I kicked back the other day and watched the Twitter world erupt over the news that Tyrod Taylor won the starting job with the Buffalo Bills. This news had me thinking entirely differently than the masses as it appeared everybody and their mother was going to roster Taylor across the DFS industry. I sat there and wondered to myself, does this mean somebody like Eli Manning or even Aaron Rodgers is going to be lower owned than they should be?
As I began to debate this in my own mind, I started to compare the preseason hype machine to the workout warriors of the NFL combine and workouts leading up to the NFL draft. If you are like me in any way and enjoy following all of the stuff leading up to big events, you know the players that I am referring to and they tend to shoot up draft boards and become first round picks because of what they can do without pads, up against nobody. Then teams realize they made a mistake and try to save some face by allowing them to take up a roster spot for 2-3 years before finally saying we f’ed up and release the player. Then that player bounces around league rosters trying to catch on and is completely out of football after 4-5 years. A recent example of this would be Taylor Mays. I know these guys are rookies and very unproven in terms of professional football, but isn’t that very similar to a guy who gets hyped up because they crush some preseason football games against guys who end up cut and playing in the Arena league?
Are you that enamored with guys like Taylor, Fitzpatrick, Foles, Cousins and Hoyer that you are willing to take a gamble that they are able to perform above what they are most likely going to finish with in terms of average points per game by the end of the season? When compared to the top QB options on any given week, you are talking about a QB that is most likely going to put up, on average, about half as many points as their star counter parts. I understand that you want to save money at spots so that you can pay up at other positions, however wouldn’t the smart thing be to spend money on the guys that have the ball in their hands all of the time?
I understand that your first response will be, well this is DFS and on any given day, a player will outperform his averages or expected output. This is very true and we are always looking for those guys when we put together our DFS lineups, however wouldn’t you rather find those diamonds in the rough at other positions, especially when they offer a larger pool of players that are going to see the ball at that position? At a position like WR, you can find some established players that have been doing it in the league for awhile, who are under priced and generally just ignored. Terrence Williams and Eddie Royal are a couple of names that come to mind immediately, as does Steve Smith Sr. on some sites.
Week 1 is the perfect time to take advantage of the hype and hysteria that comes with a guy like Tyrod Taylor being named a starting QB, however most will not see it that way and jump on the wagon and watch themselves use the same QB that a large amount of the industry will. All of those guys will expect Taylor to do something he has not been able to do, in his 5th NFL season. Do not get me wrong, I certainly understand the desire to use/roster a guy like that, however I think expectations need to be tempered. I will definitely be multi-entering a decent amount of NFL GPPs for week 1 and I would be dumb to completely ignore guys like I have mentioned earlier, however I can guarantee you that my ownership %’s of the preseason warriors will be far below what they are in each particular GPP.
A possible lineup that I like is the one used in this image. It utilizes some of the things I talked about above and tries to hit on some guys that I am thinking will go lower owned in the bigger GPP contests around the industry in week 1.
