One of the most memorable ‘one and done’ appearances in Simpsons history is Homer’s new boss Hank Scorpio. He is an amazingly charming man who is all about the people who work for him, only it turns out he is a super villain bent on destruction – that was week 6. Week 6 was very good to me but still has some sinister undertones. I cashed for only the second time this season and cashed well enough that I am now plus for the year which is exactly how last year started, so I’m hopefully things will even out. Until then, I’ll be optimistic and pleasant but below the surface, the super villain will lurk. So let’s review how we did and review the names I recommended in the article last week.
Home Runs: We had four guys go over the 5x value line: Ingram, McKinnon, Engram and the Texans Defense. I wont trumpet about a defense, that’s somewhat hit or miss, but I’m very proud about predicting the Giants increased usage of Engram and the Ingram and McKinnon picks. If you had two of those three players, you were in excellent cash position this week.
Value Met: These guys are the ones who exceeded 3x value but didn’t go over the mythical 5x mark and we talked about a bunch of them this week: Watson, Fournette, Moncrief, Fitzgerald, Tate and Seffarian Jenkins. Despite the Tate injury, he was great, Moncrief had one of those rare games where people forgot TY Hilton is on the same team and nearly had another TD to boot (went right off his hands). Fournette was also hindered but still returned solid value. Using any of these guys helped you in a cash game and if you combed them with the guys from the home runs section, you were talking about tournament quality as well. Moncrief, Fitzgerald and Seffarian Jenkins were all moderate to cheap so using them with Engram and Ingram was definitely possible. I used all these guys in at least one pool and most of my entries had three or four of these guys, making for an easy week.
But for every hit, there are misses, so here we present the guys we thought would provide better value, but missed.
Average Joes: These guys didn’t flame out but they didn’t get over 3x. This area is where you find an average week from a chalk player. Remember this is all relative to salary. So if Leveon Bell is 9000 and he scores 25 points, he would end up on this list. My system is about identifying value and letting you fill in with guys to put you over the top. With that in mind, we had very average performances from Miller and Kamara. The Kamara thing is understandable because of the great day Ingram had. If Ingram had come up small, this would be a disappointing outcome from the young rookie. The Miller pick was largely on the hope that the passing game would loosen up the run defense of Cleveland. Cleveland may give up a ton of points but its mainly through the air. They only give up 2.6 yards per carry on the ground, so I probably should have faded Miller but I had hoped that a few Watson TDs would loosen them up and drop a few back but it didn’t. So my bad there.
Flaming Tire Fires: These guys could not even get to 2x value and that’s simply inexcusable. So here we have Brees, Thomas, Hopkins and the Redskins D. We already discussed the volatility of defense in DFS, so I’m not shocked I’ve got one in the best and one in the worst category. You’ll also notice the names here are all chalk players, that happens. Because chalk players have such high point ceilings, they get big salaries, but in this case, I don’t think the salaries were the issue. How des Drew Brees put up 50 points and not have 200 yards passing? Its insane to consider that they put up a massive offense performance, the best combined total since Drew Brees and the Saints against the Giants some years ago. So how in all that is good in the universe do you not hit value? Its maddening! And if Brees cant hit value, there is virtually no chance that Thomas can make value, so we have those two misses right off the bat, but if you stacked them with the RBs, you probably did ok. The Hopkins miss is also infuriating. Watson went nuts on the Browns, Miller was quiet so how does he not get 100 yards and a TD? Insane! So I’m sorry, I thought all these guys would make value, and if you told me the score of the NO/Det game and then that Watson would throw like he did, I’d still recommend these guys.
All in all it wasn’t a bad week. I gave you sixteen names to strongly consider and ten of them made value, that’s pretty good. I hope you guys cashed last week. I’m working on projections for this week and will publish a similar article as soon as possible. Good luck this week and absolutely fade the KC/Oak game! Everything I’m hearing is that both these teams are having a tough time with turn around on the short week. If that is true then the only reason to play a Thurs-Mon pool is if you want to use the Sunday night or Monday night game. That’s up to you, the NE/Atl game is the only 50+ this week, so there is some logic to getting into those pools, but I’ll likely stick to Sunday only this week. I’ll follow up with more on Thursday. Good luck!
Fignuts DFS Podcast and Beer Reviews 
Hey that guest host was great! I love that guy!
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