Fantasy Football Today - BONUS: Week 17 DFS Podcast! (Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: December 27, 2019

Week 17 DFS is weird and awesome. Mike and Heath are building around Carson Wentz, Alvin Kamara and Julio Jones this week. Thankfully, there's plenty of value to put around them.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Now, here's some combination of Adam, Dave, Jamie, and Heath. It's week 17. Nobody's playing. Well, I'm playing. I'm Heath Cummings. Mike McClure's playing. We're playing some DFS, aren't we, Mike? I'm definitely playing. I cannot get enough of the late season DFS action.

It's going to be a lot of fun. Playing a lot of guys that I never thought I would ever put in a DFS lineup for actual American dollars. But we're going to do it this week, and it's going to be a lot of fun. We have an actual section called the replacements, so you'll get to talk about all of those guys in that section. Let's start with the big news, and there are a few things that have come out for sure. So the Ravens are resting their starters.

We are not expecting Lamar Jackson to play. Mark Ingram's not going to play. We don't think Mark Andrews or Marquise Brown is going to play. Mark Ingram's not going to play. We don't think Mark Andrews or Marquise Brown is going to play. You should probably just avoid any Raven that you've ever considered before this week. Vikings and Rams could be in a very similar situation. We've already heard that Dalvin Cook's likely not going to play. I cannot imagine Alexander Madison's going to play. Kirk Cousins is most likely not going to play. I don't know about the wide receivers, but I likely not going to play i don't know about the wide receivers but i'm not going to play them even if they do play rams going to rest players who are dealing with injuries jaylen ramsey's the only name that we've received but i'm kind of thinking golf and girly could be

in doubt yeah i i wouldn't i'm you're not playing golf or girly in dfs this week for sure there's there's just no way you're getting there. And then the, the one that is the most frustrating so far, the Houston Texans, because they could legitimately be slate breakers. Um, Bill O'Brien has over and over told us that they are going to play this game to win.

They will know before their game starts if their game means anything. Because if the Chiefs win, then they're the four seed, and nothing they do matters. I can't take Bill O'Brien at his word. Yeah, it seems a little fishy there. It's unfortunate because if they do play at full strength, like DeAndre Hopkins is someone you can consider playing just because there's so much value out there. You could pay up for him and treat him like Michael Thomas and some of the other studs on the slate.

So I'm going to take a wait and see approach and see if we, you know, we might get some more definitive news on that. Maybe Sunday morning, for example. Right. And I think it's going to be interesting because there are so many 430 games with uncertainty right now. We may not know if Josh Jacobs is playing. We may not know if Leonard Fournette is playing. We do know. We do know. Right before we started recording,

we got confirmation that Jacobs will not play this week. Well done, Mike. Excellent. And Kirk Cousins has been ruled out already as well. I knew Kirk Cousins had. I had not yet seen Josh Jacobs. I came straight from FFT on CBS Sports HQ and on the walk across

that changed. So good. So DeAndre Washington absolutely 100% in play. Let's get to the replacements. DeAndre Washington is a replacement, but who are the replacements that you're playing this week? The guys that you never thought you'd be considering in DFS? One, I think it's going to be Myles Boykin for me. I think I'm going to end up playing some Myles Boykin on DraftKings. He's bare minimum 3K. So with that, that means I'm expecting Marquise Brown to not play in this game. As we already talked about, Lamar's not playing. Robert Griffin's

going to be the quarterback. So I'll definitely have a little bit there of Myles Boykin. I also have Javon Wims. I don't know if we can call that a replacement or not. Super cheap on DraftKings as well. Right now, that's where i'm at with those two plus washington those are the three that i've got the most interest in my my favorite on draft kings and probably on fan duel too is hayden hurst just because i think he's more likely to play that mark andrews role like i don't even know how much nick boyle is going to play but even if it's her stand boyle i would expect her to be the downfield tight end. And I think that Robert Griffin, the third is going to have a little bit of success in this game.

I agree with you. And I like that. We're kind of on the same page there and that we both want to target a pass catcher in that Raven situation. So yeah, I'm with you there. I think Robert Griffin, the third is a viable tournament quarterback on draft games this week.

One other thing I missed in the news, Terry McLaurin has been ruled out. So Stephen Sims, I believe, has scored three touchdowns in his past two games. I said earlier today that I would actually prefer to play Kelvin Harmon, I think, because people are going to play Sims and he doesn't have any floor at all. And Harmon has the better pedigree, the lower price, and will have no ownership. Yeah, if I was going to attack that situation, I would take Harmon. He's 3,900.

Sims is 4,700. It's still going to be difficult for me to get there over Boykin at bare minimum 3K. But yeah, if I wanted to play one of the Washington guys on the other side of Dallas, it's obviously a must-win game there. Yeah, it would be Harmon for me. Sims is 6K on FanDuel. Hard pass. Hard pass.

Let's talk about Vegas a little bit. The top implied totals. And these numbers have swung wildly since the start of the week. They've probably swung wildly in the last hour since I pulled these numbers up, but this is what I have. The Patriots by far the biggest number on the slate, 30.5 for their implied total. Then the Saints at 29.75. The Rams at 28. I would expect that number to fall quickly. If you could bet the under on the Rams at 28, I would take that in a heartbeat. The Packers and Cowboys both at 27.75 and the Chiefs at 26.75. I think we should talk about the Patriots because it's not too often that a team

has the highest number on the slate and I'm not really considering that many of their players for DFS purposes. And that's how I feel about the Patriots right now. I'm probably going to play a Brady lineup or two, but other than that, I'm really lukewarm on them. Definitely. They're just so good at distributing the scoring and, for our purposes, the fantasy points and kind of whatever the other team is going to allow them to do.

So, yeah, it's never something you feel super comfortable with when you're locking in Patriots to your lineups. So I'm in the same boat with you there. Tom Brady rates as a top three value quarterback for me on DraftKings this week. At this point, we'll see what happens when we rerun with some of the quarterbacks likely sitting. So I'll probably have one Tom Brady lineup out of my 10, but I certainly won't be loading up on them and be playing them even in cash games, even though they have the highest team total on the slate. And there are four or five teams with a number below 17. I think you can probably stay away from these offenses except for one player, is what I would say.

The four offenses are the Panthers, Washington, the Lions, and the Dolphins. You can't fade Christian McCaffrey, although last week, week 17, he crushed anyone who played him by only playing one series. He's 216 yards away from breaking David Johnson's total yards record. I think he's 67 receiving yards away from a 1,000-1,000 season. And the Panthers have said, we're not holding back on Christian McCaffrey. He's priced way too high, but I'll probably play a couple of lineups with him just in case it's a record-breaking performance. Yeah, I mean, look, I honestly, I think it's probably going to end up as a record-breaking performance. I think that,

you know, they verbally said they're committed to letting him try to get this. That literally could mean 30 plus touches in this game. You know, a lot of them literally might be three yard passes. We're going to see a lot of that. That's good news if you're playing on DraftKings. I do expect them to have double digit receptions in this game. So I will be playing some Christian McCaffrey. Fortunately, we have value out there. Like I've already mentioned Boykin. There's just a lot of value out there. So it's very, it's not as prohibitive as it normally would be at that salary. So yeah, play Christian McCaffrey for sure. I'm not really interested in any of the other guys though, from Washington, Detroit, or Miami. Let's just get right to the positions. Who is your top cash game play on draft kings at the quarterback position

um gonna be a lot like you heard from me last week i'm playing carson wentz again a lot uh i'm riding this eagles team i think they're gonna come out there and have to play well again obviously um so i'm gonna be going there i have a little bit of dac i have a little bit of mahomes um really gonna depend on value as the week shakes out, but if I sort my model here by value, I'm going to get Wentz, Brady, Prescott, and then Deshaun Watson, Patrick Mahomes are right there together. That's, again, assuming Deshaun Watson is actually going to try to win this game. Yeah, I think on DraftKings, it's pretty easy because Carson Wentz at $6,100, actually cheaper than Daniel Jones, $800 less than Aaron Rodgers, who's given us one week in

the past two months. It's just not much question. On FanDuel, it's a little bit more difficult. I still think Wentz is probably my favorite value if Zach Ertz plays. If Ertz is out, I would lean towards Brady as the top cash game play. He is $100 cheaper than Ertz and I will like Brady more than

Wentz if there's no Ertz. Yeah, I will definitely, on FanDuel, I'll want to have Ertz available. On DraftKings, I'm probably going to play Wentz either way. And handcuff him with maybe Greg Ward or no handcuff. It just kind of depends on the value.

I like that Wentz, Ward, Goddard just full-on stack. Find a Giant or two. The problem with the Giants pass catchers, and we can talk about it more when we get to wide receiver, but I'm guessing this is your favorite game to stack, the Eagles and the Giants. It is your favorite game to stack the eagles and the giants it's my favorite game to stack for sure um you don't know on a weekly basis which of the three giants wide receivers is going to be the right answer yeah um i think i like what i've seen from

sterling shepherd you know recently so you know initially if i were going to stack that up it would definitely be sterling shepherd would be priority number one, for sure. Slayton is the cheapest of the three, and I do think has the most one-play upside. I will have a little bit of Darius Slayton in my Carson Wentz lineups. I'll have a little bit of Golden Tate, and I'll have a little bit of Sterling Shepard. Who's your favorite stack besides the Eagles? Besides the Eagles. After that, I'll probably play some Mahomes-Travis Kelsey. I think it's

going to be a really good spot to take advantage of that duo again, just because I think we all kind of want to play Ertz. I think there's going to be another tight end we're going to talk about. It's going to be pretty popular as well. If Ertz happens to sit, Goddard's going to be significantly higher ownership there. So I don't think a lot of people are going to end up on Travis Kelsey this week. I've got Mahomes in that top five value overall. So once again, for me, it's going to be Mahomes, Travis Kelsey, going to be my favorite stack outside of the Eagles. Yeah, I think my favorite will likely be Matt Ryan and Julio Jones. There is enough value available on this slate to just play those two.

And over the last two weeks, Ryan knows they don't have anything to play for us. Let's just see how much we can get Julio. I mean, he's just 35 targets in his last two games. Julio is my number one wide receiver on the slate, and he's still significantly cheaper than Michael Thomas on FanDuel. $8,500 for Julio, $9,200 for Michael Thomas. So, yeah, I'll play that Ryan-Julio stack. Running back, who is your top cash game play?

I'm going to have a lot of Alvin Kamara, but now that Washington looks like he's going to be the play, I think that I'm going to end up with a ton of Washington for the Raiders as well at this point. I'm so glad that you said you're going to have a ton of Alvin Kamara because he, to me, looks like one of the top plays on the slate, regardless of which site you're playing on. The touchdown thing is fluky. It's not going to go back to where it was before because the first two years of his career, Alvin Kamara put up numbers that we pretty much knew he couldn't duplicate. The first year, it was his rushing efficiency and his yards per catch, and no one does that.

And that came back to earth. Last year, the touchdowns were ridiculous and out of control. He had like 20 or something. That swung the complete opposite way this season. But he's still getting significant work in both the run game and the pass game and he's facing one of the worst defenses in the nfl this carolina team can't tackle at all huge opportunity for big plays for him and he's just 7900 on fanduel i think 7800 on draft kings where it's full point ppr he point PPR, most of my lineups, I suspect,

will just have Alvin Kamara and DeAndre Washington. Definitely. So I just ran it again as we were talking here. When I run 20 lineups on DraftKings, I have 100% exposure to Kamara and 100% Julio Jones. So those two guys are definitely going to be staples. So while we're talking about running backs, I find it really hard to not play Alvin Kamara this week.

Now, I guess the Kamara-Saints stack works out pretty well if you want to correlate your defense with your running back because Will Greer is going to turn the ball over. It's not my favorite, though. I think my favorite is going to be Damian Williams and the Chiefs defense. With Spencer Ware put on IR, I expect a few more touches for Williams. I wouldn't be surprised if they gave LaShawn McCoy one more week off before the playoffs. They've been very, very careful with him.

So I think the Damian Williams-Chiefs stack I like quite a bit. Yeah, I'm with you there on that. I like the Chiefs stack a lot. Another running back defense stack that I will probably end up having, especially on FanDuel, Leonard Fournette and the Jaguars, both, in my opinion, still a little too cheap. Definitely the Jaguars D at 3,400 is worth a flyer in a tournament if you want to correlate that with Leonard Fournette.

Yeah, I like it a lot, and I plan on playing a bunch of Fournette if he could just get to practice. He did not practice on Thursday. I've not seen yet if he practiced on Wednesday or on Friday. If he doesn't practice at all this week, it's going to be hard to trust him on Sunday, especially in a 4.30 game. Again, I think it's one of those situations where you might just want to plan on at 3 p.m. being ready to make a bunch of swaps. Yes. If you're playing some of those players like that, and especially, like I said, if he doesn't practice, definitely have a backup plan where you're going to be pivoting to some other players there.

So definitely be prepared for that. Well, and the really interesting part of that is we talked about the replacements, and DeAndre Washington's a great value even at 6,300, but he's going to share with Jalen Richard. If Leonard Fournette for some reason can't play, Rykel Armstead is getting 25 touches

and he's 4,500 on FanDuel. That's going to change things for sure. So again, another opportunity where those, hopefully we get a lot of information Sunday morning. We're going to get Adam for sure so again another opportunity where those hopefully we get a lot of information sunday morning we need adam schefter and ian rapaport to do their best work but uh that that armstead jacksonville stack could be ridiculous so i think we've probably made it clear that our top cash game play at wide receiver is julio jones

yeah um i mean i'm still going to play a lot of michael thomas as well just because i have that our top cash game play at wide receiver is Julio Jones? Yeah. I mean, I'm still going to play a lot of Michael Thomas as well, just because I have the ability to do so with all this value popping up. But yeah, I would say it feels fine giving it to Julio. I still have Michael Thomas projected slightly higher, but Julio is the guy we'll certainly have 100% exposure to. And we talk about all that value is greg ward your favorite cheap wide receiver on draft kings i know he's cheaper on draft kings it is on fan duel he's 5600 on

fan duel which isn't isn't quite as cheap as i'd like to see yeah it's not as cheap as i want it to be um as far as favorite value for me right now it's javon whims and it's going to be. As far as favorite value, for me right now, it's Javon Wims and it's going to be Myles Boykin. My model's just very high on both of those guys. After that, I could maybe stack, if I'm playing a Tom Brady lineup, some of my favorite value plays

might be like Mohamed Sanu. I might take a flyer on that. Yeah, it's probably probably outside of those three, then it would be Greg Ward. Yeah, and I do think it'll be interesting to see which of the Ravens' wide receivers are going to play. Seth Roberts, Willie Sneed. I would presume Sneed's not going to.

I wouldn't be surprised if we see Roberts and Boykin, though. And so either one of them could be in play. I was just looking on FanDuel. Boykin is 4,600, very close to the minimum. I'm going to go ahead and plug him in, see if that gives me enough room to play who I want to play in the rest of my lineup. Is Travis Kelsey your top cash gameplay? Or tight end?

Actually, no. As of right now, I'm probably going to end up with OJ Howard, at least on FanDuel. I like him there. Also going to depend on the status of Zach Ertz. I will likely force the handcuff of Wentz and Ertz as long as Ertz is good to go. If not, it'll probably be Goddard.

But Kelsey's in that mix. I don't think a lot of people are going to play Travis Kelsey this week, so that's why he was kind of one of my favorite stacks, but not necessarily the lock in cash games. So yeah, it's going to be a combination of Ertz, Howard, and Kelsey, just depending on who's active and ultimately which quarterback i end up with there and i do like hearst a lot at 4700 howard's 55 on fan duel that's absolutely without a doubt underpriced um he's been super disappointing but i'm just going to go right back to him who is your face who's your favorite punt at the tight end position? Probably going to be Goddard, I guess.

Or if I wanted to roll with Hurst, just kind of going to depend on how much news we get out of Baltimore and when we get it as far as who's playing, who's not. But I do want Baltimore pass catching. So if I'm looking for value, probably going to be hers. That's going to be a really interesting game with the Ravens. Cause I kind of think they're still going to beat Pittsburgh, but the thing that makes it really interesting is on FanDuel, Pittsburgh's defense is priced as if they are facing the regular Baltimore Ravens offense.

They're 3,500 on FanDuel. And I still think that Robert Griffin will have some success, but I don't know how you pass up one of the best defenses in the league so far this year against an offense full of backups. That's yeah. It's a very, really, really good point there.

You have to be, that's something I'll have to consider in my, in some of my stuff. I might in tournaments end up playing lineups with the defense and one pass catcher against my defense this week. Which is a weird feeling but that's not that, like it's not like you're playing Robert Griffin and

the defense or Mark Ingram and the defense. You can see very easily a way in which the Pittsburgh defense has success getting after RG3, getting a couple turnovers. And then miles Boykin has a huge fourth quarter and it works out. Oh yeah,

definitely. Yeah. It's something I will likely consider. And when I'm optimizing off to make sure to change some of the settings to make sure I can allow that to happen. All right, let's get weird. And listen,

there's nothing more weird than Week 17. We've been kind of weird with some of the names we've already said. But let's get really weird. I'll get started. Drew Locke is over $7,000. That seems like it's too expensive. I'm going to play him. $7,100 at home against the Raiders.

The most Raiders thing ever and ben gretch said it this morning on the podcast and i i'm convinced now it's going to happen the most raiders thing ever would be for the steelers to lose the titans to lose the colts to win and the raiders to lose and everybody else does what they need to get the raiders into the playoffs and the broncos just smack them around anyway yeah Yeah, I can see that. Are you sure you don't want to mention Gardner Minshew? I'm going to play Gardner Minshew. Everyone just knows that at this point.

Okay. You're going to play Gardner Minshew? I'm not going to play Gardner Minshew. I will say he does sneak his way in. He's like the number six overall value at quarterback, though. He is climbing his way up as he remains 5300 on draft ones nice how are you getting weird is there anybody like is that the weirdest

you would get a quarterback is minju oh no i'm getting weird i'm getting real weird here uh david blau wow yeah that's uh that's something that might happen. I failed to mention Amir Abdullah earlier. I like Amir Abdullah. So that's how you're getting weird at running back. That's perfect. Yes, I'm going to lead off the let's get weird at running back. We're going to get weird at quarterback running back with that little stack or playing each one of those guys individually.

But we're talking Detroit Lions here, David Blau, Amir Abdullah. I like both of them. I think there are scenarios in which both of them can score 15 to 20 fantasy points. Former Detroit lion, Amir Abdullah currently ruining Mike Boone. Currently ruining Mike Boone.

And that's how I'm getting weird. There is nothing that would be more 2019 than for Mike Boone a week after he crushed teams in the fantasy championship to play against a bears team with all of his backup offensive linemen and run for 120 yards and two touchdowns. He's priced at 6,200 on fan duel. No one should play him at that price. He's a hundred dollars less than deandre washington and that mike sounds exactly like the way you want to get weird that yes i'm going to get weird like

that in one lineup as well that's almost definitely going to happen twitter will be on tilt it's going to be amazing because i'm going to have a piece of it yes absolutely can you get any weirder than we already have at wide receiver not really boykins plenty weird i mean look if you want to get continue with the theme play danny amandola um pair them with plow i think that that's that's going to be a pretty weird lineup um yeah that's about as weird as i'm getting on top of the the value wide receivers i've already given you there i like that a lot um i i'll just stick with kelvin harman because i do think sims is going to turn into a semi-popular punt play on draft kings at least on fan duel raise 6 000 he probably won't but har Harmon is 5,200 on FanDuel. I'm definitely going to have some of him.

We've already talked about it at tight end. It's Hayden Hurst. For me, you're probably, I would say OJ Howard's about as weird as you're getting, and some people with his production recently would call that weird. I've got a lineup here that I've put together during the show. Should I just give it out? I think you should. Who's the quarterback? You'll never guess. Carson Wentz. Carson Wentz. Okay. I love it. The running backs are Alvin Kamara and DeAndre Washington. I think you like that.

The wide receivers are Julio Jones, Michael Thomas, and Miles Boykin. Seems decent. The tight end is O.J. Howard. Yes. The flex is Damian Williams. Okay. The defense is Damian Williams. Okay. And the defense, you can, listen, I'll give you the choice.

Choose your own adventure because there is enough money here to play the Chiefs defense with Damian Williams and get that correlation there if you want to. I think I'm probably going to just leave 400 on the table and play the Pittsburgh Steelers at 3,500 against Robert Griffin III. Okay, and you got Boykin in there. I like that. If you wanted to play that in a tournament, I would go ahead and play Pittsburgh. If that was a cash game, I would probably take the correlation with the Chiefs defense.

Yeah, I think that makes it. And the nice thing is people think when I'm playing a tournament lineup, I've got to be contrarian everywhere. No, Julio Jones, Michael Thomas, Carson Wentz, they're going to be very high-owned, and that's perfectly fine because no one is going to have Miles Boykin, OJ Howard, Pittsburgh Steelers combo.

No, nobody. So those three hits, the rest of the chalk hits, we make all the money, Mike, and it's a great way to end the 2019 season. All of the money. We're going to win all of the money here in this week. It's going to be great. And I think I'm done.

I think you're done. I think it's time to go make some FanDuel and DraftKings lineups and enjoy the weekend. We will not be back next week for the playoffs DFS, or at least I will not because I'm out for the next two weeks. Maybe there will be something that pops up if you tell Adam you really want to hear more from Mike McClure during DFS playoffs. But thanks for listening and we'll talk to you later.