It's that time of year again! FOOTBALL! There is a lot to be excited about being a Pittsburgh Steelers fan with all the young talent we have on our team. But, aside from being a die-hard Steeler fan, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't counting down the days until Daily Fantasy Sports. This blog is going to strictly breakdown and review my lineup each week.
Before I break down the lineup for this week, I want to explain how I tackle each week. The 2 main sites that I play on are DraftKings and FanDuel. However, I only make 1 lineup each week. The reason for that is because I don't want to be rooting for 30+ players over multiple lineups each week. I'd rather go with my best lineup and see how the cards play out. Each week, I will be deciding if I want to play on DK or FD depending on how much I like the lineup that I've made on said site.
For Week 1, I made my lineup on FanDuel. So, let's get to my Week 1 lineup and results.
Contest: $100K NFL Luxury Box (Single Entry)
Buy-In: $535
1st Place Payout: $20,000
Min-Cash: $1,000
Result: 151st Place.
QB: Patrick Mahomes. It comes as no surprise that Mahomes will be a fantasy stud week in and week out as he is just that good and is damn near matchup proof against anyone. I narrowed my stack options down to KC and PHI this week. As you can see, I decided to go with KC and roster Mahomes and he did not disappoint. 34.9 points on FD is an absolute smash as he threw for 360 yards and 5 touchdowns. I expected this game to be a shootout as most KC games are when they play other talented teams. The Cardinals did not live up to the shootout hype but Mahomes still got his.
RB1: Aaron Jones. Green Bay is hot garbage right now. Their wide receiving core is filled with players that I don't even know. With Lazard missing this game, I fully expected Jones to be a contributor on the ground and in the passing game. Green Bay got punched in the mouth by Minnesota and Jones did not amount to much as he only ran for 49 yards and caught 3 balls for 27 yards. This play just simply did not work out even though it was a favorable matchup.
RB2: Christian McCaffrey. When CMC is fully healthy, he's almost a must play every week. He is such a huge part of Carolina's offense as he gets the majority of the carries including goal line work and catches a ton of balls. Going up again Cleveland, CMC was in a smash spot. However, some things don't always go as they should. I blame Baker Mayfield. This is the first game Mayfield and CMC played together and CMC only caught 4 balls for 24 yards and only ran for 33 yards. He did score a TD but that production for CMC just doesn't cut it.
WR1: JuJu Smith-Schuster. This was an obvious play when you draft Mahomes. As many of you know, when you're playing a tournament in DFS, you want to stack your QB with usually 2 pass catchers or his RB. In this case, I draft JuJu to pair with Mahomes. Like I mentioned above, I expected this game to be a back and forth shootout. JuJu did get 8 targets and caught 6 balls for 79 years but without a TD, 8.9 points isn't enough in a spot like this.
WR2: Chris Olave. I'm not sure if the Saints will be a good team or not this season. But, I do know that Olave is a freak. I watched him in college and the Vegas sportsbooks expect him to have a great year as he is in the early runnings for ROTY (pre-season). However, with Michael Thomas playing and looking to be healthy, the targets just weren't there for Olave. (3 targets). I know this was a risk to play him but I needed to save on some salary and I thought he may have better production than what he did. 3 catches, 41 yards doesn't win DFS tournaments.
WR3: Mike Williams. Big Mike. Damn you. It's like clockwork for me when deciding to draft Williams or Allen. Whoever I chose, it's the other guy that has a game. Williams was in an absolute dream matchup against the weak Las Vegas secondary. Not to mention, Allen went down with an injury in the 2nd quarter and did not return. How does Williams not dominate this game? 2 catches, 10 yards was his final stat line and I couldn't be more pissed off. Hint to self: NEVER draft Mike Williams.
TE: Travis Kelce. I love Travis Kelce. Especially when drafting Mahomes. As mentioned above, when you draft a QB, you want his pass catchers to stack with him. It's a no brainer to draft Kelce each and every time you draft Mahomes. My stack this week was KC (Mahomes, JuJu, Kelce). Kelce did Kelce things as he caught 8 balls for 121 yards and a TD. 22.1 FD points is massive and I couldn't be happier with his production. Albeit I'm not slightly surprised.
FLEX: Dameon Pierce. Okay, Mr. Pierce. You fooled me. He had a great pre-season and was given the RB1 role in Houston. I was worried about the game flow of this game due to IND being a big favorite which would take Pierce out of the game if IND went up big early. However, it didn't matter as Houston played well but Pierce still didn't amount to anything. Rex Burkhead out carried Pierce 14 to 11 and was also targeted 8 times in the passing game as Pierce was only targeted once. I didn't love this play but hoped to be pleasantly surprised. 4.4 points sucks and I now fully understand why I wasn't excited about this play.
DEFENSE: Las Vegas Raiders. I don't care to pay up for defenses as their points are so unpredictable. I usually just draft a bottom tier defense and hope they can get an INT or 2 or a fumble recovery just to get some points. This week, I had no other options other than the Raiders which were at league minimum at 3,000. I would have had to break up other parts of my team to upgrade the Raiders and I didn't want to do that so I rolled with Las Vegas. They got 0 points. Sigh.
Results: The only 2 players that worked out this week were Mahomes and Kelce. CMC scored a TD but 13.7 points from CMC is a fail. The rest of the team didn't even break 10 FD points. I finished the week with 102.7 points. A min-cash needed 136.42. We weren't even close to sniffing a cash as we finished 151st out of 191. I am glad that Week 1 is over as I can start to build a better team for Week 2.
Best Finish: 151st
Worst Finish: 151st
Cashes: 0/1
Weekly Numbers: -$535
Yearly Numbers: -$535
Leave a comment if you'd like! See you all next week for Week 2!
-UnitedWeZag
Aaron Jones is complete dust.