Welcome back to the weekly DFS College Football FanDuel review. This edition is focused on the Saturday Main slate for Week 10 of the season. We’ll discuss top DFS CFB options by position for your FanDuel DFS CFB slates.
Playing the main DFS CFB FanDuel slates each Saturday can be like finding a needle in a haystack. There are so many games within the main slate, they’re played over a eight-plus hour time-frame, and you have so many players to pick from the lineup focus can be overwhelming.
Another wrinkle are the match ups. I usually try to focus on which offense has the best defensive match up. But, it’s dangerous to avoid some of the best players on the field just because they have a tougher match up.
There are some players who elevate to another level during those games, and you miss cash and GPP winnings because you faded them for a safer play. That issue has bitten me a few times this season.
All of those things come into play for the Saturday, November 2nd, Main slate for DFS CFB Saturday. FanDuel decided to go with 15 games for the slate, so you have players from 30 teams to pick through at each position. The slate also covers games starting at noon through 8pm ET. And, some of the best DFS CFB teams to pick from also happen to have their toughest match ups of the season on Saturday. So, who do we focus on?
Before we get there, a reminder to never take a DFS CFB optimal lineup as ‘bible’ for your personal lineup each day. Use the suggestions as guidance. Also, make sure you follow final lineup thoughts throughout the day on our twitter account @FantasyCPR or me @MattyMcMatt17 look for late breaking lineup news.
Here’s a look at the schedule for the Saturday Week 10 Main Slate:
Syracuse at Wake Forest 12pm ET
Iowa Stat at Kansas 12pm ET
Louisville at Clemson 12pm ET
Oklahoma State at Baylor 12pm ET
Nebraska at Ohio State 12pm ET
West Virginia at Texas 3:30pm ET
Georgia at Kentucky 3:30pm ET
Penn State at Michigan 3:45pm ET
Boston College at Virginia Tech 3:40pm ET
Missouri at Florida 4pm ET
Utah at Arizona State 4pm ET
Houston at SMU 7pm ET
Notre Dame at Northwestern 7:15pm ET
Oklahoma at Texas Tech 8pm ET
Alabama at LSU 8pm ET
Ironically, the Bama game in Baton Rogue is probably the one game everyone wants to play but won’t. You have two very good offenses facing two very good defenses. However, that isn’t necessarily moving me away from take a few players from that game.
Notre Dame is playing a road game against a sneaky good Northwestern team. Don’t be fooled by their record, they remind me of Perdue. They started the season struggling to win, but not getting blown out either. Only to put thing together by mid-season and they’re now one of the most dangerous teams in their conference to play.
The West Virginia and Texas clash in Austin will be interesting to watch. Both teams have some of the best offensive players in college football. But which team has a better defense? We may need to grab some players from that big match up as well.
Let’s start off by looking at our top quarterback picks.
DFS CFB FanDuel Week 10: Saturday Quarterbacks
From a purely passing perspective, I really like Dwayne Haskins ($10,300) on his home field facing a Nebraska Cornhuskers team that looks like a shell of it’s former self. Of the group of quarterback options, Haskins has been one of the best at piling up passing yards and passing touchdowns.
But, I have a few worries as I considering plugging Dwayne into my lineup. One is obvious, could the Buckeyes already be well within a victory by mid-third quarter, limiting Haskins DFS CFB productivity? That’s certainly possible.
But, another concern I have is Haskins ground game compared to other quarterback options. This is a concern that consistently keeps me from playing him in my DFS CFB lineups, and it continues this Saturday.
A good example is comparing air-game dominance from Will Grier (10,100) and Haskins to more duel-threat type options like D’Eriq King ($10,800), Kyler Murray ($10,600), or Eric Dungey ($10,200).
I still love Haskins as a top five play at quarterback, but King is averaging over 40 points-per-game, while Murray isn’t far behind with 35.44 FanDuel points-per-game. Dungey’s average should be higher, but he was knocked out of the FSU game earlier with an injury.
In fact, he likely could’ve had closer to 40 points in that game, considering how horrible the Seminoles looked in Syracuse. But Dungey’s passing game hasn’t be as dominate as King or Murray’s.
That is why King and Murray are the most expensive quarterbacks. This is also why I like the idea of paying up for one of them as my top quarterback. But then the next question is, who? Well, that answer isn’t simple.
Last week, King was on another level against a good South Florida football team, throwing for over 400 yards and five touchdowns. But King also added 12 rushes for an insane 132 yards and another two touchdowns. It’s fair to see you likely cashed with King’s 61.16 FanDuel points in your lineup last week.
In fact, aside from a 20-ish point stinker against ECU, which looking back is odd, King has been fairly consistent with his 30 to 40 points per game. But, So has Murray. Since September 8th, Murray hasn’t thrown for less than three touchdowns in a game, when an option for a FanDuel DFS CFB play.
Also, Murray has 40+ rushing yards in his last seven starts and six rushing touchdowns in the last seven games. Yeah, but what about the defense? Well, that’s where things start to move into Murray’s favor for me.
Texas Tech is giving up 283.4 passing yards per game. That is 119th, 130 teams, in college football. Or simply, that’s terrible! Even at Texas Tech, I think Murray goes off in the air game, gets over 400 yards in a Baylor-like performance, and we get 40 to 50 points from his play.
You also can’t go wrong paying up an additional $200 for King, but I’d rather just save the $200 and lock in Kyler for all most lineups this weekend.
DFS CFB FanDuel Week 10: Saturday Running Backs
The position giving me the most angst this weekend is running back. There are many great options on the ground, that are too expensive. If you go with someone like Travis Etienne ($10,100), my favorite DFS CFB running back right now, you really lose leverage to play someone like King or Murray at the QB position, which can get you more points than the RB position.
So, given my high-point QB strategy on Saturday, I’m likely fading Etienne. But, if you’re not going with that strategy, play him. Ignore the 4.5 FanDuel points he got against FSU last week. Etienne isn’t playing against that type of talent this week, and FSU clearly had a game plan to stack the box against Etienne and make Clemson throw the ball (it didn’t work).
Beyond Etienne, I’m unimpressed with the expensive running back options while considering their match ups. Oddly, I kept coming back to Nick Brossette ($8,800) after skipping him when considering the match up against Bama.
The Crimson Tide have only given up three rushing touchdowns this season. That is surely a deterrent from playing Brossette. But, I was surprised to see they’ve given up 113.4 yards on the ground per game this year.
Also, on the road against the Razorbacks, Bama gave up 102 yards Rakeem Boyd on just 15 carries. And if there’s a team who could punch it on against the Crimson Tide, it’s LSU with their 6′ 0” 221 lbs. senior back Brossette. There’s clear risk with this play, but there’s also a lot of upside, especially considering the likely low ownership on FanDuel.
For our second running back pick, I like a relatively unknown option from Northwestern. A few weeks ago, Northwestern’s offense was struggling against Rutgers of all teams. Desperate for just about any ball movement, they gave Isaiah Bowser ($7,000) a shot at pounding the rock.
Boy, did he. Bowser piled up 108 rushing yards with 24 touches, and saw the end zone twice. Isaiah also had a catch for six yards, something I’m hoping they continue to work on in the future. So the next game, against a better Wisconsin Badgers team, Northwestern stuck with Bowser and were rewarded with another 117 yards on the ground and another touchdown, after 34 carries.
That’s exactly the type of production I’m hoping to see continued on their home field against Notre Dame. Again, facing a tough defense, we should see Isaiah get somewhere between 20 and 30 carries, and hopefully he punches the ball in for a touchdown. So for a fairly cheap running back pick, we could see a solid 15-20 point return. I’ll take that along with low ownership.
DFS CFB FanDuel Week 10: Saturday Wide Receivers
At wide receiver, there’s at least one obvious play we need to make. We already identified the strong passing game we’re expecting from Murray and the Sooners against Texas Tech. Obviously Kyler has to throw the ball to a few receivers to pile up that many yards, and hopefully several touchdowns.
So, why not go with mister consistent, CeeDee Lamb ($9,300). He’s only hauling in three to six receptions per game, but Lamb has at least one touchdown in each of his last seven games. He totals nine touchdowns in that time, adding a second against Army and Kansas State. Lamb has also exceeded 100 receiving yards three times this season, Saturday being a likely fourth.
We spent a lot of coin on our top receiver pick, and I want to have a decent amount of salary left over for the Super Flex option. So for the next two receiver picks, I’m going to look for more mid-salary range type of picks, potentially even finding a value nugget.
I talked about King at quarterback earlier, and while researching the Houston game at SMU, I landed on a result I wasn’t expecting. Reggie Roberson Jr. ($8,100) was virtually a no-name in the SMU passing game until late October.
That’s when things go interesting. In a mach up SMU should be favored against Tulane, Roberson showed up on October 20th to haul in seven passes, piled up 99 yards and recorded a touchdown. That was his second after scoring his first for SMU against Navy in late September.
Maybe it was an anomaly, but it’s hard to believe that after Reggie then racked up seven more receptions against the Bearcats of Cincinnati. Against a better opponent, SMU entrusted Roberson with more passes and he piled up an incredible 147 receiving yards while seeing the end zone twice. There is a trend developing, and I want to pounce on the value while it’s there.
For a final play at receiver, we’re going back to Baton Rogue, LA but the other sideline. I realize targeting LSU’s defense isn’t exactly ideal. But I like the production from Jaylen Waddle ($6,500) in the last four games.
Waddle was unleashed against Louisiana Lafayette, hauling in three receptions for 138 yards and two touchdowns. Last week, in Knoxville, TN, Waddle added another four receptions for over 100 yards and another touchdown.
In fact, Jaylen has three or more receptions in four of the last five games. Waddle appears to emerging in the Crimson Tide’s passing game and could be a sneaky play against a tough LSU defense.
DFS CFB FanDuel Week 10: Saturday Summary
Before we summarize the top plays at each position, first I want to focus on the Super Flex position. If you stick with each of the top plays we discussed, then you have $9,700 left on the table to play with for your Super Flex spot. If you jumped up for King at QB, you still have $9,500.
That is plenty of salary to grab for a good chunk of the top DFS CFB players. I spun through the list of options, and kept coming back to Sam Ehlinger ($9,600) hosting the Mountaineers in Austin, Texas.
Ehlinger is one of those duel-threat options at quarterback, and his salary seems to be a tad cheap considering the match up. West Virginia is in the middle of the college football world when defending the pass, and they’re 108th against the run.
Most of the Mountaineers success has really be on the offensive side of the ball. So I’m not afraid to plug a duel-threat QB of Ehlinger’s caliber against WVU at home.
So we have Murray or King at quarterback and we’re frankly taking some risky shots at Running back with Brossette and and Bowser. We’re going to stack Lamb with Murray and at receiver and add Roberson and Waddle. And we already mentioned Ehlinger at the Super Flex spot.
With that summary in mind, here’s a look at a sample lineup for the Week 10 DFS CFB FanDuel Saturday Main slate:
QB Kyler Murray ($10,600)
RB Nick Brossette ($8,800)
RB Isaiah Bowser ($7,000)
WR CeeDee Lamb ($9,300)
WR Reggie Roberson Jr. ($8,100)
WR Jaylen Waddle ($6,500)
Flex Sam Ehlinger ($9,600)
Remaining Salary: $100
Note: This is a recommended lineup after discussing our top options for the slate. You should use this as a guide, and provide your own input when building DFS CFB FanDuel lineups. We are not telling you, or selling you, to use this lineup.
Best of luck in your DFS CFB FanDuel contests and stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all your DFS news and analysis across College Football, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, EPL, PGA, and NASCAR this fall!