Week 9 DFS Review
Updated: Jun 2, 2021
Wow, what a week! The Dolphins are legit, Murray is the Cardinals RB1, and Seattle/Buffalo put on a show. If you don’t have NFL RedZone, then what are you doing with your life? Well, if you live near Philly, you probably had to watch Ravens/Colts on CBS instead of Seattle/Buffalo. Oof, whoever made that decision should be fired. Why would we want to watch two stout defenses try to get run on for 60 minutes? Give me Russ cooking and Allen firing away all day. What a game. Before this turns into a thank you letter to Scott Hansen for keeping my eyes from Indianapolis, let’s review Draftkings this week.
QB was spot on this week. Normally I’m around 60-75% so this week was an anomaly, but always nice to go 5/5. Russ cooked but actually left a ton on the table. Allen got back to his early season upside in the most obvious get right spot of the year, and Herbert kept doing his thing. Ryan had a nice day, but I stacked him with Julio and Gage which drew dead. Lock was fantastic, everyone was so worried about him being the Jimmy G of this week that they forgot how bad Atlanta’s defense is. Like almost every week, the opposing offense went off in comeback mode, only this time Atlanta has gone two straight weeks without blowing it at the end. Cheers to the pretenders.
Running back was awful, no doubt about that. Cook was the hero for me once again this week and I owe that man a thank you note. My leverage plays off Cook came up well short of anything worthwhile, but thankfully he was in half my lineups. By the way, I noted CMC in the Week 9 Preview, and I never played him. Wanted to clarify that if there was any question. Not much to say about the rest of my RB selections. Henry did not get the TD’s this week and he needs those to pay off since he doesn’t catch passes. I crossed Robinson off my list and never played him. Edmonds ended up being Murray’s backup RB, and while I played him in 3 of my 7 lineups, I noted that Murray could steal TD’s like he does when Drake is in the game. That led me to having far less Edmonds and more Jacobs. Jacobs wasn’t great, but the cheaper price allowed me to pay up elsewhere. He was my top leverage play, but needed more from him. Johnson was concussed early, Lindsey played so Gordon was off my list, and the 5k guys were all just meh with Jackson getting hurt early as well. Overall, an ugly day for running backs across the board. CMC and Dalvin blew the field away.
Wide Receiver plays were on par with the rest of the season at 50%. I added Chark just before lock Sunday morning because that price was too low. He was 5.2k, and while he has underperformed, the upside is there. The Julio chalk is almost always a let down so having him in only 1 of 7 lineups helped a ton. Diggs was not overly owned because his price was so high and a little more from him would have been preferable, but no complaints here. I’m just glad to see the Bills staff is exactly what I thought they were heading into week 9: Hyper-adaptive. Kenan Allen continues to be underpriced, and his target share continues to be like Davante Adams at a lower price. Thielen and Jefferson were leverage plays in lineups without Cook, but Dalvin took all the work again. Cooks picked up where he left off with Watson, Brown was healthy and Jeudy went OFF. Albeit some of it in garbage time, but he racked the points up. Foles crushed Chicago WR hopes once again, and Lockett simply missed a couple deep balls in a nice matchup. Such is life, but the David Moore leverage was on point for the second week in a row.
Tight End and Defense did what they do best, saved me money. The Giants were a top play based on price so I locked them in to all of my lineups. Dissly was in 6 of 7 because of the matchup, snap shares increasing and price. I will have to dive into that more because Hollister was the main receiving TE alongside an old Greg Olsen. Seems like Dissly is primarily a blocker so that could be the issue but at 2.7k he afforded me a lot of Dalvin/Henry and Russ/Allen. Fant was just ok but not good enough to be worth his price. As always, paying down at these spots afforded me expensive, high upside stacks that allowed me to climb towards the top of a couple tournaments.
Best and Worst
This section will review my best lineup and worst lineup for the sake of transparency and hindsight. Hopefully this helps you and I improve thought processes with lineup construction.
This lineup, like 6 of 7, was an all out game stack of Seattle/Buffalo. The others also cashed, but this one made it into the top ten of smaller field gpps, which is my focus. Adding Chark to my pool late allowed me to have the low owned upside necessary to take down a couple tournaments. However, he was in both of my Lockett lineups so while I still had a chance to take these GPP’s down, it was up to Jacobs to pull through. He failed me even though the game script was exactly what I wanted. If he fulfilled the expectations I had for him then this lineup goes from top 10 to top 3 in its respective tournaments. As you can see, the preference here would have been John Brown or Cooks over Diggs or Lockett, but its really Jacobs that leaves me with the most disappointment because it’s likely I would have played Henry over Jacobs if I did that which would have offset the move. Regardless, I have had a lot of success with full game stacks in small field tournaments. People just simply don’t want to do it when they are only putting 1-3 lineups in a higher dollar entry so building with this concept creates natural leverage on the field.
This lineup was my large field entry that I build each week. I typically do one and I should stop because they are usually overthought and overleveraged. I loved Matty Ice as usual and once the Broncos top two corners were ruled inactive I had to have a Falcons stack. Ryan is always low owned and I love double stacking him. I had a lot of early season success with these all out Falcons game stacks, but this one was constructed poorly. I thought Fant would go off, but it was Jeudy that did which was always a possibility and why I used the cheaper Dissly more than Fant. Even if I played Jeudy, this line was dead in the water with Jones and Gage underperforming. Hurst and Zacchaeus were the better plays this week. Henry was a top leverage play for me, but I could not have been more wrong. Thielen was leverage off Cook and Helaire was placed into this lineup because I did not have enough for Jacobs. I have always stuck strictly to my player pool, and normally would have never played Helaire due to that reasoning. However, as time wound down to lock, I thought the Panthers defense was going to get gashed with the run game and it was finally Helaire’s time to shine. I was going to take down a large field tournament with Helaire at the wheel, but really I just found out that the Kansas City back’s aren’t playable. Ultimately, this lineup was overleveraged. There were too many ‘cute’ plays, and you simply can’t do that even in a large field tournament. Like always, you needed good chalk to hit and differentiate in one or two spots. This egregious lineup is an example of overleveraging yourself when trying to be too different so keep that in mind when building lineups in the future.
Overall, I was pretty happy with my builds and ensuing profit. Although my leverage plays came up short this week, my actual and only true regret was never correlating Brandin Cooks and DJ Chark in the same lineup. The full passing game stacks I built prevented that correlation and ultimately prevented me from a first place finish this week.
Summary
Murray is the Cardinals RB1
Bills are one of the most adaptive staffs which is good for fantasy purposes
Cook/CMC should both be 9-10k
Kenan Allen is still underpriced
Continue paying down at TE/DEF
Don’t be afraid to game stack
Regardless of game stack, correlate the remainder of your lineup.