The NFL’s Wild Card Round is upon us. While there are fewer games on the playoff slate than a standard regular season slate, the following article should look slightly familiar since it’s essentially the love child of my weekly DFS picks and predictions and the cheat sheet.
The goal is to provide readers from all DFS circles with helpful information. Whether you’re entering one lineup at your favorite DFS outlet or entering the maximum number of lineups in classic contests and showdown contests, the following will take a broad view of team tendencies, strengths and weaknesses. The suggested players were curated with gamers entering a modest number of contests in mind, albeit with some deeper contrarian suggestions as well.
The NFL’s Wild Card Round is upon us. While there are fewer games on the playoff slate than a standard regular season slate, the following article should look slightly familiar since it’s essentially the love child of my weekly DFS picks and predictions and the cheat sheet.
The goal is to provide readers from all DFS circles with helpful information. Whether you’re entering one lineup at your favorite DFS outlet or entering the maximum number of lineups in classic contests and showdown contests, the following will take a broad view of team tendencies, strengths and weaknesses. The suggested players were curated with gamers entering a modest number of contests in mind, albeit with some deeper contrarian suggestions as well.
This game is a shootout waiting to happen. Fortunately, it’s also rather straightforward to stack in the classic contests. The Commanders had a 58% situation-neutral pass rate in their final eight games, and the Buccaneers faced an NFL-high 65% situation-neutral pass rate from Week 10 through Week 18. Washington’s offense’s success will rely on Jayden Daniels as a passer and scrambler. He’ll probably direct most of his targets to Terry McLaurin and Zach Ertz. They were first and second among Washington’s pass-catchers in expected fantasy points per game at 13.6 and 9.9, respectively. Additionally, the Bucs yielded the sixth-most DraftKings and ninth-most FanDuel points per game to wideouts and the seventh-most to tight ends in the regular season.
Tampa Bay could rely on Baker Mayfield‘s arm, Bucky Irving‘s legs or a relatively balanced mix of both. Since Week 10, they’ve had a 51% situation-neutral pass rate. Still, even in a lower-volume passing attack, Mayfield was dialed in. He had multiple passing touchdowns in his final five games, surpassing 285 passing yards four times. Mayfield also used his legs to reach at least 25 rushing yards in three of his final four games.
Mike Evans and Jalen McMillan are Mayfield’s top passing-game weapons. The former had 5.3 receptions per game, 71.7 receiving yards per game and 11 receiving touchdowns. Evans’s high touchdown output wasn’t flukey, either. He had a massive 17 end zone targets in 14 games this year.
McMillan didn’t hit the ground running. Instead, the rookie wide receiver emerged late. McMillan had a five-game touchdown streak to end the year, securing two, one, one, two and one touchdowns with 59, 75, 57, 60 and 80 scrimmage yards. McMillan also had five receptions in each of his final four games.
While Mayfield, Evans and McMillan are excellent DFS picks, Irving is the most exciting one. Among 70 running backs with at least 50 rush attempts in the regular season, Irving was sixth in yards per carry (5.42), tied for seventh in explosive run percentage (6.8%) and third in missed tackles forced per attempt (0.26). In Irving’s last eight games of the regular season, he had 84, 190, 92, 113, 18, 185, 152 and 87 scrimmage yards with five touchdowns. Gamers also shouldn’t dismiss stacking Irving with Mayfield since the rookie running back had multiple receptions in 14 games.
