Back by popular demand, NFL DFS Box Checkers shows you to quickly identify key players for this week’s fantasy football slate in minutes. The DFS Army NFL Research Station is a very powerful suite of statistical analysis with fully customizable, filterable, sortable functionality. What used to take days or hours now takes mere minutes to discover! Follow along as @Choppodong rips these core plays to shreds every week in less than 15 minutes…
At the bottom, see a secret video normally only available to our VIPs! How to setup the optimizer to crush the top 1% and 2% in contests like leagues and microboosters. As the self-proclaimed “king of the smallaballa,” Chop has uncovered another easy to follow system capable of building bankrolls for anyone struggling on Fanduel or Draftkings.
Week 5 NFL Box Checkers
Quarterbacks
5 categories lead to making value historically. Home NFL QBs perform better than road QBs. Favored teams are implied to score more points, and their QBs do the scoring. Game totals make sense to follow, the higher the better. And, efficiency trumps volume! Volume is nice, but efficient QBs are proven to put up more fantasy points than those banking on volume alone. To finish, salary. You can price yourself out of making value unless putting up a true ceiling performance. In the NFL, we find staying under $8000 in Draftkings salary helps…in fact, the cheaper the better.

Only a few NFL QBs will smash every check-box. In week 5, Brady, Cousins, and Herbert hit every category…a good indicator they will have solid fantasy points scores. And, Carr, Darnold, Prescott, and Kyler Murray just miss…making them good plays as well.
Running Backs
Once again, home teams matter for RBs, and being favored obviously affects game scripts in a positive way. High scoring game environments help push those touchdowns around, landing on running backs. We want volume at all positions not QB. 18 touches (rushes + receptions) is the goal here. Passing game work gives us safety when the game script flips. Red Zone work matters…especially inside the 10. And, salary works here again. Staying under $8000 like our NFL QBs helps the running backs, too.

Our best backs this week are: Zeke, Najee, Aaron Jones, and Ekeler with 7 categories checked. Next in line are: Henry, Cook, Barkley, Robinson and Swift. These NFL RBs offer some of the safer bets in any DFS format.
Wide Receivers
Home field advantage proves negligible for NFL WRs. But, being favored is still important to hitting fantasy value. High totals matter, but when favored, we want team totals over 25 points. When the dog, we want UNDER 22 points indicating garbage time potential. Volume matters again. We’d like to see more than 7 targets per game on the average, and we want to see more than about 25% usage in the Red Zone…especially on Fanduel. Salary is key again, so we stay under $7000 here. Remember, this position is volatile as hell. But, we have backtested 250+ contests and found the top 3 Milli-Maker lineups contain someone meeting these criteria almost 60% of the time…..good odds for a crapshoot like WR.

Now, these are more flukey….and you’ll see why. Our 6-box checkers are: Adam Thielen….and Mike Evans. You will find underperformers in here, but if trying to win the Milli….you don’t care about what has happened. You care about what might happen this week! Next best are: Adams, Keenan, Ridley, Jefferson, Crowder, Parker, Godwin, MJJ, and Waddle. (Please check injuries on your own….I’m running off what I see early in the week.)
Tight Ends
Here we go with the home and favorite stuff again. NFL TE depends on it. We want volume, so focus on 7+ targets again, too. Red Zone work goes without saying at TE. And, we’ve discovered they also benefit from closer games, under 7 point spreads. If favored, you want ITTs over 26 points, and if the dog, under 24 points. Cheap plays, too!! On Draftkings, $3000-$5000 seems to be landing in the Milli a ridiculous 68% of the time…..and until week 1 this year, we had no recorded example of an 8k TE appearing in the Milli winner. That changes with Travis Kelce, and you can speculate all the previous slates he might not have been a part of due to prime time or Monday Night games. Fact is….the super high-priced TE is rare and likely cost prohibitive most times. Tend to pay down.

Only one NFL TE sweeps all 7 boxes off the board: Dalton Schultz. No TE is “safe” in this world, but this isn’t a bad place to look first this week. Next guys only take down 5 boxes: Waller, Pitts, Cook, Conklin. A real who’s who of TE mashers…lol
Where to Use These DFS Players
Box Checkers players are typically obvious, chalky (see our NFL Chalkboard Tool) and highly owned. Occasionally, we get some that slip under the radar (see our Leverage Stacks components).
However, these players can be used in ANY format from NFL cash games to big tourneys (or “Ladder Lineups” combining both!). The key to tourney play is using a core of these players and adding in some other lower owned pieces to give your lineup some uniqueness and creativity with the upside to beat a lot of competitors. As the DFS NFL world becomes more and more advanced, sometimes simplifying our process actually goes a little against the grain.
Now, How Would You Set Up an Optimizer?
I have backtested my own contests looking for the elusive “top 1%” and found a very fast and easy way to set up optimizers. Gone are the days of hours and hours of research. Make your own tweaks, but start winning more money this week.
Imagine how openly I share with our VIPs? Ask any question, and I will dive into YOUR game and help turn things around. (See how to join DFS Army below.)
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