herbert. It’s not intuitive, but note that we projected Purdy for more points than Josh Allen here, and just 0.3 behind Jalen Hurts. That’s because Purdy has had a sneaky nice rushing role this season, the matchup against the pass-funneling Bucs was ideal, and the Niners had all their weapons (except Brandon Aiyuk) back as they came out of the bye. So while going down to Herbert and spending that $1300 to upgrade RB or TE was tempting, I really wanted Purdy.
* We needed to spend a lot of money to play three high-upside RBs on this slate. That’s the way I ideally want to play on most slates these days, given the landscape. That almost forced me onto AD Mitchell, who was just $3400 with aggressive-throwing Joe Flacco in a dome. I certainly didn’t love Mitchell considering he’s been pinned to the bench and made plenty of mistakes this season, but an athletic guy thrust into a bigger role thanks to Michael Pittman (back) absence… there was plenty of room for error at this price.
* Speaking of the Colts, Josh Downs has been the Colts best receiver this season. Now Michael Pittman was out, Joe Flacco was starting, and there was a good chance they’d be playing from behind in a dome. Against a Bills defense which dares opponents to take short-area targets. We had Downs 1.6 points clear of Khalil Shakir in projection, even with Amari Cooper + Keon Coleman out. Note that I did play Shakir on FD, where he was $900 less than Downs.
* The RB position was loaded once again. I thought Alvin Kamara vs. Saquon Barkley was a coinflip, so I played Kamara on FD (where he was cheaper) and Saquon on DK. That was a bit of an IKB on projection, where we had Kamara ahead at $200 less.
On DraftKings, Aaron Jones was a tier cheaper than the other backs and also fit better in the full-PPR format. I was happy to play him there. On FanDuel, the cheapest non-Ekeler option was JK Dobbins.
On DraftKings, I needed one of James Conner ($6500) or D’Andre Swift ($6500) to save enough salary. This was very close, but I considered the offensive systemic risk lower for the Cardinals than the Bears. And the Jets’ strong secondary typically yields run-based gameplans.
* DeAndre Hopkins was at a pricepoint that made everything fit. I didn’t love him against Patrick Surtain, but we had a chance to get Patrick Mahomes’ clear No. 1 WR for $5300. If the pricing came out before Hopkins’ Week 9 MNF role, he would have been $6000 or more.
* I looked lineups with Will Dissly, Juwan Johnson, Taysom Hill, and Cade Otton at TE. In the end, I thought finding the $700 to get to Taysom’s touchdown upside here was worth it. This team had roughly zero NFL-caliber WRs healthy, both backup RBs were out again, and they were home against the Falcons with a reasonable team total. Unlike other cheap tight ends, Taysom had both a receiving role and a rushing role around the goal-line.
Week 10 Results
I never felt too comfortable with this slate, especially at RB. So I was fine to hedge across sites by playing three different RBs on each. I don’t like to play multiple cash lineups on the same site as it’s really hard to win with both, but across different sites they can both be very +EV.
Anyway, having conviction on Brock Purdy made a big difference here. As did not spending up (as usual) at tight end for Dalton Kincaid or Cade Otton. But I certainly got lucky on DraftKings, where Kamara should’ve had about 12 more points if he didn’t drop an easy long TD. Given the way the usage played out, perhaps Kamara on both sites was right. Either way, happy to escape from this week with another small win.
YEAR-TO-DATE RESULTS
Week 1 DraftKings: 147.38 points, won 98.6% of head-to-heads
Week 2 DraftKings: 116.94 points, won 21.1% of head-to-heads
Week 3 DraftKings: 109.3 points, won 54.8% of head-to-heads
Week 4 DraftKings: 146.28 points, won 75.3% of head-to-heads
Week 5 DraftKings: 143.06 points, won 83.5% of head-to-heads
Week 6 DraftKings: 134.12 points, won 50.1% of head-to-heads
Week 7 DraftKings: 93.14 points, won 28.2% of head-to-heads
Week 8 DraftKings: 173.16 points, won 96.3% of head-to-heads
Week 9 DraftKings: 170.86 points, won 65.2% of head-to-heads
Week 10 DraftKings: 117.92 points, won 66.1% of head-to-heads
Week 1 FanDuel: Did not play
Week 2 FanDuel: 143.24 points, won 75.2% of head-to-heads
Week 3 FanDuel: 111.88 points, won 71.9% of head-to-heads
Week 4 FanDuel: 120.92 points, won 41.9% of head-to-heads
Week 5 FanDuel: 130.22 points, won 71.4% of head-to-heads
Week 6 FanDuel: 133.36 points, won 80.6% of head-to-heads
Week 7 FanDuel: 100.04 points, won 65.0% of head-to-heads
Week 8 FanDuel: 122.36 points, won 70.4% of head-to-heads
Week 9 FanDuel: 132.1 points, won 52.0% of head-to-heads
Week 10 FanDuel: 108.82 points, won 60.9% of head-to-heads
* Note: Win percentages do not include ties.
