For Fantasy Sake

The strategy is simple ... play Christian McCaffrey; win all the money. Every week.  He did it again. Like he does every week. He just gets it done. Christian McCaffrey is a machine. A robot. A man among boys. All the cliches. They all apply here. You're not getting away from him. Even at the $10.5K price tag this week on DraftKings. He's a lock every week at this point until he reaches Russell Westrbook and James Harden price territory -- shouts to all the NBA DFSers out there ... you know what I'm talking about. This weekend against the Packers is no different. They've seemed to have given up on trying to defend the run at all of late, and have been torched by backs throughout the season. McCaffrey's gotten insane amounts of work week in and week out, and there's no reason that we should believe it would change at all this week, even with him carrying an injury tag and getting in limited practices. He's their horse. A few years back, eve...

With six teams on bye, a lot of the top options we usually go to on DraftKings, like DeAndre Hopkins, won't be available to play. So who are we going to this week with so many fantasy studs on the sidelines?  It's officially Bye-Nado. With six teams on bye, which, obviously, shrinks the slate; but with so many teams having their week off, it diminishes the talent pool. The teams that are on bye: Denver New England Philadelphia Washington Jacksonville Houston Obviously, Washington, and even Denver to an extent, are outliers on this list. The other four, however, have fantasy-viable players up and down their roster.  New England: Tom Brady, James White, Sony Michel, Julian Edelman, Mohammed Sanu and Pats DST Philadelphia: Carson Wentz, Jordan Howard, Alshon Jeffery, Zach Ertz Houston: Deshaun Watson, DeAndre Hopkins  Jacksonville: Leonard Fournette, D.J. Chark There are some fantasy heavy-hitters in that list above. But the more important fac...

It seems as if Leonard Fournette finds his picture on every column I write, but with the usage he's getting and DraftKings refuse him to price him appropriately, I'm going to continue to tout him. The positive touchdown regression is coming, and when it does, it's going to be a barrage. He's a cash-game lock.  This time a week ago, it was the beginning of the #KoviStrong✊ movement that myself and two co-hosts of For Fantasy Sake  started. We partnered with QC Custom Tees to create the T-shirts and raise money for Kovi and his family as they traveled to Peoria, Ill., and Evanston, Ill. numerous times to get the treatment and surgeries he needed as he battled viral myocarditis.  Our attempt to raise money for the family has been great, and we've received many orders from all of you who read this column, listen to the show and live in the Quad-Cities community. Your support has been so overwhelming we at For Fantasy Sake can't say thank you enoug...

David Johnson is a game-time decision this weekend. If he does play, he's a great tournament play, but if he's held out, lock in Chase Edmunds into all your lineups. Your lineups can't be fully built yet. There's no way. Right? I mean, mine aren't even CLOSE to being built. There are still far too many tidbits of information up in the air and have yet to drop.  We got a bit of clarity on a few situations on Friday: Alvin Kamara is OUT with his ankle injury Todd Gurley and Saquon Barkley were taken OFF the final injury reports Davante Adams is OUT and Geronimo Allison is DOUBTFUL  What we're waiting to learn more about: David Johnson and Christian Kirk are GAME-TIME DECISIONS  Marquez Valdes-Scantling is QUESTIONABLE  Marquise Brown is QUESTIONABLE, but it doesn't sound all that good  Dede Westbrook looks like he'll carry a QUESTIONABLE tag into Sunday's game Maybe it's just a me thing, but the news that still...

George Kittle is carrying a $5,200 price tag coming into Week 6, which is just TOO cheap. He's going to be chalky, but he's a damn good play.  Will Fuller week happened. So, you -- and basically everyone else playing DraftKings -- got a piece of that 50-burger he tossed up. Scores were crazy. Some of my lineups hit solidly in the 200s and didn't return much. It felt like every bit of the chalk hit last week, which is bound to happen from time to time throughout the course of a 17-week season, I guess. There is a benefit to come out of weeks like Week 6, though. The chalk donkeys will continue to chase the chalk and use the "this guy went off last week, so I have to play him again." And another golden nugget: the game log watchers will thumb through the DK player pool and see the dud games put up by guys like Alvin Kamara and refuse to click the plus sign next to their name. Take advantage of those people who will fully fade the guys coming off bad w...

Oooohhhhh, whammmmmy. That's about the only way to sum up Week 5. It was a freaking scoring frenzy. Six players topped the 40-point mark in DraftKings scoring and the high-scoring chalk game of the week hit 85 points. And it didn't involve the Chiefs. #Shocker. Let's take a minute to channel our inner Alex Trebek, "and let's take a look at the scores." Not 1. Not 2. But 3. Yes. Three players put up 50-burgers. Will Fuller, 56.7 Aaron Jones, 52.2 Christian McCaffrey, 50.7 The other three to go over 40 were: Deshaun Watson, 44.74 Michael Thomas, 44.2 Amari Cooper, 42.6 If you didn't have a lineup with at least two or three of these guys, you were doomed from the start. However, with Thomas' price at $6,600, Aaron Jones' at $5,900 and Will Fuller's at $4,500, it wasn't unfathomable to run into lineups that had four or five of these guys.  That, kids, is what they call the buzzsaw.  It's a progressive...

This about sums up the way I felt after forgetting to swap T.Y. Hilton out of my  lineup that was about 30 points off from winning a GPP that would've been a $20,000 payday. It happened.  I had a chance to win a GPP in Week 4. One of my few tournament lineups I played scored 200.8 points, and placed me 394th out of 297,265 entrants in the $250K First Down.  Not a great win, but it's usually not a HORRIBLE position to finish in like it was for me this weekend.  After the For Fantasy Sake live show -- 10-11:30 a.m. on QCSportsNet.com at Kavanaugh's Hilltop Bar & Grill ... #ShamelessPlug -- I was rushing home so my lovely significant other could get out the door to teach a one-on-one dance solo to one of her students.  During that very same For Fantasy Sake show -- did you see the links above? you need to see the links above -- we went through the gambit of actives and inactives. During that segment, we confirmed T.Y. Hilton was, in fact...

There's going to be a lot of this going on this Sunday in Dallas.Ezekiel Elliott gets to eat up the awful Miami defense, and it's going to be awesome for fantasy players. There's no good way to sum up Week 2 for me, other than thanking the Kansas City Chiefs for being an offensive juggernaut and allowing me to scrape back most of what I lost on the Seahawks-Steelers stacks I ran out. God bless you Patrick Mahomes and Demarcus Robinson.  And you, too, Pats DST.  We're not going for a long soliloquy, this week. We're going to get down to it. The Plays Ezekiel Elliott, RB, $8,900 (vs. Miami) D-O-L-P-H-I-N-S ... what's that spell ...?  If you guessed Dolphins, your'e wrong. Clearly it spells fantasy yum yum. The dumpster fire that is the Miami Dolphins defense is just bleeding points to everyone. Somehow, they're not yielding the most fantasy goodness to opposing running backs, but I expect that to change after this week. Th...

Josh Jacobs looked great in his NFL debut against the Broncos. He's likely going to be incredibly chalky in Week 2, but at his price point, it's almost too hard to resist. After going through and dissecting some of my favorite plays from across the DraftKings main slate, it's time to take a little deeper look at who the best cash game and tournament considerations are. Below I've compiled a handful of players from each position I see being viable options in both formats. Granted, my mind is mostly geared toward the tournament prospective, so take the cash game plays with a bit of a grain of salt.  I can tell you, though, my tournament player pool is relatively small for the week. I'll probably roll out two or three tournament lineups, and I'm debating on lock-buttoning one QB and WR combination. My cash game lineups, however, I haven't settled on just yet. But this is where I'm starting.  Cash Plays QB Lamar Jackson $6,700 (vs. Arizona...