Yahoo NFL Picks: Week 18 Sunday Night Football Chargers vs. Raiders

Tonight the Las Vegas Raiders are hosting the Los Angeles Chargers in the featured Sunday Night Football matchup, and Yahoo is offering NFL DFS single-game contests. The general concept of creating a team remains the same, but this is a one-game player pool. The twist is that any position player can be rostered, and one is designated to receive a 1.5x multiplier on their Yahoo points. Using Awesemo’s expert NFL projections and rankings, these are the top Yahoo NFL picks for the Week 18 Sunday Night Football game tonight.

Yahoo NFL Picks: Week 18 Sunday Night Football

Top SUPERSTAR Options

The SUPERSTAR position will get a 1.5x multiplier on their Yahoo points in the single-game format. Awesemo’s NFL DFS optimizer creates daily fantasy football cheat sheets. Check out who is popping in the Yahoo NFL DFS cheat sheet for the Week 18 Sunday Night Football game.

Justin Herbert, Los Angeles Chargers – $36

Tonight will be the 32nd career start for Justin Herbert who continues to impress. For his career he is averaging 289.3 passing yards, 2.12 aerial scores with another 17.3 yards on the ground accompanied by eight rushing touchdowns. This year he has 11 games with multiple touchdowns and the Raiders are in the bottom quartile of the league for passing DVOA. This is the highest salary of anyone in the player pool, but Herbert has more than proven his worth.

Herbert is one of the leading options for SUPERSTAR on Yahoo, and Matt Savoca has an even more in-depth look at his outlook tonight from a holistic view across DraftKings and FanDuel in his Week 18 Sunday Night Football Showdown Breakdown.

Austin Ekeler, Los Angeles Chargers – $34

This season Austin Ekeler is second in the league with 18 touchdowns behind only Jonathan Taylor (20). Most impressive is that he can score on the ground or through the air with 11 rushing and seven receiving scores on the season. Plus he even missed out on the Week 16 matchup with Houston. On the season, 18 different running backs have at least 35 rushing yards against Las Vegas and 14 have 20 or more receiving yards. This season in 15 games, the undrafted Ekeler has 190 carries for 847 yards, and he has turned 82 targets into 65 receptions for 612 yards. It is feasible to work in both Herbert and Ekeler in the same lineup.

Yahoo NFL Core Picks

Derek Carr, Las Vegas Raiders – $25

It is never a sexy play when going with Derek Carr, however, in this must-win game we are likely to see him attempt something in the neighborhood of 40 passes. It has been a hot minute – five games actually – since he last notched 300 or more passing yards, but he has hit that threshold half a dozen times and he had 296 in another game. The downside is that he has only six touchdowns in his last seven games, but that is clearly factored into his salary.

Josh Jacobs, Las Vegas Raiders – $23

Los Angeles has been one of the worst teams against the run all season. Josh Jacobs is managing a rib injury and he has been dinged up for most of the season. Considering the stakes for this game, he is expected to play, and this salary is baking in a lot of the risk. Jacobs has been steady though not spectacular this season with no multi-touchdown games, and he has gone over 75 yards just three times. On the flipside, he has double digit fantasy points in 10 of his 14 games and he is one reception away from equaling his production through the first two years of his career combined. Part of this is due to Kenyan Drake being lost to an injury for the latter third of the season, but Jacobs also has shown he is a capable check down option for his conservative quarterback when necessary.

Latest NFL DFS Content

Yahoo NFL Value Picks

Zay Jones, Las Vegas Raiders – $14

It has been veteran Zay Jones who has stepped up over the back half of the season to become the second wide receiver behind Hunter Renfrow ($21). Over the last three games he leads the team with 27 targets, and he is easily the best discount dandy in the player pool tonight.

Josh Palmer, Los Angeles Chargers – $11

With everyone healthy for the Chargers, rookie Josh Palmer falls well down the pecking order behind Keenan Allen ($22), Mike Williams ($18), Jared Cook ($16) and of course Ekeler. However, at only a dollar above the Yahoo minimum salary he is live for 3-4 targets and that could be enough to have his backers grinning from ear-to-ear as they watch the action unfold.

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Author

Eric MacPherson

Eric "EMac" MacPherson won the 2007 Fantasy Baseball grand prize (trip for two to the MLB All-Star game) in the Roto format on ESPN. He won again in 2008, this time in the H2H format. As one of the early adopters of daily fantasy sports, EMac has been providing content for baseball and basketball as well as both professional and college football since 2012 for a variety of websites including DraftKings Playbook, FanVice, RotoWorld, Daily Fantasy Bootcamp, and RotoGrinders. He is well into his third decade of fantasy sports and has a wealth of knowledge and experience. Follow him on Twitter @EMacDFS or contact EMac by emailing [email protected].