Your season-long fantasy team sometimes has an unexpected impact on your weekly team. Take my Week 7 FanDuel roster, for example.
FanDuel: Finding roster inspiration from your full-season league
I was just clicking around, fixing a roster I’d neglected, and I found one of my best potential bargains of the week.
Sean Gardner
I have Travis Kelce in a lot of fantasy rosters, and Jimmy Graham in one. So last week, with both on a bye, I had to find a lot of replacements. I used Tim Wright in a league, Owen Daniels in a couple,and even made a trade for Antonio Gates in one. And, knowing Graham could be out for longer, I figured the guy I picked up a week ago would hold me.
And then I didn't think of that roster again until Thursday morning, when I sat down to make sure my lineups were all in order. And I realized that I still had Daniels set to start at tight end in that league. Now, a couple weeks ago, I was all aboard the Daniels bandwagon. I thought he'd slide right into the Dennis Pitta role in the Gary Kubiak offense and be fully productive. And I was wrong, but with so many fantasy teams, I simply forgot that I didn't have a tight end worth starting who I was excited about.
I was late on this and didn't come around for waiver wire time (seriously, y'all, so many teams). So all I could do was troll and hope. The wire had the usual suspects - Scott Chandler, Eric Ebron, Jace Amaro. I was considering, thinking, but not excited. And then I scrolled down, just hoping that, I don't know, Rob Gronkowski had been mysteriously dropped or something. I didn't have a goal, but I had a few extra minutes.
You'd think, owning Graham, that I'd have thought of this earlier, but I scrolled far enough to find Josh Hill.
He hasn’t had a lot of targets this year -- eight in five games -- but Hill has two touchdowns, and with Graham out, he might see a spike. At the very least, it’s not like Chandler/Ebron/Amaro have that much more upside. So I added Hill, dropped Daniels and hoped.
And later Thursday, when I sat down to set up my weekend FanDuel rosters, the first player I added was Josh Hill. He's one of those "workload spikes before his weekly salary does" guys who is always nice to find in FanDuel.
From there, I searched around. I got silly. I scrolled down to see what the cheapest running backs were named. (What's an Orleans Darkwa?) Then - and I promise you this is how it went - on the scroll back up, I thought I saw a name in a weird place, so I scrolled back again.
Justin Forsett was only $6,200?
FanDuel’s player-selection table has a grouping of information available for those who don’t want to do their own research. It includes position, name, alerts if applicable, games played, opponent and salary. But there’s also fantasy points per game. You need more than that, of course - it’s an incomplete picture - but if a number stands out, it stands out. One of the players at the same salary as Forsett is James Starks. Forsett’s points per game? 13.7. Starks’? 3.4.
That didn’t make sense, and when something doesn’t make sense, I click it.
Two positions, two discounts. Add in Shaun Suisham (inexplicably one of the cheapest kickers), and I was saving money like mad. So I decided to splurge. Went Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson at QB and WR1. Fun times.
Here’s where I ended up:
| Position | Player | Opponent | Salary |
| QB | Aaron Rodgers | Carolina | 9,700 |
| RB | Ahmad Bradshaw | Atlanta | 6,600 |
| RB | Justin Forsett | Cincinnati | 6,200 |
| WR | Jordy Nelson | Carolina | 8,900 |
| WR | Mohamed Sanu | @Indianapolis | 7,200 |
| WR | Rueben Randle | @Dallas | 6,500 |
| TE | Josh Hill | @Detroit | 5,000 |
| K | Shaun Suisham | Houston | 4,700 |
| DEF | Cleveland Browns | @Jacksonville | 5,200 |
Rueben Randle's is a "usage up before salary" guy. Sanu was a week ago, and I still think he can overproduce his price. And I don't know why Bradshaw is still that price. Meanwhile, I ended up with Cleveland's defense, which, you know, plays Jacksonville this week. That roster is my entry into the weekend's $250,000 rush, which is the same shape tournament that yielded me $200 a couple weeks ago. (I bet out $10 last week and pulled back $9, so we'll call that a wash.)
For my weekly 50/50, I made a bit of a change. Normally, I enter all-weekend tournaments -- you can use anyone from any Sunday game or the Monday-night game. But I’ve grown a bit tired of having to watch through Monday night just to see if I get $9 back. So this week, my 50/50 is going to be in one of the “1 p.m. only” tournaments. Get in, get out, know if I’ve made my money by mid-afternoon.
Here’s where I ended up:
| Position | Player | Opponent | Salary |
| QB | Andrew Luck | Cincinnati | 10,000 |
| RB | Ahmad Bradshaw | Cincinnati | 6,600 |
| RB | Jerick McKinnon | @Buffalo | 5,900 |
| WR | Alshon Jeffery | Miami | 7,900 |
| WR | T.Y. Hilton | Cincinnati | 7,600 |
| WR | Cecil Shorts III | Cleveland | 6,400 |
| TE | Jordan Reed | Tennessee | 5,400 |
| K | Blair Walsh | @Buffalo | 5,000 |
| DEF | Cleveland | @Jacksonville | 5,200 |
I'm a Colts fan, man, and hoping for big things this weekend, Sometimes you just need a team to root for. And I also get to spend the early games yelling, "Alshon!", which is more fun to say excitedly than it has any right being.
Inspiration can come from any number of places. For me, this week, it came from, “Crap, I forgot to fix my roster.” That’s a weird place for it to come from, but oh well.
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