Daily Fantasy Football Picks for FanDuel and DraftKings - Divisional Round 2017

 

A note on formatting for this week. Instead of writing specific value plays (which would basically just be a copy of our optimal lineup), we're going to give a more in depth game by game breakdown, akin to our Friday podcasts. Let's get to work!

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If you want to see the numbers behind our projections, create lineups, or research as deeply as your heart desires, click the button below to test out yourself.

Seattle Seahawks at Atlanta Falcons

Atlanta favored at -4 with O/U of 51
The first game of the weekend should be a good one with Seattle heading into Atlanta to face a Falcons team who won five of their last six games of the regular season. Albeit most of those were against below average teams, but they put up an average of 37 points per game in that stretch. Much of the Falcons' success comes from their ability to spread the love around without necessarily focusing on one (or even two) specific threats. Matt Ryan's clearly the man here though finishing the season with a 117 QB rating (5 points higher than number two) thanks to an absurd 9.26 yards per attempt and 5.5 TD:Int ratio. He was ultra efficient this season even playing with a hobbled Julio Jones, losing their number one and two tight ends and working with a receiving corps without a clear fantasy name to it. He's an interesting option in DFS this week even against a tough Seattle defense.

As I mentioned, the rest of the Falcons, from a fantasy perspective, are a little tough to guage. Devonta Freeman would be a fantastic option if we could trust his carries. But Atlanta hasn't used him in a high volume role really at all this season and they will use Tevin Coleman in the red zone. It's hard to trust the Atlanta running game though on DraftKings I think there's some case to run both RBs in cash.

Meanwhile, the aforementioned Julio Jones has had an injury-plagued final third of the season but came back for the last game of the season against the Saints with a 7/96/1 on nine targets. The problem with Jones here is he likely draws the Richard Sherman treatment That being said, in their meeting earlier in the season Jones lit up Seattle for 7/139/1 on nine targets. He's a bit expensive considering the matchup but is clearly in the top three of best overall receivers on this short slate.

On the Seattle side of the ball, Thomas Rawls broke out of whatever the hell was wrong with him in the final three games of the regular season and tuned up the Lions with a crazy 27/161/1 line last week. Don't be surprised to see the Seahawks lean on him again here. The Falcons ranked 29th in the DVOA against the rush this season and it's clearly a weakness for them. While I do think the Rawls performance in the Wild Card round is an outlier, Seattle's determination to force feed him the rock is a great sign if they're looking to control the offensive flow of this game.

I think Russell Wilson remains a solid cash game and high upside tournament option considering this could be a game flow with Seattle playing catchup. He didn't have to do a ton against the Lions but was still efficient, completing 77% of his passes for 224 yards and 2 touchdowns. He can also make hay with his legs if Seattles forced into the passing game and I really love his implied floor in almost any game script.

As for the receivers, we wondered last week if Doug Baldwin would see an elite target and he didn't disappoint with an 11/104/1 line on 12 looks. He's unlikely to repeat that kind of conversion rate, but the double digit targets are a great sign and I suspect 10 is his floor in this game.

Houston Texans at the New England Patriots

Patriots favored at - with an O/U of
The Texans snuck through the first round even with Brock Osweiler as their quarterback. This was mostly because the defense is tough and the Raiders trotted Connor Cook out there for a playoff game. But whatever the reason, they now find themselves staring down the barrel of a New England offense who’ll almost assuredly blow their doors off. Tom Brady ranked 7th in touchdown passes this season despite playing four less games than most of the guys above him. He there 28 TDS on 432 attempts or one every 15.4 throws. He’s on the short list with that kind of efficiency though two other guys in the club (Matt Ryan - 14.05 and Aaron Rodgers - 15.25) are also playing this weekend. The only real concern we’ve had for Brady this season is around how much he actually throws the ball. The Patriots get up on teams and can simply take their foot off the gas. Because he does so little with his legs, he needs to hit all of his value through the air. There are plenty of ways for that to go wrong at his prices. Again, the Pats are big favorites here, though the Houston defense is a good one. This is a close decision for cash games.

Julian Edelman makes for an elite WR option on the short slate this week. Edelman ranked fifth in targets per game this season and again, that was with four weeks sans-Brady. He’s an ultra-safe option in full PPR and getting over double digit looks seems like his floor. Houston’s a top five team against the pass which could cause issues for the New England, but this is playoff Pats we’re talking about.

The run game load appears mostly split between Dion Lewis and LeGarrette Blount. Timesharing makes both of them less safe and picking the Pats’ running back poison isn’t a route I want to head down this weekend. Blount definitely has the touchdown upside considering how they use him down and close.

On the Houston side of the ball, it’s hard to get excited for much here. They leaned heavily on Lamar Miller last week, though that will be much more difficult this Saturday. The Texans played from ahead against an inferior Raiders’ offense and could afford to just run the clock as much as possible and rely on their defense. That likely won’t be the case here and Miller could easily fall by the wayside if the Texans get down quick.

Brock Osweiler avoided being a disaster against Oakland, which is actually a compliment. He still stunk by all other QB metrics. 14/25 for a 168/1 line is bad and a big reason he’s still coming at the stone cold minimum on DraftKings. I suppose if you think he throws 40+ plus times in an effort to keep up then there’s upside at his prices. But again, this is Brock Osweiler we’re talking about.

The Texans’ WR corps falls in the same category. DeAndre Hopkins has seen increased target share over the last few weeks but you can bet New England understands they just need to take this weapon away to shut down much (if anything) Houston can get going through the air.

Pittsburgh Steelers at the Kansas City Chiefs

KC favored at -1 with an O/U of 44.5
Am I crazy, or is this just a really weird playoffs from a daily fantasy football perspective? This game features two very unusual teams, who are strange for totally different reasons. The Steelers are one of the most known fantasy commodities that I can remember, consolidating all of their considerable fantasy performance across two players - Le'Veon Bell and Antonio Brown. Bell will be a unanimous 50/50 play once again after paying these prices handily last weekend and seeing his price drop in response. The drop isn't altogether unjustified - the Chiefs are not nearly as good a match-up as the hopeless Dolphins - but they're still no great shakes. At 4.4 yards per carry allowed this season they rank in the bottom 7 in the NFL, and it sure looks like Bell is set to feast.

The big question here is the same as it was last week - can we really play Bell and Brown together given the reduced player pool? It won't be easy, particularly if you want to pay up for a guy like Aaron Rodgers at quarterback. Still, 65% of players made it work in cash games last week, and it mostly worked out for them. Brown returned to fantasy dominance, dropping 124 yards and 2 touchdowns against the Dolphins. If we dig a little deeper, though, the troubling signs were still there. He only caught 5 balls on 9 receptions, and a few big catches wound up making the overall much more impressive than it could have been. I'm not saying Brown is a bad play by any stretch, but it simply might not be where you hope to prioritize your spending this week.

As for the Chiefs, oy. The only Chief to crack our top 10 optimal lineups is Cairo Santos, and you have to go down to lineup 17 to see Travis Kelce. But hey, if he's the most relevant guy on the team, we should probably talk about him. Kelce went from an other-worldly performance against a phenomenal Denver D (160 yards and a TD) to disappearing completely (1 REC, 8 YDS) in a game the Chiefs really wanted to win against San Diego. He also hauled in in 100 yards in 5 of the last 7 games of the season - a total that you'd love out of a wide receiver at similar prices. So why isn't Kelce showing up in the top lineups? The price, mostly. At $7,100 he causes some serious pricing problems if you also want to play elite big money guys like Rogers, Bell, or Brown. As of now I think he's a good big tournament play, but don't like the cascading effect he has on cash game lineups.

As for some big tournament options, there are quite a few interesting options. Tyreek Hill obviously has electric big play upside, but the world seems to be sleeping on Jeremy Maclin. He's dirt cheap on FanDuel - just $5,500 - and with some extra time to rest there's some chance he returns to full health here and really does some work. Or he could completely suck. But if you're building big tournament line-ups, he's the kind of high upside enabler that you should be looking for.

I'm not particularly interested in Spencer Ware here. Him being "good to go" is great and all, but I just have better things to do at RB.

As for the Steelers, they offer little in the way of off-beat excitement. Jesse James? No thanks.

Green Bay Packers at the Dallas Cowboys

Dallas favored at -4.5 with O/U of 52
Aaron Rodgers is the headliner here, as he has been ever since we realized early in the season that his completion percentage hadn't deserted him completely. His fantasy total has gone down in each of the last 2 weeks, but the 31 he put up in the Wild Card round was still enough for him to slide into your big tournament winning lineups. We're now on 3 straight weeks of 300+ yards and 4 touchdowns against excellent competition, and the question has moved past "Should we play Aaron Rodgers?" to "Whom should we pair with Aaron Rodgers?" That one is quite a bit closer.

Jordy Nelson appears to have fractured two ribs in the Packers' wild card win over the Giants, and his status is very much in doubt at this point. Which is probably about the best scenario he could have hoped for after having a near-death experience with that Leon Hall hit. So where do those Nelson targets go? Well, your buddy Randall Cobb was up to his old ones against the G-Men, catching just 5 balls but somehow turning those into 3 touchdowns. It's not all roses, though. Cobb was getting 1-3 targets a week until this explosive breakout, and while there's historical precedent here, it's still awfully tough to trust. That said, you're still going to see a ton of him in cash games this week, so use that information as you will.

I'm considerably more interested in Davante Adams, though. Adams is a red zone target in his own right, putting up 12 TDs on the season, and he added a more sustainable 4 targets to his already solid 7-8 per game. At this stage in their respective careers Adams is just more involved in the offense, and I believe that will continue against the Cowboys.

I'm also pretty interested in Jared Cook. 8 targets in week 17, and 9 last week - Rodgers is looking for him, and with Nelson at least hobbled he should be a solid value on $5,400 on FanDuel.

You can also keep an eye on Christine Michael here. The overall stat line from the Giants game doesn't look phenomenal, but he looked excellent in the second half, and Ty Montgomery's status is in doubt here as well. If he's finally picked up the playbook he could be excellent, sneaky value at a very cheap price. As of now

As for the Cowboys, there are a handful of interesting big tournament plays here. The first is Dak - he's cheap, allows you to pay up elsewhere, and the Packers have really been bad against the pass this season. Yes, they shut the Giants down in cold weather last weekend, but this is a totally different situation. Over the course of the season they allowed the 2nd highest yards per attempt to opposing passers, and I actually think last week's performance against the Giants will improperly color people's opinions as far as their ability to defend the pass is concerned. Throw in a young QB who can run a bit and the recipe for upside is certainly here.

It's hard to know where the passes will go, though. Dez is the obvious choice if you have to pick, but at his current prices, you're not really getting away with anything even if you get one of his better performances on the season. There's potential for big games from the whole group of Jason Witten, Cole Beasley, and Terrance Williams - but the fact that that potential is spread (thinly) across this whole group should be a signal that none of these options is very trustworthy. Still, you can bet some high volume tournament players are going to try a "Dak/guess the right dude" stack this weekend.

The flip side of Prescott's good passing match-up is Ezekiel Elliott's lousy rushing match-up. The Pack have been above average against the run all season, and Zeke is just expensive in a week where we need to be very judicious about deploying our salary cap. That said, a very plausible game script has the Cowboys jumping out to a lead and trying to grind it away with Elliott, so I wouldn't sleep on him for big tournaments.

Playoff football, baby!

Again, you can grab a free trial of our NFL DFS suite of tools including full projections, optimal NFL lineups and our Player Lab, which includes filters to help you create NFL lineups for FanDuel and DraftKings for any format. It’s a set of tools well beyond anything we’ve ever had, and something we feel will help our users crush it this daily fantasy NFL season.

You can grab a go test it out yourself.