Hello all and welcome to my NFL GPP breakdown for Week 13 of the NFL season. For those of you who were here last year, we had a ton of success with this article throughout the year and saw a plethora of screenshots throughout the season of MAJOR wins from in cooperating this article into your weekly research and lineup construction. For those of you who are new, welcome, my name is Bob Viafora and I am one of the lead DFS analysts at DFS Karma. I’ve been with DFS Karma for 2+ years now and looking forward to what our team (and you – the reader) is able to accomplish this season. As a staple of your weekly reading/research, please reach out to me on twitter @DF_Advantage (throw me that follow if you don’t already) each week and let me know how your rosters did as well as sharing any #screenshots you may have. Football is back! Let’s GO!
QUARTERBACK :
High Tier: Jared Goff ($6400 – DK / $8400 – FD) – Jared Goff is one of my favorite players in the NFL as I “touted” his coming out in week 1 of last season. Goff has continued this trend of dominance in the league and finds himself in another massive 55 pt. over/under this week against the Lions. Although Goff doesn’t add a ton in the rushing department (ironically had one rushing TD last week) he has been heavily involved throwing the ball as Sean McVay shows he trusts his quarterback. Goff is averaging over 40 pass attempts per week over the last month and should get the opportunity to near that mark in a huge total.
Detroit has been one of the worst teams against the pass this season ranking 31st in DVOA. Diving into their inefficiencies, even more, we find that they are allowing the highest aDOT in the NFL while struggling to keep receivers out of the end-zone ranking 6th worst in the NFL in touchdowns allowed.
As you can see from this heat map Goff has generally been ELITE on every part of the field outside of the right sideline for whatever reason. My take is that Andrew Whitworth, being the best left tackle in the NFL doesn’t allow any pressure from the left side so Goff looks that direction more and gets cleaner looks. This doesn’t make a ton of sense considering Rob Havenstein grades out better than Whitworth according to PFF but is just a theory. Maybe he just prefers throwing to the left. No matter. Goff is going to light up the Lions on Sunday in what should be a shootout.
Mid Tier: Deshaun Watson ($6100 – DK / $7900 – FD) – Watson is one of my favorite plays on the slate going up against the Cleveland Browns in what I see as a high scoring affair. Watson has been conservative as far as his pass attempts go the last couple of weeks which is an opposite trend of what we were accustomed from seeing from Watson earlier in the season and last year. The reason I believe we’re going to see a change back to the old Watson this week is the pace of play both these teams play at. The Texans have been playing some slower paced teams the past few weeks leading to fewer plays ran by the Texans. However, this week, the Browns are facing the highest number of plays this season. I believe this is going to spike Watson’s attempts this week.
As you can see over the course of his short two-year career Watson has been one of the most accurate passers in the NFL as this difference in his completion percentage and the league average is notably massive.
Outside of Watson’s obvious elite passing ability he brings a ton of upside with his talent as a rusher. Watson, as I said, should be much more heavily involved this Sunday compared to the last 5 weeks where his competition was noticeably weak. He should be used out of the pocket as a rusher a lot more this week against a fierce Browns pass rush and a weak Texans offensive line. I love Watson’s upside this week where he’ll be virtually un-owned.
Low Tier: Marcus Mariota ($5200 – DK / $7000 – FD) – I don’t think you HAVE to go Mariota this week where quarterback pricing continues to be pretty tight on Draftkings but if you are looking to save salary at QB, I believe a “Naked” Marcus Mariota is the best strategy you can take in GPPs. People are going to be off of him due to low volume and a difficult matchup with the Jets defense. However, he doesn’t need to do much here and has had a few games this season where his rush attempts spiked to 10. His ability as a rusher provides him much more upside in this “low-tier” than his passing ability.
Mariota is going to need to rely heavily on Corey Davis in this matchup as his new favorite target, Jonnu Smith, has an extremely difficult matchup with Jamal Adams.
Again, I much prefer paying up at QB this week as the price difference is not much but the upside is huge. However, if you need to save $1,000 in salary and the rest of your lineup is the nuts, feel comfortable punting Marcus Mariota.
PERSONAL FAVORITE PLAY (FP/$): Deshaun Watson
RUNNING BACK: This position is very clear this week so I will be fairly limited in my exposure to my mid-tier and low-tier play. The Carlos Hyde value is almost impossible to pass up as a LOCK and it will be difficult to get exposure to these guys with almost needing exposure to Lindsay, Jones, CMC, Gurley, Saquon, and Hunt.
High: Saquon Barkley ($7,900 – DK / $8,600 – FD) – I was all in on Barkley last week and it paid off huge. Obviously, being underexposed to CMC hurt a ton but Barkley helped make up for it. Unfortunately, he only got 4 touches the 2nd half en route to a Giants loss. But I think the coaches will realize what a massive mistake it was not getting the ball to Barkley as much as possible last week and will correct it this week with a tough defensive matchup with a Bears unit. Saquon Barkley is the human cheat code and Draftkings algorithm priced him WAY to cheap this week where it seems they overvalued the opposing defense a little too much. We’re getting a 1.2k price drop on Barkley after he dropped 36.2 DK points last week. LOL OK.
Evan Engram is ruled out clearing up even more targets for Saquon as essentially the #2 WR on the team. Saquon is going to see his usual 8-10 targets this week including 20+ rush attempts on the ground. Obviously, the matchup is tough this week but the price dip and projected < 15% ownership has me all over Saquon in GPPs this week. He can EASILY outscore Christian McCaffery this week who is the massive chalk after his huge 50 burger.
Mid-Tier: Theo Riddick ($4,700 – DK / $5,300 – FD) – Although Theo Riddick isn’t involved in the running game like Saquon Barkley is, he does get a ton of targets each week and is essentially a WR for the Lions. Riddick has seen his price slowly increase as his targets each week stabilize between 6 and 8. Riddick essentially catches all his targets every week (85%+) so we can assume he comes with an 8 point floor this week against the Rams. With the Lions almost surely trailing in this game he could see his usage spike even more in the passing game.
Riddick is yet to see his upside/ceiling hit this year due to a lack of a touchdown but that big play/TD is coming and I’m going to be a part of it. If I were to bet on Riddick in any game this season it is this one where he should be featured as a key component of the Lions offense. Amazing GPP play where he will be 1% owned.
Low Tier: Lamar Miller ($4,600 – DK / $6,300 FD)- I am not in love with this play as I believe there are so many clear running back options on this slate as is with most slates. This is the reason I usually spend the least amount of my time focusing on running backs, as the usage is fairly predictable and correlated with gameflow (vegas implied total’s). This week if for some reason you feel inclined to find a running back option in this 4.5k range that isn’t Theo Riddick, I believe you can take another shot at Lamar Miller against a Browns run defense that has been poor this season. Miller has only seen over 20 touches twice over the past six weeks but in those six weeks has posted over 100 yards three times and scored three touchdowns.
I’m not in love with the usage as that is what drives optimal running back plays in the NFL, but Lamar Miller seems to be playing out of his mind behind a pretty poor offensive line and gets a great matchup this week against the Browns run defense. He is definitely viable in GPPs.
PERSONAL FAVORITE PLAY (PT/$): Saquon Barkley
WIDE RECEIVER:
High Tier: Davante Adams ($7,900 – DK / $8,500 FD) – Davante Adams has seen extremely volatile usage this season but comes into Week 13 as an extremely high upside GPP playmaking perfect sense to leverage off of the ownership we’re going to see on Aaron Jones. Adams makes for the perfect leverage off of Jones as he has been one of the biggest red-zone threats in the NFL this year which will potentially lead to multiple vultures from Aaron Jones punch-ins. Adams ranks 1st with 23 RZ targets and 1st in TD’s with 9. 
This sets up perfectly against a Cardinals defense that has consistently allowed an above average catch rate this season. “Oh, but what about Patrick Peterson?” Peterson doesn’t shadow receivers so we can be confident he won’t be on Adams this week for any above-normal amount of time. Adams has shown his upside in the yardage department this season with 140/132/133/166 yardage games at times this season. These are insane numbers for a guy so prominent in the end-zone. He’s one of my favorite WR leverage plays on the board this week.
Mid Tier: Jarvis Landry ($5,300 – DK / $5,500 – FD) – I’m starting to think I’m a Jarvis Landry truther as he has been flat out bad this season and I’ve been waiting on this positive regression to what he’s shown his first couple years in the league. I’m going to continue waiting on that this week and believe that it is coming soon while taking advantage of his consistent price dropping.
I’ve posted these images for Landry before but I want to touch back on them to emphasize my point. The graphic on the left is Landry’s catch rate in the first four years of his career. The right graphic is this year’s catch rate by depth of target. Obviously, we’re going to see some regression back to his career average’s and I’m not buying into a 12 game sample size that Jarvis Landry is bad. His aDOT is about 160% of his career average which just boosts his upside even more. The only thing that worries me is his target count the past three weeks but I’m willing to ignore it for what I believe is slate winning upside from Landry. He also makes perfect sense coming back in my Watson-Thomas stacks.
Don’t give up on Jarvis Landry and win the week with him this week at an insanely cheap price on Draftkings.
Low-Tier: Demaryius Thomas ($4,300 DK / $5,300 FD) – As I mentioned above in the Quarterback analysis I am very high on Deshaun Watson this week. With DeAndre Hopkins seeing a limited target count of late and likely in a very difficult matchup with stud cornerback Denzel Ward, I believe this is a week Demaryius Thomas could spike. Thoma’s snap count is on the rise as he continues to learn more of the Texans offense and build a better repertoire with QB Deshaun Watson. This week could be another breakout week for Thomas who is coming off a two TD week against the Titans.
The only thing lacking is the yardage, but with his aDOT likely to rise closer to what he’s seen over the course of his career (currently 2.5 yards below average with Texans) his yardage and upside will rise with it. I believe he’s built some confidence with his performance last week which is going to lead to more looks from Watson. My scorching hot call of the week is that he outscores DeAndre Hopkins in raw points! Let’s GET IT!!
PERSONAL FAVORITE PLAY (PT/$): Jarvis Landry
TIGHT END:
Rob Gronkowski ($5,400 DK / $6,700 FD) – Are we forgetting who this is? This is the best tight end in the NFL and I don’t care what anyone else tells me. Gronkowski is still a beast for New England and although dealing with injuries I believe he is at the healthiest he has been this entire season. His price is way down from what we’re accustomed to seeing and if Gronk continues to stay healthy this may be the cheapest we ever see him priced again.
This week he carries the questionable designation against the Vikings which I believe is more the Patriots limiting his practice snap counts and preserving him as best they can. After a 2 game absence from play, Gronk came back in Week 12 playing 69 of 70 snaps en route to 53 yards and a Gronk SPIKE on 7 targets. With Josh Gordon and Edelman in extremely difficult matchups, I think we see the usage spike this week for Gronk closer to 10 targets which have been the only thing holding him back from monster weeks. The touchdowns and yardage are coming for Gronk and I believe you’ll NEED him in your lineups in order to post a GPP winning score this week.
I will be giving out more of my low-owned GPP’s plays on Sunday morning where I will be hosting an Instagram live show you can find @DFS_Karma on Instagram around 11am. Make sure to stay tuned and thanks for reading! I better see ALLLL the screenshots Monday morning with all of you RAKING in the cash! LET’S GOOOOO! #MONEYTEAM
WRITTEN BY: @ DF_ADVANTAGE – Follow me on Twitter 
*THIS ARTICLE IS DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR GPP ENTRY CONTESTS ON DRAFTKINGS AND FANDUEL. MY GOAL WHEN SHARING MY THOUGHTS/INFORMATION WITH YOU ALL IS THAT THESE PLAYERS COME IN UNDER 10-15% OWNED IN GPP’S. TO FIND PLAYERS THIS LOW OWNED, WE ARE TAKING ON A “BUST RISK”. THIS IS THE TYPE OF RISK AS A GPP PLAYER YOU NEED TO TAKE DOWN A TOURNAMENT. *
