We made it! The NFL season has officially started and we are less than 24 hours away from locking in to a comfortable position on the couch and trying to watch 8 different football games at once.
For those of you who are long-time readers of The Flowchart, welcome to it’s new home Momentum Labs! We launched just under 2 months ago and are focusing on building tools, analysis, and community around the NBA Top Shot and NFL All Day products. We are also going to building out the Fantasy Sports aspect to our website, and in the first year here The Flowchart will be a main feature. Don’t worry The Flowchart will ALWAYS BE FREE! But if you are interested in any of the other Web3/NFT Fantasy Sports games and want to have access to projections for OTM Rumble, The Owner’s Club, and MomentRanks Play then upgrading to a Premium subscription might just be for you!
For those of you who are new to The Flowchart, and are checking this out mainly as an offshoot from your love of all things Dapper Sports products, welcome! The DFS landscape can seem like a overwhelming and complicated space, but I am confident that by reading this article each week, you will continue to add tools to your toolbelt that will make you a more profitable player.
Final thing before we jump into Week 1, I am super excited to announce that I will be introducing a Cash Game Flowchart this year! This will be done in an entirely separate post each week to help keep ideas and strategy clear. Check out the Momentum Labs website for that version each week.
Full Game Stack
If you haven’t yet read this year’s Introduction to The Flowchart, I would recommend doing so now. This will help set the groundwork for a lot of the sections you will see each week, and provide a little context for why we make the decisions that we do.
Starting off with a bang this year and firing up the slate’s most expensive Quarterback in Patrick Mahomes. The Chiefs/Cardinals game is sure to have some fireworks as it’s got the highest total on the slate, but I think it’s going to go a bit overlooked due to some of the uncertainty swirling this week. First, the Chiefs no longer have Tyreek Hill so there’s uncertainty around who’s going to pick up his slack. The Cardinals lost Rondale Moore this week and Zach Ertz is still questionable so there’s uncertainty around who’s going to see the volume there. GPP Tournaments are the perfect time to lean into uncertainty!
To start off the game stack, we are going to lock in JuJu Smith-Schuster with Mahomes. At $5200 he is severely underpriced if he turns out to be the reliable WR1 for Mahomes like his offseason ADP projects. I want to bet on JuJu getting back to his 2020 ways in Week 1. On the Cardinals side, we are just going to plug in Marquise Brown and forget about it. I am extremely excited to see the Oklahoma college connection of Kyler Murray to Brown resurrected in Arizona this year and no better time to show off some target hog tendencies than this week against the Chiefs.
Finish the Double Stack
Now that we’ve got 3 studs locked in, it’s time to fill out a 2nd WR for Mahomes. I’ll start with Marques Valdes-Scantling because all reports out of camp say that he should be out on the field for the vast majority of the Chiefs offensive plays. Only $100 cheaper is Mecole Hardman, the often frustrating Chiefs WR3. Hardman is likely not going to make many flowcharts this season and even this week I am going to skew towards the MVS side more often, but there’s something to be said about the upside of a familiar weapon for Mahomes in Week 1.
But JBB, you skipped over Travis Kelce, the league’s most dominant tight end for the last four years. This is our first leverage spot of the week! Right now, Kelce is projecting to be the highest-rostered Tight End on DraftKings while Mahomes is coming in at just half the projected ownership. This tells me that a huge majority of Mahomes lineups are going to have Kelce in them, so we are going to start Week 1 off by fading the best TE in the league. Are you starting to get the feeling of “yea well…but…” don’t worry it’s okay, that’s how you know you are on the pathway to building a good tournament lineup!
Fading Kelce in favor of Chiefs WRs is just a contrarian angle, where does the leverage come in to play? Thanks for asking.
Secondary Stack & TE Leverage
There’s going to be a lot of people who decide to fade Kelce this week. There’s two main ways to do this: first, you can simply pay down at TE and punt off the position with someone in the $3k range. Another way of doing it is picking a different high-priced TE and hoping that they outscore Kelce. We are going to do that latter, but by doing this AND pairing an expensive TE with Kelce’s QB this is where we find leverage nirvana.
Mark Andrews is the highest priced TE on the slate and many would argue he is inflated due to last season’s outcomes where the Ravens far exceeded expectations in the passing game. The major reason Baltimore passed more was because their Top 3 RBs were out for essentially the entire year. Entering Week 1, their Top 2 RBs are on the shelf, and a guy they picked up on waivers last week is projecting to be there RB1. Seems like they might be passing a lot this week again. I’m adding in some correlation here and pairing up Andrews with Elijah Moore of the New York Jets. Moore actually had better splits with Joe Flacco last season so I’m not worried about him at all this week.
So we’ve got the TE priced above Kelce on one side of The Flowchart, now let’s grab the one that’s priced just below. The sophomore sensation Kyle Pitts fits that bill this week and will probably go decently overlooked on this slate. At $5700 I think he is in a pretty weird no-man’s land and also is not in a great game-stacking environment. Anytime we can get a WR who plays TE and is going to be around 5% utilized, we want to be all over that! Pairing up with Pitts I chose the rookie Chris Olave. A lot of people remember Jameis Winston and the Saints as a rather incompetent offense last year with much “uumph” in the passing game. This year the Saints Top 3 WRs are all much better and I want to see if Winston airs out a couple long ones to Olave this weekend. Plus the $4500 price tag gets us access to a RB cheat code in the next column.
Running Back Studs
Ok we haven’t yet talked about any RBs this weekend. On a macro level, I think we have much stronger options at RB than we do at WR. I would recommend spreading out your exposure to the pass-catchers and I’m much more ok with condensing your exposure at RB.
On the bottom route of The Flowchart we get access to this week’s biggest cheat code in Christian McCaffrey. $8500 is a slam-dunk for the highest upside player in the league. With CMC loaded in we have multiple options in the low $5k range. I loaded up Chase Edmonds and AJ Dillon into The Flowchart this week but could have easily tossed in Nyheim Hines and JD McKissic as well. All 4 of these guys I am extremely high on coming into this season.
On the top route, we are going to take a more balanced build to the RB pool. Saquon Barkley is the main target on this half as his $6100 price tag may look silly if he gets back to the form that had him getting drafted 2nd overall in 2019 drafts. David Montgomery is a guy who fantasy players have soured on this off-season, however there is a real chance that he gets a workhorse role to begin the season and also catches quite a few passes since the balance of the Bears receiving options are really weak. This is just a close-your-eyes special where we pick him, throw up a little bit, and check back after the Sunday slate is over. Cordarelle Patterson is one of my favorite options this week if we are targetting the Saints/Falcons game. Drake London looks set to play, but he has been hobbled in proactice since the pre-season, which means CPatt should have plenty of pass-catching opportunity.
That’s a wrap for the first Flowchart of the season! We don’t look set to have too many injury concerns here in Week 1 but if anything pops up, the Momentum Labs Discord and my Twitter @JonBoyBeats will be where I post any updates. Good luck and I’ll see you at the top of the leaderboards!