FanDuel advice: Takeaways from a crazy week

Editor’s Note: FanDuel is running a $1,500,000 fantasy football league in Week 4. The top 66,000 teams win cash with $100,000 paid to first place on Sunday. Join now!

Last week was either the most exciting or most frustrating one I can remember for FanDuel fantasy football. With so many absolute monster performances (eight quarterbacks put up 20-plus fantasy points, eight running backs, eight wide receivers), the winning scores in most daily games were way higher than normal.

It meant that any given game featured performances that wildly swung FanDuel outcomes (okay, Pittsburgh-St. Louis excepted). The flip side of that, of course, is that you could have set a personal best for a weekly roster and still finished out of the money, or at least with much less money than you might have expected. That’s exciting, and that’s frustrating.

Not that there’s any way around it, of course. Some weeks, there is one roster that makes any sense (in hindsight) for a FanDuel investment; some weeks, there are fifty, and whether you picked the right one is just a matter of luck.

My buddy Brad, for example, set his all-time best in daily scoring. He made, I think it was, $3,500. But at noon Sunday, he had Chris Johnson in his lineup, and made the last-minute decision to swap him out for Melvin Gordon. Johnson had 150 total yards and two scores; Gordon had 51 yards. Brad made four figures; if he had kept Johnson in he would have made 10 times as much. Exciting. Frustrating.

The best you can do is to make the best choices, find the best bargains, pick the right situations. Sometimes, a wild salary changes indicates something is different; other times, that change indicates FanDuel thinks something is different. Identifying the distinction can make the difference between some money and a lot of money, or between money and no money.

So let’s look at the interesting prices for FanDuel Week 4; the ones that changes, and the ones that didn’t, and what those things mean:

Teddy Bridgewater ($7,200 down to $6,500): Quarterbacks less expensive than Bridgewater at the start of the season include Marcus Mariota, Derek Carr, Andy Dalton. Quarterbacks less expensive than Bridgewater, who has two games of eight or fewer fantasy points in three outings, include Jimmy Clausen, Brandon Weeden and Kirk Cousins. I once wrote that Teddy Bridgewater was basically a Peyton Manning starter set, but 2015 has been a disaster so far.

Carson Palmer (steady climb from $7,700 to $8,200): For a 35-year-old quarterback off of a torn ACL, Palmer starting out at $7,700 was fair, even generous. And all he’s done with that is earn every penny, with 21.3 fantasy points per game through three weeks. The only quarterbacks ahead of that are Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Andy Dalton and Cam Newton. The problem, though, is that you have to assume things get harder for Palmer, who has played 16 games in a season once since 2010. The Cardinals still face Seattle twice, still face St. Louis twice (including Week 4). His price has continued to rise, to the point where he’s approaching no-longer-a-bargain status.

Philip Rivers (peak of $8,200, now at $7,400): We’ve criticized Bridgewater and the Manning brothers and Matthew Stafford and Drew Brees for slow starts. Somehow, though, Rivers has escaped that criticism, despite averaging 14 fantasy points per start—worse than both Mannings and virtually the same as Stafford and Brees. He has faced some decent defenses, but nothing special. The next couple weeks, Rivers faces Cleveland and Pittsburgh at home, and gets Antonio Gates back after Week 4, so maybe things start to look up. If so, he’s currently heavily discounted. Potential value here for a quarterback who should be better than this.

Alfred Blue ($5,300 last week, $6,400 this week): Normally, you like a guy off of 139 yards and a touchdown going into a game against the Falcons. But the likelihood of a return for Arian Foster for Houston Sunday makes Blue unusable at $6,400, and frankly he’s probably unusable even if his price had stayed at $5,300. (If Foster happens to miss Sunday ... well, Blue still hasn’t been very good, career-wise.)

Eddie Lacy ($8,500 in Week 1, $7,800 now): The reasonable news is, now that Lacy is seemingly healthy, his price climbed $100 over last week. But this is still a superstar running back in a ridiculous offense who is priced below eight grand. I’m sure the FanDuel algorithm hates Lacy’s zero points in Week 2, and it’s not like he lit it up in Week 3 either (eight fantasy points), but those were injury-related. He’s still Eddie Lacy, it’s still the Packers. At this price, he could be a steal.

Karlos Williams ($5,300 last week, $6,300 this week): The FanDuel prices are obviously set early in the week. So Williams’ salary rose a fair amount this week, because he’s the only running back in the league with a rushing touchdown in all three games so far. That will make anybody valuable. But what the price doesn’t take into account is that, all of a sudden, Williams is likely to be the only viable running back for the Bills, with LeSean McCoy likely to miss Sunday. If FanDuel had that information a few days ago, Williams would have been even more expensive. As it is, he’ll be in every single one of my Week 4 lineups.

Keenan Allen ($7,600 last week, $7,700 this week): In Week 1, when Allen had a huge performance, his salary jumped $300 bucks. He had an even huger game in Week 3, but his salary climbs only $100 bucks. Interestingly, after two big games in three weeks, Allen’s salary for Week 4 is lower than it was for Week 1. Marginal rises and falls can be summarized by “player averages 13.3 fantasy points a game, salary falls.” That’s a player who looks like a bargain.

DeSean Jackson ($7,100 in Week 1, $6,000 in Week 4): The handiest thing is that FanDuel has to set prices early in the week, but you set your lineup late. This makes it easy: If Jackson can come back from his injury, at six grand against his old Philadelphia team, it’s hard to imagine a more enticing option. If Jackson sits ... well, FanDuel set a price that no one uses. Hard to call that a loss. But if he plays, you’ll never have him at a cheaper price.

Terrance Williams ($6,500 last week, $5,900 this week): In his first week without Dez Bryant, Williams saw his salary go up a thousand bucks. After a decent Week 2, it went up another $200. And yes, his game in Week 3 (no receptions, only two targets) was awful, which explains why his price fell back $600, but this is still the only legitimate wide receiver on a team that, even considering injuries, should be in contention. Jason Witten and Lance Dunbar will catch passes in Dallas, yes, but Williams will too, and a No. 1 receiver at $5,900 carries potential.

Martellus Bennett ($5,600 last week, $5,500 this week): I had a debate with another of our writers earlier this week. What gets more weight as it concerns Bennett: Jimmy Clausen throwing him the football, or Oakland defending against the football? By lowering Bennett’s salary, FanDuel is clearly picking the Clausen/Chicago-is-terrible option. But ... Gary Barnidge was a monster against Oakland with Josh McCown throwing to him. Is Clausen-Bennett really worse? It can’t be, can it? Bennett could be a Week 4 bargain, even with his terrible quarterback.

Jimmy Graham (yoyo’d from $6,900 to $7,100 to $6,300 to $6,600): Graham’s salary trend has been very similar to that of Keenan Allen, mentioned a few paragraphs ago. The idea that we’re giving more credence to his one bad week than his other two weeks, with eight targets and a score in each, is insane. Jimmy Graham is still Jimmy Graham. He’s still the top non-Gronk tight end, and with the possible exception of Travis Kelce, he’s significantly ahead of the others, by more than his salary would indicate.