NFL FanDuel Picks and Pivots – Week 4 Fantasy Football

Welcome to the Week 4 NFL FanDuel edition of Picks and Pivots, a fantasy football column focused on helping you find the best core lineup for this week’s Main Slate of DFS action!

For those of you finding us for the first time, the concept behind NFL FanDuel Picks and Pivots is to first identify key building blocks that can be used for any roster construction and then identify pivot points to help differentiate your lineup in hopes of a big payday!

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Week 3 is in the books and for the second straight week a stack built around the Patriots passing game was at the core of the winning million dollar GPP’s on FanDuel built around Tom Brady, Brandin Cooks and Rob Gronkowski! The winning GPP line-up scored over 200 points which was the first week of the NFL season where we saw winning tournament scores eclipse that mark as a variety of high scoring games drove the DFS scores up to new heights!

Picks and Pivots is not a simple “best plays” column but rather it focuses on slate strategy and roster construction to help give you insight into how I will look to play this slate! The goal of this article is to dig through the slate, highlight our top plays and give you a sample line-up as an example of what our core roster build could look like using the analysis we lay out in the coming pages!

As always, we will look to update our picks and final lineup thought  prior to lock on our twitter account @FantasyCPR so make sure to give us a follow for all the late breaking lineup news.

Without further ado, let’s get into this week’s slate!

NFL FanDuel: What Have We Learned So Far:

With three weeks in the books, one of the things I want to establish in each week’s column is a continual look back at winning tournament rosters so that we can identify roster build trends and let that help us as we build our rosters moving forward.

The one thing I have harped on through the first three weeks of the NFL season when it comes to DFS – 1) Rely on Vegas to help guide us and 2) Don’t over think your plays – let others get cute and try to fade the best spots. Week 3, just like Week 2, was literally the perfect example of this where the New England Patriots came in with one of the highest Vegas totals on the board and a QB-WR-TE stack was at the core build of the winning GPP rosters as Brady and Co. torched the Texans defense for multiple scores in a come from behind victory!

Through Week 3 – the winning roster build (using the FanDuel Millionaire GPP as the baseline) looks as follows:

• QB: Average Salary ($8,733) and Average FD Points (31.5)
• RB: Average Salary ($7,283) and Average FD Points (21.2)
• WR: Average Salary ($6,822) and Average FD Points (21.2)
• TE: Average Salary ($7,067) and Average FD Points (19.5)
• K: Average Salary ($4,600) and Average FD Points (12.7)
• DEF: Average Salary ($4,500) and Average FD Points (19.0)

Through the first three weeks of the season it has been the Quarterbacks that have been the key to winning and really it has been Tom Brady in Week 2 and 3 putting up monster numbers which is skewing both the average salary as the highest priced QB in the game and the higher average QB scores! Interestingly enough the trend has been to pay down to the mid-tier at both RB and WR as we have seen players like Stefon Diggs ($6,500) in Week 3 explode for monster games at a significant multiplier over their price point!

After a more balanced roster build in Week 1, Weeks 2 and 3 have shown the importance of stacking in GPP’s but with so much of that data tied to the Patriots offense it will be important to decide whether stacking an offense or stacking the PATRIOTS offense is really the key difference maker!

NFL FanDuel: Stack it Up!

By this point I am sure you are sick of the New England Patriots themed article, and as a Jets fan believe me, I am just as sick of writing it. However, it would be naive of me (and you) to ignore the winning formula that stacking the Patriots has rendered early on in the DFS season.

The Patriots lead the NFL in points per game at 33 and step into Week 4 with the highest projected team total at 29 (remember we can listen to Vegas early in the season) against a Carolina Panthers defense that just gave up three passing TD’s to Drew Brees and the Saints! Tom Brady ($9,500) is pricey – REALLY pricey – in fact he is $1,500 more than the next closest signal caller on the slate in Matt Ryan but that price point and a perceived “tough match-up” may actually lead to lower than deserved ownership on Tom Terrific who was only 6% owned last week.

Rob Gronkowski ($8,500) has been on back to back week winning rosters while leading the Patriots in targets and can be easily paired with Brandin Cooks ($7,900) facing a Carolina defense that is ranked 27th in DVOA to opposing WR1’s so far this season. The reality is, the Patriots stack will be popular so adding a fourth piece to this stack as a correlation play in Panthers Running Back Christian McCaffery ($6,400) is a great way to build off the highest projected scoring game on the slate!

So far this season, the Patriots are ranked 28th against the rush and against running back pass catchers and McCaffery is coming off a monumental week for him as the go to offensive weapon for a Panthers team without Greg Olsen and with Kelvin Benjamin likely to miss this game. In fact, McCaffery was responsible for 34.4% of the Panthers targets in this game – a figure higher than players like Julio Jones or Mike Evans – so it would be safe to expect that Panthers rookie to remain a critical offensive focus especially considering the likelihood that Carolina is forced to play catch-up.

If you are looking for pivots you can easily build multiple line-ups off this same core by pivoting to Chris Hogan ($6,900) or a dirt cheap Devin Funchess ($5,400) who racked up 10 targets last week, 7 of which came after Kelvin Benjamin was forced out with an injury! The value plays here make this stack easy to build and will be at the core of my GPP rosters this week!

NFL FanDuel: Finding Value Plays around a High Dollar Stack:

If you plan to stack the high salaried Patriots stars then you are going to need to find the value RB/WR plays that have been so critical to the winning roster builds the last two weeks!

Jacquizz Rodgers ($5,300) With Doug Martin out for another week due to suspension, Quizz has another opportunity to dominate the Tampa Bay backfield, an opportunity he has squandered to this point in the NFL season. A match-up with the New York Giants may be just the thing to shake the rust off for Rodgers as the G-Men are ranked 29th in DVOA to opposing running backs this season and have given up over 100 yards rushing in each game so far this season!

Rodgers struggled in Week 3 against a Vikings team that is giving up the fewest fantasy points per game to running backs and also suffered due to the fact the Bucs found themselves down 21-3 at the half and had to come out throwing but in their Week 2 match-up against the Bears, Rodgers racked up 19 carries for 67 yards and a TD in a closer contest. This game against the Giants has a 3 point spread and I would expect the Bucs to attack the Giants biggest weakness on defense and pound the ball with Quizz in Week 4!

Sanders on the season has accounted for 30% of the teams passing targets, the fifth highest mark of any WR in the NFL, so to get that kind of volume at this price point is simply a steal!

Demaryius Thomas ($6,900) and Emmanuel Sanders ($6,900): The Denver Broncos have the sixth highest team total on the Main Slate and will take on a Oakland Raiders team ranked 28th in DVOA against the pass this season. Sanders on the season has accounted for 30% of the teams passing targets, the fifth highest mark of any WR in the NFL, so to get that kind of volume at this price point is simply a steal!

Oakland has actually been quite good at limiting the opposing running game this season with no RB gaining more than 55 yards rushing but they have been gashed through the air both by opposing WR’s and RB’s like Redskins Chris Thompson last week!

With C.J. Anderson seemingly splitting carries now with a rejuvenated Jamaal Charles combined with their limited pass game involvement (3-4 targets per game) leads me to lean towards stacking the Denver WR duo who get consistent targets in a game Vegas loves that may get over-looked!

NFL FanDuel – Sample Line-Up and Slate Overview

Please Note: This is NOT an optimized line-up, it is simply illustrative to show the type of roster build we can have using the logic previously laid out in Picks and Pivots. My actual line-up may differ from the line-up shown here. 

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QB: Tom Brady ($9,500)

RB: Christian McCaffery ($6,400)

RB: Jacquizz Rodgers ($5,300)

WR: Brandin Cooks ($7,900)

WR: Emmanuel Sanders ($6,900)

WR: Demaryius Thomas ($6,900)

TE: Rob Gronkowski ($8,500)

K: Ka’imi Fairbairn ($4,500)

DEF: New York Jets ($4,100)

Slate Overview: The Patriots stack has been a winning formula to this point in the season and seems primed for another monster day in DFS but rostering the high-priced players in this offense will require you to dig deep for value. With high volume players with  defined roles and little competition we can fill out a high upside roster around them and can take some salary saving steps including rostering a New York Jets defense at home for only $4.1K against Blake Bortles and the Jaguars!

Next: DraftKings NFL GPP Picks

best of luck in your NFL FanDuel contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR as we get you set for all the Week 4 NFL DFS and Fantasy Football action!