daily fantasy sports articles

The NFL season is upon us, and we dive straight into things with a huge “Thursday Night” matchup between two fantastic teams. The reigning Super Bowl champs, the Los Angeles Rams, will host this seasons betting favourites, the Buffalo Bills, at SoFi Stadium. It’s not out of the question for this to be the game of the season! Of course here in Australia kickoff time is 10:40am on Friday morning, so we have a little extra time to get our lineups sorted.  

Draftstars has a $15,000 contest with $1133 to first place. There are also several other contests including the Mini, Micro, and the High Roller. Something new is the High Roller Qualifiers, for those who’d like to try to win a cheap ticket into the main slate High Roller on Monday morning.

Odds

Bills $1.77 v Rams $2.06 - Bet now at Ladbrokes!

Overview

There’s not a lot of news on the teams this early in the season, but we can have a quick look at some of the changes over the offseason. The Rams have replaced Odell Beckham Jr with Allen Robinson as their WR2. It’s pretty much a like-for-like, and for Robinson it represents the first time in his career that he’s played with a quality quarterback, so there could be fireworks. Cam Akers should be healthier a full year removed from his Achilles tear, but it’s an injury that has ruined the career of many running backs before him, so beware. Van Jefferson is ruled out as the WR3 with a knee injury.

The Bills lost Cole Beasley and Emmanuel Sanders from their WR group, adding veteran Jamison Crowder. That’s good news for Gabe Davis who already started to break out last season, and should now be the clear WR2 on the team behind Stefon Diggs. Isaiah McKenzie looks likely to win the WR3 role ahead of Crowder, but is carrying an injury so we need to keep expectations in check. The team also drafted running back James Cook, who will start with a pass-catching role and serves to dilute the upside of Devin Singletary.

Love It - Allen Robinson $12,560

As above, Robinson has literally never played with a QB who was even average across his entire college and NFL career. Despite that, he’s carved out a very decent level of production as a true alpha WR, and now gets to play with Matt Stafford and the reigning champs. We saw what happened to Cooper Kupp last season when Stafford arrived, and I feel safe saying that Robinson will take a nice leap this season after looking like he’d given up in 2021. The price is a little low even for his career average, so if this turns out as well as I expect then this is a massive bargain to start the season, even in a tougher matchup.

Love It - Stefon Diggs $16,170

I said that Davis stands to gain the most from Sanders and Beasley leaving, but it won’t hurt Diggs either. The Bills stud receiver still dominated the team last season in all meaningful categories, but didn’t quite replicated his 2020 season when he first joined the team (averaging 16, down from ~20). I’d expect his average to settle somewhere in the middle of those two numbers this season, and think he gets things off to fast start in a high tempo game. The price doesn’t necessarily scream value in comparison to Kupp in particular (who was a full 10 points per game better last year), but I’ll be looking to squeeze them both in fairly often.

Love It - Darrell Henderson $6190

This ones a little less obvious, with Henderson slated to take the RB2 role in close to a 50/50 timeshare with Akers. Akers looked terrible in the playoffs last year after rushing back from a serious injury, and although he’s had 6 months to rehab it further I’m still not optimistic about his future prospects. That means I can see Henderson getting at least half the work, and the price tag is just too generous if that is how things pan out. The Bills are a very tough matchup for RBs, so I’m not going too crazy with other interesting options in the lower price range as well.

Hate It - Cam Akers $12,610

The inverse of what I’ve just said is that Akers is way too expensive. If I think he’s slightly above Henderson at best, then I can’t justify paying double the salary to fit him into lineups. Again, it’s a brutal matchup and he’s super unlikely to outscore the likes of Robinson, Davis and even Singletary in the same price range. It’s hard to totally fade anyone on a showdown slate like this, but Akers is the closest thing to a 0% play to start the season.

Hate It - Isaiah McKenzie $10,260

McKenzie is a bit different, because I like him as a player and think he’ll be very useful in fantasy at times this season. However, he starts the year under an injury cloud and has been priced up far more than I expected. Like Akers, he’s struggle to outperform others in his price range, and is triple the price of Crowder with whom he could be sharing the slot role to some degree. He still has a slim chance to outscore those around him, but I’d rather spend a bit less and play the TE for either team who have decent chances to catch TDs (Knox & Higbee).

Who Knows - Rams WR3s

With Jefferson out, the likes of Skowronek, Atwell and McCutcheon have a better chance of getting on the field. The first two aren’t as cheap as I’d like, but they do have a chance to catch a deep ball and become a useful play with so few salary savers on the slate. McCutcheon is more of a dart throw as he snuck onto the roster after an excellent preseason, and is a minimum price option if you think he can get any targets at all, but I have no idea.