Welcome to my final Geek’s picks of the 2016 season. I’m approaching this week with a heavy heart because I know that for all intents and purposes this is the last serious weekend of NFL DFS. I’m certainly ready for a break from grind but mostly I’m going to miss the action. I’ll play next week’s two-gamer for sure but there isn’t enough there to do an in-depth analysis. I’ll be in slack posting my thoughts on that one but there won’t be a complete picks column. I want to take this time to thank all of you for putting your faith in me and the DFS Army this NFL season. Our group has always been about fostering a team environment. I hope that you all have found our content insightful. Most of all I hope we’ve helped make this DFS hobby more fun and profitable for you. I know that I’ve benefitted from your insights, questions and comments in our slack forums as well. It’s been great getting to know many of you and I hope you will stick around for all of the DFS content we offer throughout the year. I want to also take a moment to thank Bobby (Tex0322) and Aaron (PVAaron) for handling most of the administrative responsibilities for the site through the NFL season. I couldn’t have pulled this off without those guys. I’d also like to thank Chip (Choppodong) for his weekly articles and recaps as well as for hosting our Vegas Lines podcast this season. Keith and Al for their NFL insights on their podcasts and in our VIP slack forums. Props to Nick (Mr. Sconnie) Steig who has done a fantastic job compiling our NFL cheat sheets and projections all season as well as handling Domination Station updated. I also want to give a shout out to all the slack regulars as well. I’ve enjoyed discussing the who’s and why’s or player picks and lineup construction with you all this season. I truly feel that my game is improved because of some of the debates we’ve had.
It’s been an incredible ride for me this year capped off by one of my best weeks of the season in the wildcard round:
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People asked me last week why I had so much exposure to Randal Cobb and Thomas Rawls. It was no accident. I’ve been riding Rawls all season, generally to my detriment. When Pete Carrol came out to reporters with a quip about wanting to get Rawls 20+ touches, it was all I needed to hear. The odds and line on the Seahawks game already screamed play the RB. The missing factor was opportunity. As a bonus, I knew he would be low owned simply by gauging reaction on twitter and in slack to Rawls where people were hesitant to use him. As far as Cobb went, there was a bit of luck involved there. I started off the week thinking I’d do some punting with Geronimo Allison. As news hit that Cobb might play or would be a GTD I decided to use Cobb at 20% exposure rates because the pivot to the cheaper Allison was a very easy one. When Cobb was announced as the starter I simply didn’t pivot and got lucky with his big game.
As many of you know, I don’t do much with everyday DFS sports like NBA and MLB. I really like Daily NBA but I’m generally too busy during the NFL season to concentrate on NBA. Then once My schedule keeps me away from the computer in the hours before lineup lock. We have an incredible team within the DFS Army lead by Keith Hall, Al Walsh, Nick Steig and others that do an incredible job with write-ups, projections, player picks and last minute updates and pivots. For me, during the offseason, I like to focus on PGA, MMA, and NASCAR. Basically the once a week sports. Our in-house PGA and NASCAR expert, Taco, does an awesome job with cheat sheets, player picks and podcasts for PGA and NASCAR. I’ll be around throughout the offseason in slack talking golf, MMA, and NASCAR. My offseason project is to concentrate on continuing to improve our Domination Station optimizer. We are expecting to launch our NBA product alongside a major user experience/interface update within the next week or so. After that, we’ll work on getting support for PGA going. In addition, I’m always looking for new talent to bring into the DFS Army as far as experts in different sports and subcategories.
Divisional Round Thoughts
The divisional round gives us 4 separate but interconnected slates to consider. I generally approach this type of slate with two mindsets. First is how I would approach my cash lineups. Next is about attacking GPP’s. In a GPP, in order to win we need to nail the top play of the slate at every slot. It’s not that difficult to identify the players in the best spots on paper but that doesn’t always translate to the best actual fantasy performances. This week the two games that stand out most as far as the likely shootouts and high game totals are the Dallas v Green Bay and Falcons v Seahawks games. I’m focused on the QB-WR stacks from those two games in my cash lineups. It was actually difficult to narrow down the player picks this week as we have so many in great spots. In the player picks I bolded my favorite plays across all the positions and salary ranges. The biggest question this week is how to approach the RB position. Zeke and Bell are superstuds. As much as I want to use both in every lineup, that’s simply not possible. I’m planning to have at least one of the stud RB’s in every lineup I make this week. At TE the two chalkiest plays are Kelce at the high end, and Cook at the low end. Witten, Graham, and Bennett round out a position group in which virtually all of the relevant names are in reasonably good spots.
Here are the Vegas Lines as of this writing:
At Atlanta -5 Seattle 51.5
At New England -16 Houston 44.5
At Kansas City -1.5 Pittsburgh 44.5
At Dallas -4.5 Green Bay 52