DFS Building Blocks – Week 12

Going full studs and duds this week. Sort of.

On a shortened slate with three games already over on Thanksgiving, we don’t have as many “obvious” spots this week. We have Tampa Bay projected for 27 points and we have the Rams and Packers with lower totals but a tight spread. We don’t have any monster spreads like we’ve been seeing. Even the Jets and Texans, as terrible as that game may be, has a close spread. This means we have a lot of spots that could turn into back-and-forth games, giving us opportunities for fantasy points in unexpected places. Could we use a Texans RB this week?? Perhaps.

SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE:

The Steelers placed Eric Ebron on IR yesterday afternoon, making Freiermuth a good option in our more balanced studs and duds lineup with Sanders and Gaskin at RB. That drops us out of our Lawrence + Pitts + Shenault stack and we can run a Big Ben + Freirmuth + Higgins stack instead. It strangely feels less comfortable than playing Lawrence but will come with similar ownership leverage.

You can also play Freirmuth alone and go to any of the other stacks we talked about.

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Starting our roster with Chris Godwin this week. Had Mike Evans ended up being out, we would’ve loaded up our Brady + 2 healthy WRs stack but with Evans, Godwin, and Gronk in the mix we’ll pick one and hope we get it right. We could just as easily pick Evans and Gronk for their redzone roles, but let’s start with Godwin.

Next, let’s check out RB. Taylor in a tough matchup, not that matters anymore. But he needs almost 30 to payoff. McCaffrey needs just as good a performance, but is in a relatively tough matchup as well. Najee may get a lot of volume again, but is very pricey still. Ekeler seems priced too high for the matchup. Dalvin Cook is the first of interest, but it’s also priced too high to really feel comfortable. We can start getting further down the salary range, we see Eli Mitchell who is a solid option if he plays. Michael Carter is out, more on that when we talk about the duds. Miles Sanders is back and looks attractively priced, with the Eagles appearing to use the ground game more now. Miles Gaskin is priced fairly and people may be scared away from the red defensive ranking for Carolina, without realizing Carolina’s pass D is their strength.  

So, if going more balanced, I really like the combination of Gaskin and Sanders. Let’s lock in Gaskin for a minute and also play the correlation with Dolphins D. After Cam’s solid performance, Dolphins D should come with tiny ownership. There’s a reason multiple teams (including his current one) have now moved on from Cam – maybe we get back Cam and some turnovers. And without a ton of options at the top of the RB list, maybe people go to McCaffrey this week and we can leverage off of that play. Doesn’t feel comfortable playing the Dolphins D, but it shouldn’t feel comfortable when trying to build a unique lineup.

Let’s look at TE.

Since we’re not going to Gronk, let’s try to find one with a lot of upside. Kyle Pitts is pricey but let’s go back to him and see what our lineup looks like. If we don’t go there, Fant is an option. Engram okay. Freiermuth has shown upside but Ebron is back. Those are the only other options I have any interest in this week. Potentially Jared Cook if going to a game stack there.

So we have Godwin, Gaskin, Dolphins D, and Pitts.

Normally I like to pick a game and start with the QB + WR stack, but since only going to Godwin I’m not prioritizing Brady. And since we expect so many close games we can probably find a QB that we feel comfortable with. We’ll see what our WRs look like, then pick a correlated QB from that list.

Since we’re thinking about a studs and duds lineup, let’s go right to the top and plug in both Kupp and Adams from the GB/LAR game. That leaves us thin on salary, but let’s see what we can build.

We’d like to correlate with some other pass catcher. We already have Kupp + Adams correlation. We could go to Pittman to correlate with Godwin, but that gets a little too expensive. So let’s go down Marvin Jones or Laviska Shenault to correlate with Pitts. Shenault is a little cheaper so let’s go there.

That leaves us outside the range of the QBs for most of our pass catchers, so let’s plug Lawrence in. He’s coming off a tough stretch, but a matchup against Atlanta could be just what he needs. And he should be largely overlooked by the public.

Now we’re to the dud.

We have very little money to fill out our other RB spot, but we do have some options. Rex Burkhead, D’Onta Foreman, Tevin Coleman, David Johnson. And if we’re mentioning those players, who are still in a timeshare, we should also mention Javonte Williams. If we’re taking a flier on a dud RB in a timeshare, it needs to be in a really good situation. That puts us on Burkhead, Coleman, or Johnson. Can fit any of the three, so take your pick. I’m partial to David Johnson because, in theory, he should get passing game work also. It’s definitely not comfortable, but if he can come through at anywhere close to 3x, we’ve got a great shot at a top score with jamming in Kupp, Adams, and Godwin.

That’s where I’m going, but I like to live dangerously.

If you don’t like to live dangerously, let’s see what we can adjust.

Let’s drop Johnson and put Sanders in. We don’t really need to change much else. We can drop from Pitts down to any of the TEs we mentioned above and we can feel much better about our RB situation.

Let’s move down to Engram to add the correlation with our Sanders play. We can stop there, which I’m likely to do. Or we can move up at QB also. We can go to Tyrod Taylor who has been vulturing rushing TDs so is priced high. We lose our correlation with Lawrence and Shenault, but we can feel comfortable playing Taylor alone since he has the rushing upside. Wentz is in play now and should be passing against the Bucs. Bridgewater may be get a lot of volume playing catchup. Matt Ryan in play, but we dropped Pitts. I’d feel better about Ryan with a correlated pass catcher. Daniel Jones is in play to correlate with Engram and also has some rushing upside. You could go all the way down to Big Ben. Or Zach Wilson, but then we’re right back into the dud territory we were adjusting for.

When going this route I’m 50/50 on the Taylor lineup or the Jones lineup. I like the game stack with Jones + Sanders + Engram. We backed into our game stack this week, but it’s a close enough spread that it could turn into a shootout.

We didn’t talk about DEF much, but if you want to go away from the Dolphins, take your pick. There is not standout defense this week. You could consider the top options the Patriots and Texans, but they’re priced that way. Hard to argue against the Patriots with AJ Brown now on IR. But I’d rather take the salary savings and move down to Miami.

We also didn’t go deep into WRs this week. We can keep the same lineup structure and replace Kupp/Adams with Jefferson/Samuel or Chase/Johnson (giving us enough salary to move back up to Pitts and move up at QB as well). I’m even tempted by a Taylor + Cooks + Moore lineup this week. I’ll play around with these in my secondary lineups. If you like one of them better and can get more balance overall, go for it. You may also be able to move up to New England defense with one of these other stacks as your core.

You can go also go studs and duds with a QB + RB + WR lineup, with something like Cousins + Cook + Jefferson. Big Ben + Najee + Johnson + Chase. Burrow + Mixon + Chase + Johnson.

Lot of different ways we can go this week. You know how I’m approaching things, find a path above that you like and see you at the top of the leaderboard!