Looking back at Week 9
Week 9 felt relatively straightforward for cash games, and we easily profited there. GPPs were a bit wild - there were quite a bit of places you could've went with stacks and had a chance to win some good money. I had a lineup that competed, but a couple of unlucky breaks meant that none of my three lineups cashed. Overall a week of profit, but there was potential for that to be much better than it was.
My GPP lineups
My three stacks this week were:
A Cardinals 2-1 stack (Kyler Murray + DeAndre Hopkins with a minimum price Jakeem Grant runback), which was my competitive lineup. I'll break this one down in a bit.
A Chargers 3-1 stack (Justin Herbert + Mike Williams + Keenan Allen with a Henry Ruggs runback). I think this one is just a bit unlucky, as it's always hard to guess the Raiders piece to include here.
A Ravens 3-1 stack (Lamar Jackson + Hollywood Brown + Mark Andrews with a Zach Pascal runback), which in hindsight feels really dumb.
Here was the full lineup for the Cardinals lineups:
QB: Kyler Murray ($7800, 6.92% owned, 41.92 points)
RB: Dalvin Cook ($8200, 37.58% owned, 42.2 points)
RB: David Johnson ($5600, 18.19% owned, 1.6 points - left the game with a concussion)
RB - Flex: Josh Jacobs ($6300, 8.05% owned, 13.8 points)
WR: DeAndre Hopkins ($8200, 10.01% owned, 6 points)
WR: Danny Amendola ($3700, 3.45% owned, 14.9 points)
WR: Jakeem Grant ($3000, 0.96% owned, 7.5 points)
TE: Hayden Hurst ($4100, 11.95% owned, 13.2 points)
DEF: Houston ($3100, 7.33% owned, 4 points)
I definitely got really unlucky with DJ going down with a concussion early in this game. Plus, if I told you Kyler was going to throw for nearly 300 yards and have three passing touchdowns, would you have guessed Hopkins would be held for 3-30? In hindsight, I probably should have made this a 3-1 stack and included Kirk (replacing Josh Jacobs), but even without that change, we're an injury away from at least having a green screen.
Total points: 145.12
Cashing line: 151.34
My Cash lineup
QB: Josh Allen ($7000 - 21.35% owned -39 points)
RB: Dalvin Cook (51.39% owned)
RB: David Johnson (20.98% owned)
QB: Julio Jones ($7200 - 42.37% owned - 16.4 points)
WR: Darnell Mooney ($3900 - 10.88% owned - 9.3 points)
WR: Danny Amendola (3.92% owned)
WR - Flex: Keenan Allen ($7000 - 13.58% owned - 28.3 points)
TE: Evan Engram ($4300 - 6.2% owned - 15.8 points)
DEF: Arizona ($2900 - 13.84% owned - 2 points)
Roster construction in cash was easy:
Pick a high priced QB, whichever you want
Plug in Dalvin - he was going to be popular enough that having him even to block made sense, but of course he had an elite matchup on top of it
Plug in DJ, he was just too cheap
With Ridley out, Julio was smart
We had cheap WRs, even beyond Mooney and Amendola, so plug in two of them
Because we had cheap WRs and you can play two, and you played DJ, you had room to also have target monster Keenan Allen
Plug in a mid priced TE and whatever defense you had money for left
If you followed that, it was nearly impossible not to cash, although obviously the DJ injury could've been the part that made the difference.
Total points: 169.5 (would've min cashed the GPP I was in, which, whatever)
Cashing line: 136.34
Players from last week's picks that didn't end up in my lineups
Deshaun Watson, Derek Carr, Jake Luton, Nick Foles: I mentioned in my writeup that pretty much any of the top five QBs were the places I was likely to go, and Watson ended up not being one of them - although I did have him in my cash lineup initially. That cash lineup originally had Hayden Hurst in it, but I pivoted up from Hurst to Engram when I ended up with Julio in my lineup, then needed that $100 savings from Watson to Josh Allen to make it work. The others were simply GPP plays that I just didn't get to when only playing three lineups.
Christian McCaffrey (UGH), Antonio Gibson, J.K. Dobbins, Wayne Gallman: As the week came closer, I just ended up on different guys - playing nobody but Cook up top and going relatively cheap for most of the others. On CMC, I'm just a chicken. With Gibson, Dobbins and Gallman, I just ended up thinking DJ and David Montgomery (who ended up in one GPP lineup) were in more defined roles and were probably going to be lower owned too (DJ wasn't, but Montgomery was). I probably overanalyzed here when building my lineups out.
Diontae Johnson: Talked myself out of it! And then he went 6 for 77. Of freaking course he did fine.
Marvin Hall: I really just didn't end up here. He wasn't safe enough for cash (Amendola was the cash play on that team), and in GPPs, the one place I went down that low was part of a stack. I had no need otherwise based on where my other pieces landed.
Darren Waller, TJ Hockenson: For both of these guys, I just felt we could get enough from the guys below and spend that money on improving at WR in some spots.
Cheers to another profitable week!
I'm celebrating this week with an award-winning Dark Helmet from Titletown Brewing Company up in Green Bay. If you're ever up in the area, on a Packers gameday or otherwise, Titletown is a must-stop for a brew, and Dark Helmet is one of their best.
Be sure to follow along by subscribing below, joining us on Facebook and enjoying some shenanigans with us on Twitter: Derek Devereaux (DraftKings savant), Mikey Henninger (Fantasy Football God, also he owns this joint), and JJ Gosh (Saves you when you have all your players on bye weeks, also wins a lot of leagues).