If you are new to DFS, a Primer is available here. Full Appendix available at the bottom for any terms not understood here. 

Apologies for the late release this week. Like many of us, my normal weekly schedule was thrown for a spin with the holiday. I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving, and I want to extend my thanks to you, the reader for coming here to DFF to read our work. Y’all are the best and I couldn’t be more grateful. On to the slate, despite no teams on byes we have only a 10-game slate this Sunday thanks to all the Thanksgiving/Black Friday games. Let’s jump right in.

Week 11 Report Card

Cash Lineup

H2H ITM%: 0%

H2H ROI: (-100%)

Double Up Cash Line: 157.86

November has been a brutal month for me. Part of the ebb and flow of playing daily fantasy sports. This was a late swap after playing Curtis Samuel instead of Rondale Moore and D.J. Moore instead of Tank Dell. Originally it would have been Brock Purdy instead of Stafford, Christian McCaffrey instead of Ken Walker, and Garrett Wilson instead of Cooper Kupp. I needed to gain some leverage if I wanted a chance. So we swapped to something correlated to give ourselves an out. Unfortunately, two of the three I swapped to, got hurt. The process of the swap was good, but if you are swapping, it means you were behind to begin with. 

Single Entry

ROI: (-100%)

Cash Line: 152.82

Winning Score: 221.12

The first big play on NFL RedZone was a 48-yard touchdown to Rondale Moore while I was washing dishes in the kitchen, and I was thoroughly convinced that I was going to have more money than I knew what to do with. A few minutes later I see that De’Von Achane is out and I am sick to my stomach. I have a ton of shares in Dynasty and played him in a ton of lineups. My Sunday was dead in the water about halfway through the first quarter. In the two lineups I’ve shown so far, I have three injuries and an ejection.

MME

ROI: (-70%)

ITM %: 15%

Top Lineup Payout: 2x

Cash Line: 146.02

Winning Score: 222.42

The poor runout didn’t stop with cash and single entry. I played 40% Curtis Samuel so nearly half my lineups were ejected from contention early in the afternoon. That is the risk if you decide to have that much exposure to a player. This was my only Justin Fields lineup, but I knew I wanted some exposure to Fields since that game had some decent shootout potential. Getting near 4x FTPS/$1K out of a 2.4% owned Jameson Williams was a nice one. The snowflakes were too much to overcome for a decent payout. The Barkley and Giants D/ST correlation was also a complete hammer at 2.6% and 1.5%, respectively, and a combined 53 points for $10.1K.

Highest Totals

Bills @ Eagles (48.5)

Jaguars @ Texans (47.5)

These games both project to be awesome from a fantasy perspective and a real-life football perspective. I know the Bills have had some issues this season, but in the single-game sample size, they cannot be counted out in any particular week. Both games present stacking options from both sides of the game, but all these players will be very popular this week so keep that in mind. 

Top Stacks

Jalen Hurts (PHI): $8,300 vs. Buffalo

Jalen has had a fantastic season both throwing the ball and running that incredibly effective quarterback sneak. The Eagles’ already narrow target tree is even more narrow now with Dallas Goedert out with an injury. It will be really hard to get super creative with your Hurts stacks unless you want to play one of the tight ends or WR3s. Jack Stoll (3.0K) and Julio Jones (3.3K) both played over 50% of the snaps in Week 11, but both feel incredibly thin unless they happen to luck box a touchdown.

Josh Allen (BUF): $8,100 @ Philadelphia

I know this hasn’t been the best season for Josh Allen from a real fantasy perspective but he still has just as much upside as anyone at the position. Allen also presents more configurations for a roster build than Hurts with Stefon Diggs ($8.8K), Gabe Davis ($5.3K), Khalil Shakir ($3.6K), and Dalton Kincaid ($5.3K) all as great stacking options at multiple price points. He is also currently projecting less ownership than Hurts as well. Both will be less popular than the next guy on our list due to pricing.

Trevor Lawrence (JAX): $6,400 @ Houston

Being the cheapest quarterback in either of the highest-totaled games by a significant margin will cause Lawrence to be very chalky. Similar to Allen, he also has a variety of stacking partners at different price points. That combined with his cheaper price makes it easy to fit in whatever other plays you want to slot in without sacrificing correlation or upside from your primary stack.

Top Plays

A.J. Brown (PHI): $9,000 vs. Buffalo

Coming off a tough performance in Kansas City last week, I expect we will see Philly attempt to get the ball to their best pass catcher early and often this week. The Bills’ defense has been decimated by injuries all over the place, in particular the secondary. He has had a bit of a return to the earth the past few weeks, but we know he is a guy capable of absolutely crushing a slate on any given Sunday afternoon. The price tag is very expensive, but very few guys in football possess his level of ceiling.

Travis Kelce (KC): $8,200 @ Las Vegas

He is a bit overpriced here if we are honest with our projections here. The good news is that he may come in massively under-owned for that reason. He is nearly $3K more than the next highest-priced tight end and takes away a spot that you can normally save salary at by going cheap so it is a real cost to have Kelce in the lineup. Enough with the negatives though, the positives are that if he puts up a vintage Kelce game then he will be necessary if you want to spike in a DFS tournament this weekend. He may have some extra motivation after some critical mistakes in last week’s game against the Eagles. Rarely do we ever get a low-owned Travis Kelce, I will be taking advantage as much as I can.

Jonathan Taylor (IND): $6,900 vs. Tampa Bay

Taylor projects as the highest-scoring running back on the slate at $1.5K less than the highest salary at the position. Because of this, he also will likely be the most-played player on the entire slate. I still think it is more than fine just to eat the chalk and play him here. The matchup is not a great one but with 24 or more touches in the last two weeks, volume should be enough to get there. The Colts are also slight favorites here so game script could work in his favor.

Value Plays

Najee Harris (PIT): $4,900 @ Cincinnati

I cannot believe I am writing about Najee Harris again in the year 2023. Under $5K for a running back is just incredibly cheap. The line in this game has moved from the Bengals being slight favorites to the Steelers being slight favorites so sharp money is on the Steelers. This is also the first week without Matt Canada so perhaps the offense for the Steelers gets a slight boost. I know it’s gross, and I will likely go take a shower immediately after clicking the name, but the price is just too low.

Greg Dortch (ARI): $3,300 vs. Los Angeles (N)

Last week with Michael Wilson out, it was Greg Dortch who received all the vacated targets, not Rondale Moore. While Rondale was able to get there because of the long touchdown, what Dortch did last week with 6 catches on 8 targets was something much more replicable than a 48-yard touchdown. We have seen Dortch be successful from a fantasy perspective with Kyler Murray ($6.9K) in the past, and he should get the volume this week.

Justin Watson (KC): $3,000 @ Las Vegas

He is already projected for a 10% ownership, and that number could easily steam by Sunday morning since a min-priced receiver opens up so much salary. Game log watchers are going to see 11 targets and start drooling. He also has a big play upside that we have seen in the past and plays with the single-best quarterback on the entire planet. I like him as a piece to complete a contrarian build, but there is some high risk that if he fails to get there, you are eating bad chalk with you and a bunch of other people. Using him sparingly and selectively would be my advice.

Value Stacks

Baker Mayfield (TB): $5,500 @ Tampa Bay

It feels like a weekly tradition at this point, but with over 19 points in half the games he has played this season and still a sub $6K price tag, my hand is forced here. The Colts’ defense has had its ranking improve the last couple of weeks, but they also played against the Carolina Panthers and New England Patriots, teams great for making your defense look good. I know last week Baker was brutal, but we are going to trust the process here and jam him in again this week.

Gardner Minshew II (IND): $5,100 vs. Indianapolis

One of the reasons Baker projects so well is that his defense can be gotten through the air. The Buccaneers defense got shredded by Brock Purdy (one of last week’s value stacks) and is currently 30th against opposing quarterbacks. The price tag is very low so we do not need a ton to justify it. He has not been great the last couple of weeks, but he also scored 34.1 fantasy points against the best defense in football about a month ago so we know there is a ceiling with Minshew.

Low Owned Guys

Kyren Williams (LAR): $6,600 @ Arizona

This is a 100% recency bias situation going on here. People got burned badly by playing De’Von Achane last week just for him to be out before the end of the first quarter. It’s me, I’m people. So now, Kyren has returned, and people are still having flashbacks to last week. Let fear control other DFS players, not us. Kyren gets to return against the team he was injured against in Week 6 where he took 20 carries for 158 yards and a touchdown before the injury. The Rams won pretty easily so he had literally zero targets in that game. The Cardinals are a much different team with Kyler Murray back so the Rams should be throwing the ball a bit more, and we can get some PPR value out of the second-year back.

Drake London (ATL): $5,000 vs. New Orleans

I know why he is under-owned. We all do. He could be Arthur Smith’d at any point while we watch Khadarel Hodge ($3.2K) and Jonnu Smith ($3.4K) go ham. I must be a glutton for punishment because I’ve continued to play London, Bijan Robinson ($6.5K), and Kyle Pitts ($4.0K) using the talent argument just to be fully tilted watching Arthur Smith stick it to fantasy managers. We have gotten a couple of ceiling games from London this season so we know the upside exists, it does carry risk though as all low-owned plays do.

Gut Play of the Week

Dalton Kincaid (BUF): $5,300 @ Philadelphia

Normally I go a bit more contrarian for my gut play, but I’m just following the massive target share here. It is also at a position where you really can differentiate yourself if your guy smashes. Last week he had his worst week since the Dawson Knox injury with only 10.6 fantasy points against a tough Jets defense. I expect them to use lots of Kincaid in a matchup that should require the Bills to be throwing the ball a lot.

Conclusion

Another fun-looking slate that I am excited to build for, hopefully, we can dodge all the injuries that we had last week wrecking some nice lineups. We have a few games that could shoot out beyond the two with the highest totals so be sure to build in plenty of correlation around games that you believe have the potential to go off. Good luck and make some money!

Thanks so much for reading. If you want to discuss more, you can reach me on Twitter, you can find me @DougHarrelson on there. Also don’t forget to sign up for our Dynasty Football Factory Membership to get all things Dynasty, DFS, Sports Betting, Devy, and IDP. Annual Subscribers also get access to our discord server where you can get access to our entire staff!