Gary Gustafson 
Welcome home NFL DFS fans! This week, we have another solid slate on DraftKings with big prizes pools to take down so let’s get started with our top NFL DFS picks for this week’s main slate!
For those of you new to Picks and Pivots, the goal of this NFL DFS article each and every week is to provide you a “First Look” overview of the slate where we use DraftKings pricing as a baseline to help us get started. Rather than simply write out the “top plays,” this article will focus on slate strategy and roster construction with a GPP mindset to help you get started on your initial builds. Without further ado, let’s dive in!
NFL DFS Picks and Pivots: Week 13 First Look
Welcome welcome welcome back my friends and my family – we are officially into Week 13 of the NFL season after a wild Week 12 which gave us Wednesday Afternoon Football and now we turn our attention to Week 13 and our NFL DFS picks.
When you step back and look at this slate unlike in previous weeks, we don’t have the volume of “obvious” elite game environments with only 3 of the 12 games sporting totals of 50 or higher as of this writing.
The scheduling this week does have something to do with that as we have Kansas City off the Main Slate, we have THREE games now scheduled for Monday Night Football (which is going to make for a nice little Monday DFS Slate) and we have the Buccaneers/Panthers on bye which takes off some high octane plays like CMC and the Tampa Bay passing game.
The pricing on DraftKings adds another level of intrigue for me as we have some SERIOUS pay-ups this week with three players at $9K or higher in DaVantae Adams ($9K), Derrick Henry ($9.2K) and Dalvin Cook ($9.6K) – all three of which are now priced at their season high.
At this point in the season we do not need to argue the merit of these elite players talent or DFS ceiling – there is a reason they are priced where they are. I do wonder though what impact the pricing on these players will have on ownership and how folks attack this slate.
We only have to go back one week, where Cook was priced at an identical $9.5K in a SMASH NUT LOCK spot and we saw the masses all follow the group think – pairing Cook with the value backs we had and went about their day. Well – what happened?
Cook at 40-45% ownership barely cracked double-digit fantasy points and those who went Cook/Brian Hill – were left watching the field pass them quickly once the Kansas City Chiefs high priced stack took the late game hammer and sent the field reeling.
After playing and writing DFS for the last 5+ years there is one constant we can predict no matter the sport- recency bias is real. So after being uber chalk and busting and then starting your Week 13 research and seeing this news pop up – what do you think will happen?
If you tuned into my debut on the Win Daily Sports show on SiriusXM on Saturday (not so humblebrag), I made the case that Dalvin Cook was my “squirrel nuts on the table” fade of the week and the primary reason was that there were other high priced plays at a fraction of the ownership that had similarly high ceiling – notably the Chiefs passing game.
Now this week when you look at the “pivot” options off Cook, you have the obvious high dollar pivots like Henry as we mentioned but you really don’t have the same player pool up top that I think could rival a guy like Cook IF he has a ceiling game.
Now what this could all mean is that folks look at the pricing on Cook/Henry etc. and argue that the market rate has gotten to a point where there is simply no more value at the price tag and if that becomes the industry groupthink, does it leave the high dollar tiers under-owned relative to what we have seen in previous weeks?
While Cook/Henry provide logical either/or pivots at RB – Adams sits in a tier all by himself at WR against an Eagles secondary that we just watched DK Metcalf destroy on Monday Night Football. My initial reaction after watching what DK did to Darius Slay was – I wonder if Davante has had success against him – and then I saw this tweet from Matthew Freedman.
Well, that seems strong to quite strong.
There is no doubt that these three studs are likely the be the highest projected plays on the slate – all 3 of which make for great “plays” – but we know salary is a thing and I think this week it may force people out of this tier OR push them to pick just one high-level spend to build around
But you know how Picks and Pivots rolls – we are here to think different and we like to keep our strategic mindset each week and rather than simply pick just one of the studs – what about a build where we pick ALL THREE.
Yeah that’s right – Stars and Scrubs time my friends.
NFL DFS Picks and Pivots: Finding that Value:
Now, if we opt to go this route – I do not think it simply “starts and stops” with the Big 3 – I think by using DaVante Adams, you are essentially going to have to pair him with Aaron Rodgers ($6.8K) for the simple reason that you want that correlation and the multi-TD day for Adams means a multi-TD day for A-Aron. Rodgers in of himself is a strong play with 23+ DK points now in 6 straight games and considering his price point – makes for a budget-friendly addition to this top-heavy build.
Now – this is where we get into where the sausage is made – the land of $3K punts that is going to fill out the rest of our roster.
If you have been following along this year – this build has been a consistent model of profit as the typical injury news of the NFL combined with the COVID-19 pandemic has given us multiple paths to value on a weekly basis.
Writing this early in the week we already have some names that are going to pop and by Sunday that player pool will only grow. We saw this formula last week wherein Single Entry GPP’s (where I typically play) – guys like Nyheim Hines and Brian Hill were the value paths found consistently in winning lineups and were values we did not get until later in the week.
So stay tuned – but also, let’s not overlook some early value in some key spots.
The easy first stop here in Houston where the suspension to Will Fuller was not yet factored into the DraftKings pricing algorithm and thus leaves us multiple NFL DFS picks to grab from the Texans with two punt values in Keke Coutee ($3.5K) and Isaiah Coulter ($3K).
The loss of Fuller, the injury to Randall Cobb and the release of Kenny Stills takes 1,110 WR snaps out of the Texans lineup which represents a whopping 63% of the Texans WR snaps this season that are now up for grabs and fall right into the lap of Coutee/Coulter who right away step into roles that far outpace their bargain price point on DK.
If you translate this to target share – through 12 weeks, the Texans WR’s and Tight Ends have accounted for a total of 294 targets and with Fuller/Stills/Cobb now off the field – that takes 142 or 48% of the distributed targets away from Deshaun Watson.
Now Brandin Cooks becomes the logical WR1 now, the clear alpha dog with a 26% target share to date that should only expand – but I think it is fair to question just how much it expands and especially this week against the Colts and CB Xavier Rhodes.
So I already mentioned Coutee and Coulter but you can expand this discussion to the Tight End position like Jordan Akins ($2.9K). If Cooks role stays steady/slightly expands – the reality is – we still have 50% target share now up for grabs in a pass-heavy & dynamic offense. So while it may be best to simply “pick one” of Coutee/Coulter/Akins – what if we make the argument to play all three?
That trio costs you a total of $9.4K on DraftKings – so think about this another way. Is this almost like paying for a $9K WR who will see roughly 50% of a team’s targets?
I know it is not apples to apples and maybe it does not play out this way – but rather than roll the dice and pick just one Texans value, can you stack it up and take the lion’s share of the targets and hope you picked all the right values.
Andy Isabella ($3.2K) was a popular DraftKings value last week with Larry Fitzgerald sidelined and it resulted in a season-high snap count at 55% with 6 targets against New England. Isabella was a popular salary saver last week because of his expanded role and because he did not SMASH – people will move on to the shiny new Week 13 value – meanwhile every reason you played him in Week 12 still applies.
NFL DFS Picks and Pivots: Wrap up
We talked about this on the SirusXM show on Saturday bur my process every single week in the NFL is the same when coming up with my NFL DFS picks – I start with an early week core and try to find the value as the week goes on to make it all work.
This week -my hope is that the inflated pricing keeps folks off the three high-priced stars – now maybe not to the point where any ONE play is sneaky but how many people will try to fit ALL THREE?
The key is making the value work and it will require multiple punts but on a weekly basis that path has opened up as the week has gone on – and as noted above, we already have values that we can use as a basis of our player pool.
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