The following are my Wildcard Round player picks and notes for both Fanduel and Draftkings. This list is meant to be comprehensive and includes every player on the slate that I am considering using in my lineups. Green highlights indicate chalky plays I feel everyone will be on this week. Use those in cash, hybrid and GPP lineups. I’m leaving in Red highlights to indicate plays I consider GPP only. That’s a warning to avoid those players in your cash and hybrid lineups. I’ve also left in some orange shading for players I consider punts. Punts are higher risk players that are in good spots with very cheap salaries. We generally need a couple of punts to fit studs. BOLDED PLAYERS ARE MY TOP PICKS OF THE WEEK
You will notice that I’ve expanded my notes on the player picks over this past couple of weeks. I’m always looking for the best possible ways to relay information to our group. I’m considering going to this style of format for next season as a whole. Rather than doing a complete breakdown of every game in the Vegas Lines column, I may abridge that to two of three games and then put the extra effort into expanded notes on the player picks. I’d love your feedback on that.
Wildcard Round Notes:
The sites are running a number of slates this weekend including 2, 3 and 4 games. This is probably a good week to test out mass multi-entry using our Domination Station Optimizer. If you are attacking a slate with 150 lineups, the goal should be to nail the perfect lineup. That’s really the only way max entering a short slate will pay off. I’ve done enough of these slates to know that there will be some oddball players that wind up having big games at very low ownership. Sometimes who you fade in these slates is just as important as who you play. Think hard about this stuff and try to get some uniqueness. If you test this out in a quarter arcade it won’t cost much so be creative and take some chances.
Looking at all the matchups – the Steelers offense is in the best spot on paper. Big Ben, Bell, and Brown are cash game staples for me. LeVeon Bell is far and away the best combination of floor, ceiling, and matchup on this slate and I can’t imagine making a cash lineup that doesn’t feature both him and Ben. My second pick at RB is Lamar Miller. If he’s healthy Miller has an ideal matchup against a Raiders team that should have difficulty sustaining drives with basically nothing at QB. I like the idea of pairing Miller with Texans Defense as a primary stack.
At WR I’d give an ever so slight nod to OBJ over Brown as the top pass-catching option. That’s mainly because the Giants don’t have a running game to vulture potential TDs. I think pairing OBJ with Ben Roethlisberger may create some uniqueness in a GPP lineup. The main reason I’m slightly favoring Ben over Aaron is because the Giants actually have a solid secondary while the Dolphins will likely be without top CB Byron Maxwell which should open things up for the Steelers passing game.
As far as GPP strategy it’s important to diversify lineups as much as possible while maintaining some semblance of strategy. One or two of the min salary players will have a big game this week. We will need that player to have any shot of winning our GPP entry. You never truly know who that will be however so I like to make sure I get 5-10% exposure to pretty much anyone that has a shot at being that guy. I bolded some of my top punt plays