Editor’s Note: FanDuel is running a $1,500,000 fantasy football league in Divisional week. The top 46,000 teams win cash with $100,000 paid to first place on Sunday. Join now!
FanDuel advice: Finding a discount building block
Start with an expensive guy, and you still have work to do. Start with a steep discount, and your job is mostly done.
Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports
Every week, over at ESPN.com, the experts offer opinions on DFS “building blocks” for a given week. It’s a helpful enough notion, except for the fact that, for the most part, they pick an expensive guy around whom you can build a roster.
And sure, it's good to know that in a given week we trust, I don't know, Odell Beckham Jr. over DeAndre Hopkins or Adrian Peterson over Devonta Freeman. But that strikes me as the wrong way to approach it. The expensive guys are all likely to be good, sure. But they are also the ones who take up a big chunk of your salary cap, and make you have to scrimp elsewhere.
So wouldn't it be more helpful for a post on building blocks to find the cheap guys? It takes only a little chutzpah (and, you know, intelligence) to say "Beckham over Hopkins;" it takes a lot more to say "Harry Douglas over Cole Beasley."
No, I pick building blocks that are cheap. Save enough money on a guy at the bottom of the pricing barrel, maybe you can afford all the expensive guys at the top.
This week, that was how I went through my FanDuel roster. As you know if you saw my rankings Friday, I am a big believer in Green Bay's Jared Abbrederis this week. With Davante Adams out, James Jones likely to draw Patrick Peterson and Randall Cobb somehow awful this year, Abbrederis is my best pick to get a big jump in production. At $4,700, picking up Abbrederis for my FanDuel roster let me literally pick my top options at all the rest of the positions.
Sometimes it's that simple. I like Abbrederis this week (though I am already tired of typing "Abbrederis"). Using him lets me splurge everywhere else I want to. Yes, I'll need to check back before game time to confirm statuses (namely Spencer Ware and Julian Edelman). But otherwise, I got all I wanted.
One last note: I hate the Seattle-Carolina game this week. I could see a low-scoring game, a shootout or a blowout either way. I don’t feel confident in any individual player in the game, with the possible exception of Greg Olsen. In a weekend with four games, normally I like to have someone from every game just to have something to root for each time out. But this game? No thank you.
See More:
