I wrote this post last Friday the 14th but
never found the time to edit and post it for reasons which should become clear
below. I thought there was no harm in putting it up today as we all start to
prepare for week 12.
I didn’t manage to write a single blog post
last week which was disappointing seeing as I had set a goal of between two or
three articles a week. I managed to hit that target with relative ease over the
preceding weeks and if anything it should have been getting easier to churn out
posts as the weeks have gone by. I make DFS teams every week, watch as much NFL
as possible and I love thinking, talking and writing about it so there’s no
excuse really, outside of laziness and lack of motivation. Laziness and lack of
motivation, the bane of any writer’s existence. I don’t particularly want to
accept this and acknowledge my failure so it’s time to pull out the excuses.
My family were visiting from Ireland.
What’s that? Not a valid excuse you say, I could have found some time outside
of shepherding my parents around the sights and sounds of New England and
sampling the local cuisines, you think. Ok well try this one on for size. I got
married last weekend. Ah the sweet silence of my imaginary heckler. Yes I took the
plunge and pledged my allegiance to a woman. It may not be as exciting as a NFL
contract what with the lack of guaranteed money and an expiry date but I’m
hoping it doesn’t end in my agent failing to reach an agreement in a couple of
years and my new wife pouring through my vows looking for a way to recoup some
of that lost money. That’s a scary sentence to write less than one week into a
marriage.
Anyway I’ve told my -girlfriend-,
-fiancée-, wife I’m writing something about our big day this week and so
there’s a distinct possibility she might end up on what she considers to be the
enemy territory of rotogrinders to read this thing. That may or may not be the
reason I’m now going to tell you that it was a truly wonderful day and we
couldn’t be happier. I’d recommend it to anyone, what with the opportunity to
wear an expensive suit and drink champagne at 11 in the morning. Finding
someone to tolerate your gambling/DFS habit might not be as easy but worry
about that after the fact. (I was going to write something about posting some
wedding photos on my twitter if people wanted to see them in a shameless
attempt to garner some twitter followers then I realized how pathetic that
sounded so look, just follow me on twitter will you, I want to start talking DFS
with people, @stephengaffney)
I managed to roll some teams out last week
without even a hint of research besides reading one or two articles on
rotogrinders. The results were what you would have expected. I went with the
mostly chalk plays and managed to cash some minimum GPP’s due to Benjamin’s
garbage time TD’s. The pre wedding build up is a legitimate excuse for last
week’s lack of research and posts, but the post wedding activities have also
taken up a lot of my time and I subsequently find myself furiously trying to
piece this thing together early on Friday morning. With that being said, I’m doing it while sitting in a wood
cabin in New Hampshire gazing out at the first snow of the year so I can’t
necessarily complain. The post wedding activities do have their advantages.
Following on from the theme of the last
week I’ve decided to pick my DFS team for week 11 through the guiding principle
of love. I know all this ‘love’ talk is getting a bit heavy handed at this
stage but bear with me. One of the
best writer’s on this site, JMToWin, always talks about going through every
player each week and finding a reason to either play them or leave them out
entirely. This is excellent advice and you should do what he says, but with all
respect to JMToWin, I am completely ignoring it this week. As I’ve mentioned, these past few days
have been busy, hell I barely even got to watch any football on Sunday, but I’m
not letting another week go by without writing something and putting in some
half decent teams. I don’t feel like I have enough time to research and include
or discount every player and so like a lovesick teenager, I’m letting myself
fall in love this week.
As any of you who have read my posts in the
last few weeks will know, I have been building a, let’s call it, ‘gut instinct’
team early in the week and then expanding on those picks later in the week
through research and what not. Well this week I’m doing the slightly upgraded
version of the early week plan. I’m finding one thing I like about a player and
sticking with him. I know some players employ this strategy almost every week
and I can certainly see the merit in it but after that week where everybody and
his mother had Rashad Jennings and he got injured against Atlanta I got scared
off anchoring all my teams around a couple of players. There is just too much
randomness and potential injury every week to do that, or else I don’t have the
balls, who knows. I was going to make a joke about not having the balls being
linked to getting married but maybe that means I have more balls? I don’t know.
Answers from the married folk in the comments below would be appreciated.
Anyway, I’m getting off track. This is a
DFS website after all, not a recently married men helpline. I entered the team
below in a large GPP on DraftKings on the basis of one thing I liked about
their matchup this week and for the sake of clarity I’m just going to give the
one reason I based my decision on.
Quarterback
Aaron Rodgers
He’s Aaron Rodgers. He throw 6 touchdown’s
last week and his price hasn’t gone up. They could have priced him around 11k
and I think I would have found room for him.
Running Backs
Le’Veon Bell
He’s underpriced this week and offers the
best value out of the top RB’s.
Jeremy Hill
It was him or CJ Anderson and I went with
Hill as he’s slightly cheaper and will probably be under owned after the
disaster of last week. Speaking of that atrocity, I’m discounting it
completely. Just one of those crazy games where everything goes wrong. The
Bengals aren’t that bad.
Wide Receivers
Keenan Allen
Targets. That’s why I’m playing Keenan
Allen this week. He’s also reasonably priced and coming off a bye week so he
might get slightly forgotten about.
Playing any Chargers receivers is a shot in the dark though so I could
easily have put Malcolm Floyd in here as well.
Kelvin Benjamin
Vincent Jackson
See that blank space above. That’s not a
typo or the staff at rotogrinders censoring some fascist statement I’ve made,
that’s the amount of space I deem necessary to explain my reasons for starting
Benjamin this week. If in doubt
ask yourself because despite those drops, you know you have him somewhere this
week. As for Jackson, I want to target the Washington secondary and fade Mike
Evans.
Tight End
Jimmy Graham
Clearly it’s Graham or Gronk this
week. I went with Graham. I don’t
feel good about it but the reason I feel in ‘love’ with him, and I use that it
its loosest form, is the price differential and the fact that more people will
be on Gronk.
Flex
Davante Adams
Aaron Rodgers. That’s my one reason. I
think Adams will grab one of those sweet passes from No.12 and get in for a TD.
A couple more receptions and he should offer a nice ROI.
Defense
Broncos
Ok this is where my shaky pretense falls
apart. I don’t love the Broncos but I like them, and sometimes that’s
enough. You might not be in the
market for love, you might want a casual acquaintance who provides just a whiff
of romance. That’s the Denver Broncos this week. Take them out, buy them a drink or two, don’t splash out on
the expensive restaurant yet, and see how you feel after.
To put a bow on the theme this week I also
generously let my new wife select a team.
This was done with lots of cute smiles and chuckles as I tried not to be
a patronizing jerk like you often see women treated in anything sporting
related but let’s be honest here, if her team beats mine it would be nothing
short of an unmitigated disaster. If that happens I might pull an ‘Into The
Wild’ and walk into the woods never to be heard of again. I’m only kind of
kidding.
For those of you wondering, my team
comfortably beat my new life partner's one. All is right with the world.
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