Too-Early Week 1 NFL Thoughts for FanDuel and DraftKings Week 1 in the NFL is just around the corner and with it comes what is usually the most volatile week of the year in terms of prognosticating. While we know *a lot* about some teams, others we will have to take a wait and see approach on both sides of the ball. We will have our Week 1 picks for FanDuel and DraftKings early next week, but for now, let's look at some themes already cropping up on the horizon. Want access to the projections that power these articles? Go grab a free three day trial of DFSR Pro or DFSR Basic! Your subscription will include access to premium content, our lineup optimizer, our members only chatroom, and more! START YOUR FREE TRIAL   How quickly can Andrew Luck return to being Andrew Luck (if at all)? Andrew Luck FD 7300 DK 6100 Opponent CIN Proj Points FD - 19.23 DK - 20.1 T.Y. Hilton FD 7200 DK 6800 Opponent CIN Proj Points FD - 13.5 DK - 15.98 Ryan Grant FD 4900 DK 3900 Opponent CIN Proj Points FD - 8.75 DK - 10.6 Jack Doyle FD 5600 DK 3600 Opponent CIN Proj Points FD - 9.25 DK - 11.45 A big early theme of Week 1 is going to be how much of it rests on the shoulders (or knees) of guys returning from injury. Perhaps no single player will have quite the deterministic impact of Andrew Luck. It’s been more than a year since this guy’s seen regular season action and even if things look okay on the health front, there’s simply no way to really recreate the speed and intensity of this kind of game pace. And yet, he’s Andrew Luck who in 2016 finished in the top 10 in passing yards a would have reasonably been in top four had he not missed a game. Week 1 will set him and the Colts up for early success. They’re opening as -3 home favorites against a Cincinnati team that ranked a little below average in team defense last season. Vegas certainly doesn’t hate their chances at scoring points, coming in with the eight-best implied total on the day. It also helps that he’s got at least two familiar faces to throw to in T.Y. Hilton who led the league in receiving yards the last time Luck was under center. Meanwhile, Doyle was the team’s second-most targeted receiver that season, starting in 14 games and finishing with five targets per game when Luck started. That's not elite usage, but he's a more polished receiver at this point in his career. And finally, it sure seems like...

Three NFL Player Prop Bets for the 2018 Season - 8/23/18 NFL season is coming at us like a runaway freight train, or maybe a better simile would have been, like a big back squaring up the middle linebacker on a run through the middle. Whatever works for you. Let's take a look at three potential player prop bets going into the season that have solid odds on a few different books. Want to see the rest of this article? Go grab a free three day trial of DFSR Pro or DFSR Basic! Your subscription will include access to premium content, our lineup optimizer, our members only chatroom, and more! START YOUR FREE TRIAL - AND READ THE...

Vegas Lines and Team Rushing Performance Using Vegas numbers as a metric for DFS projections can be a tricky venture. Some outfits build models almost entirely on spreads and implied totals. Some ignore Vegas completely. To simplify things, we land somewhere in between in trying to find places where Vegas can provide a useful *window* into potential game scripts and how a team will *attack* the other. Running back play is one such area where Vegas can be helpful. Targeting running backs that are favorites (either at home or on the road) in those situations can lead to clear gains in both numbers of touches and total yards. And yes, I understand this is something of the chicken or the egg thing. Teams that are big favorites tend to have good offenses and defenses. They can take, and control, a lead early and often. The best practice here would be to compare rushing averages per team based on Vegas lines and then compare specifically team-to-team on lines. We can (hopefully) run through that exercise at a later date. For our purposes here we will take a birds’ eye view of how Vegas lines might give us a sense of a team’s rushing chances on a given week. We will separate home favorites and road favorites (rarer) to start and then combine them. These stats are taken over the last three seasons of football. I also attempted to group the lines by the number of instances. For instance, by far the most *popular* line is -3 for a given team. And there are some interesting takeaways around that particular number. From there I tried to set a baseline of instances around a group of lines which is why you'll see things set out by number of occurrences. Without further ado, some graphs: The initial take away here is that favorites (both home and away) see a (sometimes massive) gain in overall run attempts and yards. It's clearly *better* to be a favorite in a game if trying to pile on rushing yards. For some teams and players, this will be built into the pricing structure. Sites have done a much better job in recent seasons of price-correcting players based on matchups. Good teams against bad teams (at home or on the road) will likely see at least a moderate price increase for optimal situations. But there's likely some case to be made in possibly overpaying for running backs in these situations, that even with a built-in correction based on matchup, there might not be enough of one when we get to RBs as the heaviest of favorites. I also found it interesting the outlier volatility around the -3 / +3 odds....

Daily Fantasy Football Picks for FanDuel and DraftKings - Divisional Round 2018 The Wildcard Round offered little good football, but plenty of DFS success over here at DFSR! When the playoffs arrive we get a lot more certainty about roles and opportunity, so we get our edges from places besides getting a $5,200 running back or wide receiver. Let's break it down! Now’s your chance to get DFSR PRO, which will give you access to our NFL optimizer for FanDuel and DraftKings, our NBA Optimizer, and our new Player Lab! Get started for free by clicking the button below. START YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW! First time with NFL? Be sure to read our free MLB and NFL Ebooks on building lineups, general strategy and more. We've got you completely covered. Quarterback Since there are so few games this week and so few options, let's just go team by team and see what kind of value can be had. Atlanta vs. Philadelphia Matt Ryan vs. Nick Foles. Our system hates both of these plays, and it isn't hard to see why. Ryan's best game of the season was 19.42 fantasy points, and his average of 15 fantasy points per game is the worst of any QB left in the post season this side of... Nick Foles. Foles, meanwhile, is cheap - but not THAT cheap. Both of these are strictly GPP only plays. Tennessee vs. New England We saw Tennessee's game plan last week. Trailing by 18 at half time, they continued to pound the ball with back-up running back Derrick Henry. It's hard for me to believe that Mariota even has tournament upside, even if he did throw a touchdown to himself last week. As for Brady? He's also been rather light on pass attempts recently, but the Pats also haven't really HAD to win. I think they like what they have in Lewis, but I think there's more to this decision than looking at Brady's passing attempts recently. I pointed this out in the Tennessee write-up last week, but they've been a top 4 team against the run this season and a bottom 7 team against the pass. I worried that KC might lean more heavily on the pass, which is why I didn't like Hunt that much. What happened? They refused to give Hunt more than 11 carries all while blowing an 18 point lead. This Tennessee front 7 is legit, and I think you could see the Pats lean very heavily on Brady here. I like him as a cash or tournament play. Jacksonville vs. Pittsburgh A brutal one, if you ask me. Bortles ran for more yards than he passed last week, and that was...

Daily Fantasy NFL Playoffs: Wildcard Recap and Look Ahead to the Divisional Round FanDuel and DraftKings 1/8/17 What a crazy Wildcard weekend in the NFL. Saturday saw two road underdogs win outright and Sunday had a down-to-the-wire finish in New Orleans along with one of the most boring playoff games in recent memory. All in all, it was a quality weekend in football and sets the stage for some interesting subplots leading into the Divisional Round. Now’s your chance to get DFSR PRO, which will give you access to our NBA optimizer, our NFL Optimizer, and our new player lab! Get started for free by clicking the button below. START YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW! First time with NBA or NFL? Be sure to read our free NBA and NFL Ebooks on building lineups, general strategy and more. We've got you completely covered. Tennesse Titans 22 - Kansas City Chiefs 21 Henry left, Henry right, Henry up the middle Watching the Titans and Chiefs it was easy to think the former’s plan to run the ball come hell or high water on first down, second down and basically every down was a recipe for complete failure. And for a while, it sure looked that way. Derrick Henry racked up 23 carries, good for 156 yards and a touchdown despite being down three scores at halftime. Tennessee continued the gameplan into the second half where the Chiefs happily obliged by refusing to run Kareem Hunt (who was averaging around four yards per carry). Instead, Kansas City continued to pass the ball despite losing their primary pass catcher in Travis Kelce in the first half. Hunt ran the ball exactly four times in the second half and the Chiefs had stalled drive after stalled drive. Meanwhile, playing from way behind in the second half, Henry ran the ball nine times before the drive where the Titans took the lead. This begs the question: what will be the plan for Tennessee when facing the Patriots? The opening line is set at New England -13.5 but will that matter for the Titans’ strategy? It didn’t against the Chiefs where Henry touched the ball on 25 of the Titans’ 62 offensive plays despite not taking the lead until 6:06 left in the fourth quarter. Typically we want to avoid running backs whose teams are road underdogs, but could this be the exception? The Titans don’t have much of an offense after Henry (short of Mariota throwing touchdown passes to himself) and could just stand their ground with the RB touches. Atlanta Falcons 26 - Los Angeles Rams 13 Seeing Red (Zone) with Julio Of the top 20 Red Zone target leaders on the season, Julio...