Utilizing the team totals and spreads set in place by Vegas is a necessity when constructing your lineups each week. These odds makers are the best at what they do and by using the information they provide us with, we can quickly assess which spots we’d like to either gain exposure to or potentially fade.
While checking for the highest Over/Under is a great place to start, we’ve gone a step further and identified players (by using Fantasy Labs’ Trends tool) that find themselves in game situations – based upon Vegas trends – that you will be able to exploit this week.
Quarterback
Aaron Rodgers
Vegas Trend: Green Bay as a nine-point or greater home favorite.
Coming off a huge victory in Minnesota last Sunday, Rodgers and the Packers are scheduled to take on the Chicago Bears on Thanksgiving. On a night that has the potential for Rodgers to possibly find himself over-shadowed by his former mentor – and sometimes nemesis – Brett Favre and his jersey retirement, you can expect him to bring his A-game.
With Vegas setting the Packers as nine-point favorites, this is a situation that is ripe for a big game from Rodgers. Over the past two seasons he has found himself as a nine-point home favorite five times and has exceeded his expected point total on every occasion.
Rodgers’ ability to exceed value in each of these five games can largely be attributed to his increased touchdown production. In these five matchups, Rodgers has averaged 3.0 passing touchdowns per game as opposed to “only” 2.1 touchdowns per game in his other matchups over the previous two seasons. As the Bears have allowed the sixth-most passing touchdowns this season, and are the owners of a +3.6 Opponent Position Plus/Minus rating, Rodgers is a great candidate to pay off his lofty price tag once again this week.
Running Back
Mark Ingram
Vegas Trend: New Orleans as a road underdog.
New Orleans will travel to Houston this weekend and Vegas currently has them as a three-point underdog. While utilizing a running back on the road in a game his team is projected as an underdog is often a sub-optimal scenario, it has worked to Mark Ingram’s advantage over the past couple of seasons.
While Ingram’s per-game averages look great, it is a bit worrisome to see that there isn’t necessarily a correlating factor between any of the games. He has relied on outlier performances – for example, he has an eight-catch, 98 receiving yard game – to mask some less than stellar individual games. As one would imagine, his average carries per game are down while his targets and catches have increased in these matchups, but neither by extreme margins.
The fact that he has had six very different game scripts in these matchups weakens this trend a bit and makes Ingram a bit risky in cash games at his price tag – he is the fifth-highest priced running back on DraftKings – but an intriguing option in GPPs this week.
After New Orleans had posted an 8:10 passing touchdowns to rushing touchdowns ratio over their first seven games of the season, they have produced a 12:1 passing touchdowns to rushing touchdowns ratio over their three previous games. A great candidate for regression – Ingram has had bad luck around the goal line of late, but the opportunities have been there – he has an impressive ceiling, projected at 24.6 DK points, for a running back that shouldn’t have huge ownership this week coming off of a bye.
Wide Receiver
Michael Crabtree & Amari Cooper
Vegas Trend: Oakland as a favorite this season.
If you had a part of this Oakland offense last week in Detroit, your Sunday was probably not very enjoyable. Derek Carr and the passing offense as a whole struggled against the Lions in a disappointing loss – a game in which the Raiders were favored to win.
Looking into their situation further, both Michael Crabree and Amari Cooper have actually struggled this season in each game that Oakland has been favored in. Crabtree has averaged 11.17 DK points in the three contests and Cooper has averaged 9.73. For reference, in games Oakland has been an underdog, the duo has averaged 18.87 and 18.26 DK points respectively.
Many of their issues can be attributed to Carr’s struggles of his own in these games. The young quarterback is averaging a meager 14.89 DK points per game as a favorite this season. As Tennessee’s surprisingly stout pass defense – they’ve allowed the third-fewest passing yards in the league – proved last week against Blake Bortles, they are more than capable of rising to the occasion.
At their recently inflated prices – Crabtree is up to WR16 and Cooper is WR10 on DraftKings this week – it’s difficult to justify paying for either one of the duo in cash lineups this week.
Tight End
Tyler Eifert
Vegas Trend: Bengals as a favorite.
Eifert is capable of some big games and not just by tight end standards – we’re talking Gronk-type games. Unfortunately, as many tight ends are prone to, he also comes with a lot of variance. He has as many games over 28 DK points this season (3) as he does games under 7 DK points.
So all we have to do is figure out when one of these big games is coming, not that hard, right? In Eifert’s case, there are at least indications of when we may see one of these occur.
In the seven games that Cincinnati has been favored to win, Eifert has averaged 19.30 DK points and has exceeded his expected point total in all but one game. As an underdog he is averaging 7.95 DK points per game and has only exceeded his expected point total once in four games.
As the second-highest priced tight end on the slate this week, you’ll pay for the upside. But knowing that the Bengals are favorites this week, and have an implied team total over 25, should give you a bit more confidence in rolling out Eifert if you can find the room in your budget.
