Best Daily Fantasy Football Plays for Cash Games – Week 10
By Ha Kung Wong Daily Fantasy Football
Twitter: @FBGarbageTime
And we’re back for Week 10 of the NFL season and MORE DFS CASH! Hope you followed my advice last week, since most of my lineups CASHED! If not, no worries, we got you covered for this week too.
We all know that DFS is a great way to prove you have serious football IQ and earn you bragging rights among your friends (and if you’re like me, among your family as well!). And heck, if you win cash, that’s just gravy, right? (No need to answer that question, it was totally rhetorical. I know you all like cash. And gravy.)
So before we get to winning you bragging rights (and DFS cash), remember, the point of this article is not just to give you one lineup for each site, it’s to give you examples of one or two POSSIBLE lineups. Getting exposure to a few different lineups is always a good idea, so don’t forget to mix and match additional lineups from my suggestions below. Trust me, it’s a lot more fun that way AND you’ll improve your chances of cashing!
Cash Games, for those who don’t know, are essentially the lowest risk games. They include “50/50” games, in which half the entrants win about 1.8x the entry fee, and “Double Ups”, in which slightly less than half the entrants win 2x the entry fee.
Since there’s so many different sites, and I can’t cover them all, I’ve decided to cover just the most popular sites, including Fan Duel, Draft Kings and Yahoo! Daily Fantasy.
First of all, as a general rule for 50/50 Cash Games, there’s a basic target of points per salary cap spent that you’d like to look for:
- For Fan Duel try to target at least 2 fantasy points per $1000 spent.
- For Draft Kings, try to target at least 2.5 fantasy points per $1000 spent.
- For Yahoo! Daily Fantasy, try to target at least 0.6-0.7 fantasy points per $1 spent.
Remember, this article is not focused on GPP (Tournament) Games, JUST Cash Games. Feel free to use a few of these suggested players as a base when constructing a GPP lineup, but you’ll have to take some chances on a few low cost, upside players as well.
So, without further to do, here are my suggestions for the Best Daily Fantasy Football Plays for Cash Games for Week 10 contests, along with they’re prices on Fan Duel (“FD”), Draft Kings (“DK”) and Yahoo! Daily Fantasy (“Y!”).
FanDuel
To provide you with some diversity, I have two sample lineups this week.
At QB this week, I like Matt Stafford and Ben Roethlisberger.
Stafford has a terrific matchup at home against the 28th ranked Cleveland Browns pass defense per DVOA. He’s sporting the 5th most passing yards per game (276.5) and has 14 TDs to just 4 INTs this season. The Lions can’t run the ball and the Browns actually have the best run defense in the league per DVOA, meaning the Lions will have to lean heavily on their pass offense to win the game. Stafford is coming off a big 361 yard and 2 TD game against the Packers, and there’s no reason to believe he can repeat that effort this week.
Matthew Stafford carved up the Packers D against the blitz pic.twitter.com/IUDFNd8aGE
— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) November 7, 2017
Big Ben has an equally good matchup against the 25th ranked Indianapolis Colts pass defense per DVOA. He’s had a rough go of it this season, and is inexplicably worse on the road, but the Steelers are coming off a bye with all three of their top WRs back and Big Ben is coming off back-to-back decent games before the bye. The only danger is if the Steelers get up big and go into clock killing mode.
At RB, I like LeSean McCoy, Orleans Darkwa and Alfred Morris.
McCoy is coming off one of his worst games of his career, but has a shot to bounce back against the 28th ranked New Orleans Saints run defense. And he did have big games in the two weeks prior to Week 9, totaling 242 rush yards, 11 receptions for 53 receiving yards and 3 TDs.
Darkwa is no great shakes, but the Giants are short on offense and the San Francisco 49ers don’t have a great defense. In fact, they’re ranked 23rd against the run and 31st against RB receptions. Darkwa is averaging over 15 carries and 2 receptions per game over the last 3, but that should be enough for him to meet value.
Morris is simply a value play, seeing as how Ezekiel Elliott is ONCE AGAIN suspended. This time it looks for real, and Morris has the first shot at taking the backfield, so why not save some money and roll the dice?
As for WRs, I like Antonio Brown, Golden Tate, Adam Thielen, Robby Anderson and Sterling Shepard.
I like Brown because of all the reasons I like Big Ben and because, well, he’s Antonio Brown. Brown has the most targets (11.8), receptions (7.1) and receiving yards (104.4) per game of any WR in the NFL this season.
Do you think Antonio Brown will lose his number 1 spot this season? pic.twitter.com/LWYEVFbB5A
— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) October 25, 2017
Tate is in a similar situation where I like him for all the reasons I like Stafford this week. Tate doesn’t have the gaudy stats that Brown has, but he’s coming off back-to-back-to-back solid games averaging 7 receptions and almost 100 yards per contest over that string.
Thielen and Shepard are target monsters, with Thielen averaging 9.4 targets per game and Shepard getting 9 targets in Week 9 now that he’s the only remaining healthy starting WR on his team. And Anderson has turned into Josh McCown’s favorite deep threat and de facto WR1 in New York. Anderson has at least 5 targets and a TD in each of his last three games.
At TE, I went with Rob Gronkowski and Kyle Rudolph. Denver is ranked 25th defending against TEs per DVOA and Gronk is Gronk. He has the most targets (8), most receiving yards (72.7) and second most TDs (0.7) per game of all TEs this season, plus Chris Hogan is unlikely to play, leaving even more targets for Gronk. As for Rudolph, he squares off against Washington’s 29th ranked defense against TEs per DVOA, is coming off 4 straight games with at least 7 targets and 5 receptions and is a heck of a lot cheaper. Fire both up with confidence.
On defense, I’m all in with saving money on the New York Jets against the suddenly second-string Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I don’t think the Jets defense is really that good, but with turnover prone Ryan Fitzpatrick taking over for an injured Jameis Winston, and top target Mike Evans suspended for taking out Marshon Lattimore in Week 9, there’s really not a lot of offense left in Tampa. And if the Jets know anything, they know how many INTs Fitzpatrick can throw. So why not pay the minimum and take advantage?
Draft Kings
On Draft Kings, I also liked Jordan Howard, Joe Mixon and Evan Engram.
We already know that Howard is essentially the only offensive weapon in Chicago, and John Fox has gone incredibly run heavy in recent weeks. In fact, Howard has had the 3rd most carries (162) in the NFL. The Packers are ranked 11th against the run, but are ranked 25th against RB receptions, and Howard did also tally 5 targets in his last outing. In addition, the Packers have allowed the 3rd most TDs to RBs this season. Perhaps most importantly, the Packers are offensively challenged with Brett Hundley under center, so I’d expect this to be a low scoring grind it out affair, perfect for lots of Howard.
Mixon is just always underpriced, and is particularly cheap on Draft Kings. Tennessee is 12th against the run, but 26th against RB receptions, and Mixon has had at least 3 receptions in all but two games this year. Plus, Jeremy Hill has been ruled out this week and has now been placed on IR.
85% of Joe Mixon's rushing yards have come after contact in 2017.
The highest % among HBs this year. pic.twitter.com/5hzx5Hnuef
— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) October 12, 2017
And Engram has been essentially the only bright spot in a “stick a fork in it” year for the Giants. He has the 4th most targets of any TE in the league (63) and has led the Giants in receptions and yards several weeks in a row, ever since OBJ and Brandon Marshall were injured. His price continues to rise, but I still like him this week.
Yahoo! DFS
With Yahoo, I also like Jared Goff, Le’Veon Bell, Brandin Cooks and Robert Woods.
Goff has been solid in recent weeks, has shown a great connection with Woods, and faces a sliding Texans defense. Cooks is criminally underpriced as a WR1 on a Patriots team that likely won’t have Chris Hogan. And Bell is Bell. He started the season slow, but has really picked it up of late. If you can afford him, you always play him, particularly coming off a bye against a struggling Colts defense.
Comparing Jared Goff and Carson Wentz' terrific starts to 2017https://t.co/21mAc6LsIH pic.twitter.com/gyIbFnkYyf
— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) November 8, 2017
Alternative Options
Feel free to use any of the players that I’ve selected on one site in any other site if you have cap space.
In addition to the above, here are few other suggestions for players to use:
- QB Dak Prescott
- QB Tom Brady
- QB Josh McCown
- RB Todd Gurley
- RB Leonard Fournette
- RB Christian McCaffrey
- RB Alvin Kamara
- RB Bilal Powell
- With Matt Forte ruled out for Sunday, Powell will step in as the lead back against the exploitable 22nd ranked Buccaneers run defense and is an excellent value move on all sites.
- WR Marvin Jones
- WR Jarvis Landry
- WR Devante Parker
- WR Devin Funchess
- WR JuJu Smith-Schuster
- TE Vernon Davis
- With Jordan Reed ruled out for Sunday, I like Davis’ workload for the price, though he does have a challenging matchup with the Vikings.
- DEF Los Angeles Rams vs. Houston Texans
- DEF Chicago Bears vs. Green Bay Packers