NFL Monday Afternoon/Night DFS - Week 13
Thanks to COVID, we get treated to another Monday slate of 2 games. Last Wednesday was fun, especially since our lineups performed really well with over $4,000 in profit (390% return on investment). Yesterday wasn't as profitable but still a good day (see results below).
The focus today is to find those "homerun" hitters which you need to take down a GPP. The metric I am becoming more and more fond of with each passing week during the NFL season is air yards. Marquise Brown was huge for us last Wednesday and our analysis of man coverage/air yards for the slate yesterday paid off very nicely when Corey Davis and Justin Jefferson each had strong outings.
One site I have used often is FTN Fantasy which does a nice job of displaying air yards by team, position, and week. A link is shown below as well as the output for today's teams.
Based on this data, it seems that Stefon Diggs, Terry McLaurin, and Chase Claypool are the way to go. However, I will be swapping Claypool with Juju Smith-Schuster on DraftKings to get some salary savings. Plus FanDuel is more TD dependent anyway.
As a sleeper/value pick, I love Gabriel Davis. He rates high with air yards and his best games happened when John Brown was out (Weeks 3, 5, and 12). You will probably get Davis at relatively low ownership too.
Don't go cheap on tight end and defense though. Pittsburgh is in a class of its own with both of those positions among the 4 teams competing today. There are no clear "must have" high-priced options today except for Josh Allen so it would not be wise to punt tight end and defense. The Steelers defense is championship quality and Washington struggles against big receivers (which further validates our selections of Schuster on DK and Claypool on FD). FYI, none of of Washinton's corners are taller than 6 feet or weigh more than 200 lbs. They won't be able to handle the size of either Ebron, Schuster, or Claypool.
Note: I am going with Logan Thomas at TE on FD for the slight salary savings so that we can squeeze in Mostert at RB instead of using Anthony Gibson who will struggle against a stout Steelers defensive front. Thomas has just as many air yards as Ebron.
So why McLaurin at WR if Pittsburgh D is so strong? That is because McLaurin is ridiculously fast (4.35 40 time). Just look at what Marquise Brown did last week. Yes, we are taking a risk with McLaurin but it's a calculated risk.
Josh Allen is our guy at QB. He is a one-man wrecking crew and correlates very well with both Diggs and Davis (see analysis below from the ASA site). On the other side, expect Mostert and Aiyuk to put up strong numbers (opposing WRs correlate very well with Allen). They are cheap on DK and Mostert is a must play on FD given his penchant to score TDs. Mostert's snap % is low and RBs don't correlate well with Allen but Mostert's usage while on the field is impressive and Mostert correlates very well against opposting QBs and WRs.
www.advancedsportsanalytics.com
My QB, RB, and DST model outputs are shown below as well as my sample lineups for both DK and FD. Good luck!
