We are starting week 5 which means we are at the crossroads of what teams are and who players are. I suppose its time to make some slight adjustments in process in order to ensure that this year's top 5% finish is in reach. I think understanding that 75% of your lineup should be reaching salary based value. Then a certain number of plays need to be upside driven, ideally with separation scores. Lets see how we can get there. I also added showdown to the bottom of this page for the morning.
Updated sims: 10:52 am CST
Ceiling Finder
With 4 weeks of play to work with, and less for Jordan Love, we see that Jordan Love's average is above the others. Last week he was in a game environment where he had to play catchup, throwing the ball quite a bit successfully. Since he is one game short, the next layer of Burrow and Nico Colins are sorta next up. Bo Nix is still floating in the cheap region of the highest usage players so we need to watch for blowup spots for Denver.
Vegas Points
I am going to put a little more emphasis on this page this week, to understand teams, games, and totals that can go over or under expectations.
Teams projecting to exceed Vegas totals:
Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Rams, Minnesota, New England, Pittsburg, Washington
Opponents going over: Baltimore, Buffalo, Indi, New Orleans, Green Bay, Giants and Arizona. That means several matchups could start to put up points again, but do we know where the points are going to be allocated? Uncertainty isnt a bad thing, because if we knew where the points were going, they would be as chalky as can be anyways.
SF vs AZ, Baltimore vs Cinci, and GB vs LAR, are 3 games we think are going to go over their total the most, and Vegas matches those games as the top 3.
Buffalo vs Houston however seems to have the most expected fantasy points and it comes in 4th in terms of game totals. Carolina vs Chicago also has potential on my end, but Vegas drops off on that total so just maybe we can expect an ownership dip there as well.
Summary of Situations
This includes all games on and off slate. I will reference these areas as we break down each position to find workloads that have gone unrewarded.
QB
The higher you are on the scatter plot the more average points you have scored over the past 4 weeks of play. The issue with this chart this week is that Jordan Love is atop, but his total is only based on two games of play so it is less reliable. Burrow is the next best of the two, at half the projected ownership. In the summary, we see that both Burrow and Love are in games projected to score a lot. We also see the QB situation is favorable for both. It does look like the pass protection will be better for Jordan, but I do like my QB ownership under 10% when searching for ceilings if I can. The tie break may come down to which weapons I can pair them with since neither offer rushing upside.
RB
I should note that these lists are only ased on expected workload points over the past few weeks, and filtered down to those with neutral or greater leverage, so big chalk RBs like Jordan Mason wont appear. Achane does though and he appears to be underowned. Miami might suck but if they continue to use him in the passing game, he might rack up his points despite his team. A gross second option that I cant ignore is Stevenson, who may not be starting this game.
New England faces Miami who is considered to be a bad rushing defense. There could also be a slight boost in attempts for New England over their average. Therefore we might have success on the other side of the ball when it comes to rushing. The issue I will have with either is that I project this game to go under its Vegas total of 35 points, which means neither is truly an option that you can feel great about. Mason, Kyren, and Walker are the otherwise viable plays that will bring in ownership with them.
WR
In the preseason writeup on WRs, I mentioned Nico Collins as the breakout candidate of the year at WR, since Hill, Nico, and Jefferson were top 3 in yards per route last season (in that order). Now Nico has separated himself in terms of play. I think his price and ownership have caught up so it may not make sense to continue targeting. Amari Cooper is someone I targeted last week and I likely will end up back on him today. He is getting the most work for his price. Wicks is also peeking here on this chart as someone to look at if playing Love or wanting a piece of that GB offense. Ja'Marr Chase is looking around 10% ownership but is overpriced unfortunately, despite being in a good spot.
Defense vs Receivers
Looking at Cincinatti, WR1 and WR3 are both in good spots, along with the TE for receiving purposes. I dont think Higgins is necessarily WR3 but target wise he lands in that spot. Green Bay and Indianapolis both face last ranked pass defenses. Zay Flowers also provides some runback ability if we think that game might shoot out.
TE
Kmet, Hunter Henry and Isiah LIkely are all looking like cheap darts on workload charts. Tucker Kraft, Strange, Dulcich, Tremble and Parkinson may be interesting based on the DVP chart. I recommend using your final spot to choose based on your remaining salary.
Projections
One of the first things I look at here is actually the Defenses as I have had a solid track record on them. However I dont trust any of these names this week. Nabers banged up and Singletary is out so I dont necessarily trust the Giants or Dolphins or Panthers, but I will just play the Giants anyways based on the price point and then its time to get lucky rather than good this week.
Sims (Experimental)
I believe this week we will need to target players that can sum up to around 204.95 in upside. Most people will build lineups based on projections and I think that is fundamentally wrong. Projections are based on what players do on average, not what they are capable of doing. Some players will average 15 points and not necessarily have much opportunity to get more than 16 points. Others may average 5-10 points but have the potential for 25 points for the week. That is the difference between cash and GPP plays, and this is all about GPP. This week rather than sorting based on upside, I am taking the approach of sorting on value, because I do believe you want to find more value plays with upside of getting to the targets.
I'm still playing around with the levers on this so this is moreso for a lookback and validation.
However for today, Purdy is the top QB for sure for me. 2nd in projections and 1st in value.
He also hit my salary range that I want
Minnesota vs NY Jets Showdown
When Minn has the ball:
Taking a peak at where leverage exists for the captain plays. Normally Id say Aaron Jones is the guy here based on his captain leverage with the lack of flex leverage. However I feel that targetting a captain with leverage should not contain double digit captain ownership and he might be the highest owned on the slate, which has simply not worked out for me all year. So I will suggest that Sam Darnold might be the best of these options unless doing something strange like kicker captain. Reichard makes sense in the flex , with the possibility of Vikings defense. WR2 also makes sense so Addison may go in my build.
On the Vikings side, Aaron Jones looks to have room for improvement on his average ppg, based on his opportunity, so if anticipating low scoring, defensive game, Jones does fit with Kicker and Defense in a given game narrative that Aaron Rodgers struggles.
When NYJ have the ball:
Breece Hall is the ideal captain on this side as well for leverage but he comes with double digit ownership too, although half the expectation of Aaron Jones. That means Aaron Rodgers or Garrett Wilson would be ideal at captain. Conklin may be Ok for the flex, but I see several Jets players with potential to gain more points towards their average. Maybe there is room to play 4 jets and hope for a higher value from them.
Good luck!