The Week 3 NFL Dashboard
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Cardinals at Bills
The Cardinals visit Buffalo as 3.5-point favorites with an implied Vegas total of 25.25 points. The Bills are implied to score 21.75 points in a game with pleasant weather.
Arizona Cardinals
Writer: Bryan Mears
QB – Carson Palmer
Palmer had an excellent game in Week 2, throwing for 308 yards and three touchdowns on only 31 attempts. However, he’s currently the third-lowest rated QB in the Adam Levitan Player Model for DraftKings. The settings for that model really emphasize value at the quarterback spot. Palmer has a decent-enough projection on DraftKings — his 19.6 points rank 14th this week — but his salary is the seventh-highest in the slate, which gives him a low +0.6 Projected Plus/Minus. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t roster Palmer — he has a nice matchup against a Bills team that ranks 25th in defense per Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) — but perhaps roster him in tournaments as opposed to cash games.
RB – David Johnson
Johnson was in the winning DK Milly Maker lineup last week and is probably the best running back in the league right now. He had only 45 rushing yards on 12 attempts last week but also had 98 receiving yards on three receptions. The dude can do it all, and the only reason his numbers were low last week was because the Cardinals completely blew out the Bucs and gave the ball to Chris Johnson when they had a big lead. David has a ridiculous rush success rate of 54.1 percent in the last year and a nice matchup against the Bills this week. He’s the most expensive DK running back and still has a high FantasyLabs ownership projection (17 to 20 percent), but he could be a little more contrarian come Sunday if people elect to roster the large number of cheap running backs this week.
RB – Chris Johnson
C. Johnson is a value if the Cardinals get up by a lot of points as they did last week and want to limit DJ’s touches. CJ was the beneficiary of that game script and ended up getting 16 carries, which he turned into 54 yards and a touchdown. He has an incredibly low projection this week (2.9 points on DK), but the Cardinals are again favorites (-3.5) and CJ could potentially see garbage time work again. It’s probably not a +EV move to bet on garbage time, but to each his own.
WR – Larry Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald is one of only five players to have been targeted at least 10 times in each of the first two games. He’s simply been outstanding this year:
He has played the most snaps of any Cardinals skill position player and owns the highest percentage (by quite a bit, too) of their passing targets at 29.17 percent. They’re even passing him the ball at the goal line:
His price has increased, but he’s still only $6,900 on DK this week. He boasts a +2.2 Projected Plus/Minus and has a nice matchup, as highlighted by his +2.4 Opponent Plus/Minus. He is projected to be owned between nine and 12 percent, which is probably too low. He’s an elite play right now in all contest formats.
WR – Michael Floyd
Floyd has gotten the second-most snaps among Arizona players this year. He owns 18.06 percent of the team’s targets, which is also good for second. Unfortunately, Floyd hasn’t done much with his targets: He’s turned his 13 opportunities into only five receptions, 69 yards, and a touchdown. He’s getting the targets, but his upside is certainly limited as a DFS asset until he becomes more efficient.
WR – John Brown
JoBro was a potential breakout candidate to start the season, but he hasn’t played that much this year:
Likewise, he’s been targeted on only 9.72 percent of the Cardinals’ pass attempts on the year. The Arizona offense can accommodate a lot of fantasy players, but perhaps DJ’s continued emergence as an elite weapon in the passing game — he owns 15.28 percent of Arizona’s targets — has made Brown less important in the offense. At any rate, it is hard to get excited about Brown’s -1.2 DK Projected Plus/Minus. Hold off until we see him reintegrated into the offense, if that happens.
TE – Darren Fells & Jermaine Gresham
Fells has out-snapped Gresham (68 versus 46), but neither player is really involved in the passing game. They have identical target shares on the year (6.94 percent). Fells did get five targets in Week 2, which he turned into four receptions for 31 yards, but there just isn’t much upside here: You’re just praying for a random touchdown.
Buffalo Bills
Writer: Joe Holka
QB – Tyrod Taylor
In nine of 14 games last season, Taylor rushed for 40 or more yards in a Bills offense that averaged the sixth-highest yards per play in the league (5.7 yards). Taylor had just five rushing attempts for 11 yards against the Ravens in Week 1, and then rushed just twice for 25 yards against the Jets in Week 2. Head coach Rex Ryan seems content to keep the reins on Taylor. To make matters worse the Bills have run just nine plays in the red zone this season, which is bottom-three in the league.
It’s a tough spot for Tygod this week against the Cardinals, but he has performed well in the past against good defenses the couple of times he has played them. Per our Trends tool, in matchups last season against the bottom quartile for QB scoring on DK, he performed far above expectations.
Taylor could be a nice play this week, given that he has a FantasyLabs ownership projection of zero to one percent and is playing in the game with the fifth-highest total in the slate.
RB – LeSean McCoy
McCoy is clearly the guy in Buffalo, boasting a 72.09 percent rushing share. He also has an 18.00 percent target share, and the Cardinals are susceptible to receiving backs. That is the good news. The bad news is that McCoy has the highest rate of carries for zero or negative yards in the league and the Cardinals allow a -0.8 Opponent Plus/Minus to RBs, the second-lowest mark on FanDuel. They were also bottom-five last season in rushing yards allowed.
In Week 3, McCoy could still be heavily impacted by injuries to teammates. Keep an eye on the status of Sammy Watkins’ foot. If he again proves ineffective, McCoy will likely face more stacked boxes. Even with volume on his side, McCoy is a risky cash play as an underdog, but if you play him in tournaments he has a 99 percent Bargain Rating on FD.
RB – Reggie Bush
McCoy is locked in as the early-down and goal-line back for the Bills offense. Bush was a non-factor in Week 2 and is projected to score just 2.3 FD points against the Cardinals. He has one of the lowest projected floors in the slate.
WR – Sammy Watkins
Watkins was targeted on 18.2 percent of his routes in Week 2 and boasts a 20 percent target share in the Bills offense. Playing on Thursday last week, Watkins should benefit from the extended rest, but whether he will still be slowed down by his foot remains to be seen. Watkins has a tough matchup against Patrick Peterson and the Cardinals in Week 3. Pro Football Focus has graded Peterson as the eighth-best cornerback in the league through the first two weeks of the season after he held Mike Evans to just 4.12 yards per target last week.
Watkins is priced at $6900 on FD with an 86 percent Bargain Rating. He has six FD Pro Trends and his FantasyLabs projected ownership of two to four percent isn’t prohibitive. Even if he were at 100 percent health, Watkins would be tough to trust in this matchup, but he has the talent to pay off in guaranteed prize pools if he can manage a few big plays.
WR – Robert Woods
Woods has handled only seven targets through two weeks, and in 2015 he failed to top 50 yards in 78.57 percent of his games. He is projected for just 7.1 points on DraftKings at $3200 and has limited upside.
WR – Greg Salas
Out of nowhere Salas had four catches for 89 yards and a touchdown in Week 2. However, 71 of those yards came on one big play and he played just 28 percent of the offensive snaps (fourth out of Bills WRs). Sure, we’ve seen the upside, but Salas is still a return man first and a receiver second on a team that doesn’t use its WRs all that much in the first place.
TE – Charles Clay
Clay has an 18 percent target share in the Bills offense but zero targets in the red zone. Clay didn’t get a lot of red-zone action with the Bills last year either (just three red-zone targets), but he’s a guy with potential all over the field. The Cardinals ranked seventh against opposing tight ends last year (per Football Outsiders) and limited Martellus Bennett to three receptions in Week 1 and the Tampa Bay tight ends to just 30 yards in Week 2. This is not the ideal week to deploy Clay, but at $2,900 on DK he is a fine punt play as the sixth-rated tight end in the CSURAM88 Player Model.
News Updates
After this piece is published, FantasyLabs is likely to provide news updates on a number of players herein mentioned. Be sure to stay ahead of your competition with our industry-leading DFS-focused news blurbs:
