Daily Fantasy Football: Draftkings NFL GPP pivots for week 5

Daily Fantasy Football: Draftkings NFL GPP pivots for week 5

Welcome back, FanSiders, to the DraftKings NFL week 5 edition of GPP Daily Fantasy Football Pivots. I’m “Thunder Dan” and I’ll be writing this column every week this season with the goal of giving you some of the best Fantasy Football plays at each position every week at low ownership.

I am trying something new this week and dropping this article on Thursday. While projected ownership percentages at FanShare Sports aren’t available until Friday, I can still use the player tags tool to get a good idea of which players will be chalky this week on Draftkings. I’ll update my GPP thoughts on Saturday with any changes based on ownership, injuries, etc…

Let’s do a quick review of last week’s picks, starting with the good ones!

Cooper Kupp– 29.9 DK points

Leonard Fournette – 29.5 DK points

Jared Goff – 27.68 DK points

David Johnson – 21.9 DK points

These guys didn’t kill you but also didn’t quite hit their ceilings, either…

Sterling Shepard – 16.9 DK points

Derrick Henry – 14.8 DK points

Mark Andrews – 13.1DK points

And of course, there were some duds…

Deshaun Watson – 12.6 DK points

Case Keenum – .48 DK points (benched early in the game, ouch!)

Curtis Samuel – 6.3 DK points

Larry Fitzgerald – 9.7 DK points

Vernon Davis – 1.5 DK points

"My goal in this column every week is to try to help you find those pivots. My process is always to identify the chalk first, evaluate if these plays are worthy of being as popular as they will be on Sunday, and then identifying pivots at similar price points at the same position."

You can pivot off one player in a popular offense to another teammate at a different position, too. Pivoting is all about thinking outside the box. If the DFS community is engaged in a massive groupthink all week about a certain player or game, then a good contrarian GPP player is going to go against the grain in spots that they feel strongly about.

Chalky plays are usually optimal plays and if you’re building cash lineups you should be stuffing a lot of them in those lineups. But for GPPs we are looking for some leverage by either fading “bad chalk” or pivoting to some lower owned plays that can outscore the chalkier plays.

You don’t need a lineup full of players who are 10% or lower to win a GPP. In fact, we’ve seen a lot of chalky plays on winning lineups already this season. What you do need to do is mix and match the more popular plays with some of your favorite pivots in order to create some unique rosters!