Oh, FanDuel, how you tempt me so. The allure of the big payday and being able to tweet out a photo of me holding a giant check is tremendous. If I close my eyes for a moment, I can actually see myself standing there – a big Cheshire cat-like grin on my face, flanked by some FanDuel suit on one side and some scantily clad, bosomy vixen on the other. Thoughts of living debt-free race through my head as I plot a career that revolves around setting DFS lineups in the morning and sipping mai-tais on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean for the rest of the afternoon. I’ll spend my nights either popping bottles at a Phish show or swimming through mountains of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. The dream is alive.

But then I look at my lineups as Monday Night Football ends and the harshness of reality slaps me in the face. This shit ain’t easy. They make it look so simple on TV, but what I have learned in my short DFS career is that setting a lineup is something a nutless monkey can do. To set a winning lineup however, especially this early in the NFL season, is most definitely not.

I’m a numbers guys and up until this point, it has served me well. In baseball, we have countless statistics from which to choose where we can make extremely intelligent decisions. You’ve got a hitter, a pitcher and a ballpark. We can look at lefty/righty splits, weighted on-base averages, strikeout rates, ballpark dimensions, etc. There might actually be too many numbers to crunch, come to think of it. But in doing so, I have found a certain modicum of success in MLB DFS. Football, however, is a much tougher nut to crack.

When making lineup decisions for football this early in the season, there are a lot more variables at which to look that do not necessarily circle around the numbers. Just look at this lineup I submitted for my weekly $1 50/50 cash game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the way, the Buccaneers defense made Marcus Mariotta look like Joe Montana (ok, slight exaggeration here but give it up for artistic license) in Week 1, an experience veteran with normally a cannon for an arm like Drew Brees should have been a lock for 20-plus points, right? Coming into Week 2, Tampa Bay had the 32nd-ranked pass defense and while they may not have been that bad, they certainly weren’t expected to shut down the Saints aerial attack the way they did, shoulder issue for Brees or not. But did I pay attention to the fact that the Saints had dropped their last four games at home? No. Did I take into consideration what the Bucs may have learned from their first week debacle? Not really. You simply cannot just look at the numbers from the week before and assume that there is a developing trend. You have to look at each team’s schemes, both offensive and defensive, and see how they match up.

Unfortunately, I took the same approach with my running backs as I did with my QB choice. My lesson learned from Week 1 was to pay up for receivers (a successful endeavor as you can see) and go cheaper with backs; to play the match-ups. Now I’m not saying that Bishop Sankey was the wisest of picks, but the Browns had the worst run defense in the league last year and were ranked 29th in the NFL after Chris Ivory ran all over them in Week 1. Sankey didn’t need to rush for 100 yards or find the end zone multiple times to provide a solid return value for his price, but 12 carries for just 42 yards? That’s just not going to cut it.

And what the hell happened with Ameer Abdullah? He was a beast in Week 1 against the Chargers and was facing a Vikings team that made Carlos Hyde look like a vintage LaDanian Tomlinson during the first game of the season. He totaled 18 all-purpose yards and played like he was allergic to the end zone. Maybe it was because Detroit fell behind early and went right into catch-up mode. If that is the case, then obviously it is an aspect that needs to be factored in here the more we learn about individual teams and their defensive schemes.

Again, the receivers seem to be where you need/should pay up. Antonio Brown is likely to be a staple in cash game lineups, at least until he becomes too cost-prohibitive, but staggering the receivers in tiers and fishing in the top two seems to be a solid move. I had great success with Julio Jones and Jordan Matthews as both have been great here in the early goings. Terrance Williams was a solid play, but we can now scratch him off our lists with Tony Romo out for the next eight weeks.

As for the tight end, I paid up a little for Greg Olsen and while he was great, there were definitely better bargains to be had. Predicting which ones will pan out each week, though, is going to take a little more data. We need to see which defenses have trouble covering the position as well as how often the quarterback looks for the tight end throughout the game. Crockett Gillmore was the guy to own and after looking at the first two weeks, my initial feeling is that the Raiders could be a team to target against when deciding on a pick. Tyler Eifert crushed them in Week 1 and Gillmore looked like a vintage Antonio Gates. Next up for the Raiders is Cleveland, so my next step is to look and see how many targets Gary Barnidge has seen from Johnny Manziel. Possible sleeper? Hmmm. Five targets in Week 1 but just one target this past week. Might be best served as a GPP dart.

With regard to the kickers, again, it’s about finding some high-scoring offenses with a strong opportunity to put up points. The one thing to be careful with, though, is this new rule about a 33-yard PAT versus just going for two from the 2-yard line. This is taking away opportunities for kickers as well as causing a significant number of misses here in the early part of the season. Josh Brown wasn’t a horrible choice, especially for the price, but there were certainly a number of kickers who were better.

And last but not least, we have the defense. Ugh. I paid up for the Dolphins who served me well in Week 1, but they decided to open up a can of suck and allowed the Jaguars to beat the snot out of them. More data will certainly help me in making my future choices, but I’m also going to have to really look at the Vegas point spreads and figure out some clear-cut favorites.

Once again, it’s a lot to digest but if we can continue learning each week, it shouldn’t be long before I start finishing consistently in the money for my cash games. I was a lot closer to the final money slot this week than I was in Week 1, so I’m not going to get discouraged here. Like any good experiment, there’s a lot of trial and error to start but refinement gets easier to further you go. The trick is to take some notes each week and use them to advance your knowledge for the upcoming games.

I’ll be back on this page Thursday morning to share more strategy and offer up some of the names I’ll be playing this week.

Good luck and I’ll see you all in the money this year!

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