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 15 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.
Remember, blue is very strong. Green is pretty strong. When it comes to checking boxes, we are tracking those typically leading to a DFS NFL player paying off his salary.
Week 15, even aside from Covid stuff, is possibly the worst week I’ve ever seen for picking players. You’ll see as these box checkers pan out.
First, we don’t have any real studs on the slate outside of Josh Allen (in a borderline matchup and a fairly inconsistent season, barring his huge upside which is always in tact). Kyler Murray is a great choice, as well, but after that the dropoff is kind of obvious. I know he doesn’t check boxes, but I’d ask you to actually look into Big Ben’s recent game logs. He’s washed up, but he has been paying off his salaries at a crazy consistency….and isn’t a terrible choice most weeks. Just look with an open mind.
I had higher hopes for Joe Burrow, but only one box? Yeh….I can’t pull the trigger there. But, I can look to one of his WRs as a 1off play…
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.
NFL DFS RB is often where Box Checkers shines. These guys are safe enough for a cash game, but you might not use them there if you find 30% or 40% NFL RBs. They do, however, make sneaky high-quality pivot plays in tourneys or even multipliers and leagues. My “Ladder System” absolutely feasts off plays like these.
The first thing to mention is how short the list is. Sure, you might be looking for other names, but none of those have a track record of even 12 touches per week at this point and are going to be risky unless you know they are being inserted in a workhorse type role. At that point, you need to ask yourself if he even has the ability, and if he did….why is that not at least a committee? And, those simple questions will show you there is risk even in those names the industry might be touting as cheaper value plays.
If you trust Zeke, fine. I don’t. I’m liable to just roll Taylor and Najee and call it a day.
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.
WR is typically our crapshoot position. When we don’t get a lot of green and/or blue plays, I will just spend down most times. If the position is going to be volatile, why spend money?
Our receivers are particularly gross this week. If you thought some of our other weeks were just throwing darts, welcome to Week 15 NFL!!
A huge part of our problem is game totals. Nothing on this now 9-gm slate is carrying a total worth a shit. That automatically takes out a box for everyone. I would encourage you to take WR with a grain of salt this week and try your best. One receiver that sticks out to me most weeks, though, is Tee Higgins. Chase gets the publicity and Higgins just does his thing. He’s not a lot more consistent than any of the others, but he’s cheaper. And, this is the type of week I’m looking to avoid wasting money on inherently volatile players in crappy games in crappy situations.
Another great tool to consult is our coaching NFL Cheatsheets! If you wind up torn on a couple players, sometimes the words in the blurbs by another coach can help you tip the scale. In the case of this week, when Box Checkers isn’t helping a lot, those cheatsheets might become more important to your research.
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.
Seriously….not even a yellow. This is just a wasteland.
Hard not to like Kittle the way he’s balling out. But, you are going to need the salary relief to take him. I think it’s worth it, honestly, as long as it doesn’t cost you one of the few RBs on the slate. That’s about all the digging I’m doing to TE because I just don’t think much analysis matters in such a train wreck of a position, especially this week.
Remember, these boxes are set up by Shark Autopsy’s analysis of what players typically land in the Milli-Maker lineups, too. We have our safety plays, but we are also shooting for upside.
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 NFL 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.)
Box Checkers Setup NFL Week 14…but applicable for any week.
Don’t waste time duplicating the efforts of nerds! Focus on what matters….setting up optimizers. Here are two very fast ways that work.
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Plenty of box checkers in Week 8’s gpp winner. But, what’s up with all the goofy correlation? I broke the details down for our members in our #beginners-coaching Discord Channel. If you feel you struggle with stacking, correlation, leverage, and some of the finer points of lineup construction, you are going to want to use that discount above….and get involved.
We turn #Smallaballas into DFS pros every day. And, we can teach you to win 50,000 person gpps just like our coaches do. (It’s not as hard as you think…you just have to interact with us!)
Oh, and in case you want to see how these “Ladder Lineups” work out…..here’s an easy example. This is what we call a “sweep” in that it cashed everything. Ladders build bankrolls!!
