Welcome to our first NFL DFS picks article for FantasyDraft, highlighting some of Awesemo’s top grades and values for this Sunday’s main slate. Personally I’m heading over to play on FantasyDraft as much as possible this year, for one major reason: CHEAP monthly fees instead of rakes.
Why pay a 15% rake when you can pay next to nothing? FantasyDraft has monthly plans that charge you a flat fee that allow you to play up to a specific dollar level, rake free. So, if you were to go on their $100 per month plan, you’d get up to $25,000 in rake free entries that month. At a 15% rake, that would normally cost you $3,750. Easy decision.
Other differences:
Less top-heavy contents: Paying out a minimum of 25% of players in paid contests. Less top-heavy structures means less variance for GPP players and more chances to get a return on your investment.
Flexible Lineup Structure: More freedom to build, done using extra FLEX positions, and less specific positions.
Multi-Entry Capping: leveling the playing field by limiting the number of lineups players can enter in contests.
Scoring: It’s the same as DraftKings. The only major difference between these sites is the salary cap. FantasyDraft is $100,000, which of course makes it easy to determine what percentage of your cap hit is taken up by a given player.
Rosters: There’s one less WR spot and one extra FLEX, allowing the player a little more creativity when building.
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Quarterback
Lamar Jackson, Baltimore Ravens: Grade: A, Value: A
Recency bias aside, Lamar Jackson is in a prime spot this week at home to the Cardinals, with the second highest implied total on the slate (30.25 points). Kliff Kingsbury and the Cardinals lived up the hype in Week 1, running the fasted offence in the league (22 seconds per play). That’s going to mean extra snaps for the Ravens offence, who showed few signs of letting up on the lowly Dolphins last week. It’s difficult to figure out who to pair Jackson up with in this offence in Stacks.
Marquise ‘Hollywood’ Brown led the team in receiving yards in Week 1, but he did that on just 18 snaps. Mark Andrews is your safe option with Red Zone upside. He’s been Jackson’s favorite target early on in his career and led the team in Week 1 with eight targets. Of course, you could always just play Jackson solo and hope that his legs do most of the work. Down the stretch last year he averaged 90 yards rushing and just under one TD per game.
Wide Receiver
Julio Jones: Grade: B, Value: B
Who doesn’t like having the hammer in a large GPP? Julio Jones gets a Sunday night matchup at home against the Philadelphia Eagles and their porous secondary that allowed the fourth most fantasy points to opposing WRs last season. The Eagles don’t shadow, so Julio will likely see some combination of Ronald Darby and Rasul Douglas on Sunday. Neither is overly intimidating, but Douglas is the worse of the two. He finished worst in the NFL last season in yards allowed per snap (1.71).
Julio disappointed last week against the Vikings, but here are his game logs the week after a sub-70-yard performance since the start of 2017: 5-96; 10-144; 8-106; 9-138; 5-108; 6-72; 5-71; 5-98; 7-149; 5-98. In case you didn’t read all that, that’s about 6-108.
Julio dropped a 10-169 line on the Eagles last season in Week 1.
Running Back
Saquon Barkley: Grade: A, Value B
The lone A-graded running back in Awesemo’s rankings on FantasyDraft, Saquon finds himself in a plus matchup against the Buffalo Bills funnel defence. The Bills finished first in the NFL last season in points allowed to QBs and had the second best DVOA pass defence, compared to the 10th worst DVOA run defence..
Saquon didn’t touch the ball much in Week 1, but he did average 10.9 yards per carry, on the strength of one break-off 59-yarder in the first quarter against the Cowboys and his day would have been better without a Wayne Gallman vulture.
Here’s what Adam Pfeifer had to say about Saquon in his matchups column:
“Saquon Barkley ripped off a 59-yard run on his first carry of the game, showing that same elite explosiveness. He also avoided five tackles on the ground, the fifth-most among all backs in Week 1. The Giants had to go away from him due to a blowout, limiting the All-Pro back to just 15 touches. That should change this week at home in what should be a more competitive game. Buffalo is tough but can still be had by running backs, allowing 92 total yards and a receiving touchdown to Le’Veon Bell last week. They allowed 1.1 rushing touchdowns per game to opposing backs last year, while 50 percent of all of the touchdowns scored against them came via the run. Because two other elite backs are underpriced, Barkley isn’t my favorite high-end back but he’s an interesting GPP option and never out of play.”
Tight End
Travis Kelce, Kansas City Chiefs: Grade: A, Value: A
Let’s not overthink this one. Tyreek Hill is out, and the Oakland Raiders were very bad at defending the tight end position in 2018, ranking dead last in the NFL in DVOA. It looks as if the Raiders will put some combination of Vontaze Burfict and Nicholas Morrow in coverage on Kelce. In week one the two combined to allowed 5 of 6 completions for 44 yards. Kelce went HAM against the Raiders in Week 13 last year, with a 12-168-2 line. They played again in Week 17, where Kelce duded (5-62) but the Chiefs went up early and likely weren’t going to push the envelope with the division all but clinched and the playoffs starting.
If you want to get creative in game stacks, pair him up with opposing TE Darren Waller (TE in the FLEX is a favorite Awesemo move in GPPs). Of course the added advantage of playing on FantasyDraft is that you get TWO FLEX spots, so, heck, fire up a triple TE stack if you’re feeling it.
GPP Stack
With the highest total on the slate, the Chiefs at Raiders game isn’t going to fly under the radar. However, I think there are ways to get creative when stacking this one. The aforementioned Waller and Josh Jacobs are cheap and one of the best value combos on the slate. Top Raiders WR Tyrell Williams is a fine play on FantasyDraft (C,B). If you’re game stacking, try some unique combinations on the Kansas City side. Second around speedster Mecole Hardman is a GPP Boom or Bust option with high upside – the Raiders gave up the most 40+ yard receptions in the NFL last season. Damien Williams might be contrarian, especially in Mahomes stacks. He had the third most targets on the Chiefs in Week 1 (6).
Unfortunately, we’re at a point now in DFS where stacking Carr and the Raiders as part of a game stack isn’t going to catch anyone by surprises, so use ownership projections to your advantage and try to find some pivots. On the Chiefs side, we have Patrick Mahomes projected at as the highest owned QB on the slate. Our ownership is also extremely low on Sammy Watkins right now, but we expect that to change by week’s end, despite the uptick in price.
