The Week 4 NFL Dashboard
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Rams at Cardinals
The total of the Rams-Cardinals game currently sits at 42.5, which is the third-lowest mark of Week 4. The Cardinals are large 7.5-point Vegas favorites and implied to score 25 points. The Rams are implied to score 17.5 points — the lowest mark in the slate.
Los Angeles Rams
Writer: Bryan Mears
QB – Case Keenum
I have an impressive stat to tell you about Keenum. Ready? Despite being the absolute minimum price on DraftKings in Week 3 and despite his team scoring 37 points in a shootout against the Buccaneers, Keenum barely met value:
He ended up completing 14 of his 26 passes for 190 yards, two touchdowns, and an interception. That’s not a completely awful game, and the Rams are somehow 2-1, but it does show just how low of a ceiling Keenum has on a weekly basis no matter what happens to the team. This week he gets the fortune of being on the road to face a Cardinals team that is coming off a disappointing loss and that finished 2015 with the league’s second-best run defense and fourth-best pass defense. It could get ugly for Keenum.
RB – Todd Gurley
I’ll give the Rams credit: They aren’t complicated. Gurley is their bell cow back and that won’t change:
He has owned at least 70 percent of their rushes in each of the last three weeks. In Week 3, he was finally able to turn that volume into production: He rushed for 85 yards and scored two touchdowns. He wasn’t efficient by any means — he did that on 27 touches, giving him a poor 3.1 yards per carry — but a 21-point DK outing is better than his 13.2 combined points in Weeks 1 and 2. Unfortunately, things are back to tough sledding in Week 4: Over the last 16 games the Cardinals have held RBs to 0.6 points under expectations (per our Plus/Minus metric) — the stingiest mark in the league.
RB – Benny Cunningham
Cunningham is perhaps the least-involved secondary running back in the entire league. In Week 3, he received two rush attempts and a single target.
WR – Tavon Austin
Austin continued to be Keenum’s favorite target in Week 3, and this time he was able to score some fantasy points with those opportunities: He turned his eight targets into five receptions for 82 yards and a touchdown. It’s a punchline at this point, but Tavon is seeing a ridiculous amount of volume this year: He’s owned 32.95 percent of the Rams’ targets this year and 54.5 percent of their receiving touchdowns in the last year. The Cardinals are a tough matchup for all positions, but Austin doesn’t rate too poorly in our Player Models mostly because of his still-cheap price. At only $4,000 on DK, he boasts a +4.4 Projected Plus/Minus and 80 percent Bargain Rating. He has a FantasyLabs projected ownership of zero to one percent.
Tavon has been limited in practice this week but is expected to play. He’s listed as questionable.
WR – Kenny Britt
Britt has seen the second-most targets for the Rams this season at 25 percent. Fortunately for Britt this weekend, he’s set to line up on the left-hand side field, which is the opposite of whereAustin and elite cornerback Patrick Peterson will be. There is a chance that Keenum looks a little more to Britt, given Austin’s tough matchup versus Peterson, but it’s more likely that the Rams just struggle to move the ball. Britt is a fringe tournament dart at best . . .
. . . and that’s assuming he plays. He’s questionable and was added to the injury report on Friday. Presumably his injury was suffered in practice. His status should be monitored, if obsessing about old No. 2 WRs on really bad run-first offenses is your thing.
TE – Lance Kendricks
Third on the team in targets is Kendricks with 13.64 percent. Unfortunately, given the Rams’ incredibly low pass volume, that hasn’t meant a ton of targets: Through three games, Kendricks has caught six balls on just 13 targets. He’s racked up only 76 yards and hasn’t scored. The Cardinals are a bit easier against tight ends than they are against RBs or WRs, but Kendricks just doesn’t get enough raw volume in this offense to warrant serious consideration this week.
Arizona Cardinals
Writer: Bryan Mears
QB – Carson Palmer
Palmer’s color formatting in Player Models highlights what type of player he’s been lately: His (green) 36.1-point projected DK ceiling is the fifth-highest mark among all QBs in Week 4. However, his (red) 5.5-point projected floor is the eighth-lowest mark among all QBs. That’s not a knock on him. It just simply means that he probably is a better play in guaranteed prize pools than cash games.
It’s hard to ignore Palmer this week given the Cardinals’ high implied total of 25 points. However, the Rams have held QBs to 0.5 points under salary-based expectations over the last year. He has the second-highest FantasyLabs projected ownership at the position (13-16 percent) and a lot of that probably has to do with his $6,300 DK price tag and 83 percent Bargain Rating there. Again, perhaps Palmer is best reserved for GPPs this week.
RB – David Johnson
Last week showed DJ’s incredible floor: In a game that wasn’t going the Cardinals’ way at all, DJ still managed to score 26.1 DK points. He had 83 rushing yards on 19 attempts and got into the end zone twice. More important, however, is that he got six receiving targets. He’s had at least five targets in each of his last five games as the Cardinals’ starting RB. He’s essentially immune to game flow concerns, which is why he boasts the highest projected floor on both FD and DK among RBs.
Last year the Rams ranked seventh in rush defense, per Football Outsiders. This year, in the small three-game sample, they’ve slipped to 14th. In the past year, they’ve allowed FD RBs to score 1.2 points over expectations. DJ has very high salaries but is still projected to outperform them: On FanDuel, he is the most-expensive back at $8,700 but still owns a +5.2 Projected Plus/Minus and has a FantasyLabs ownership projection of 17-20 percent. He’s a DFS factor every single week.
RB – Chris Johnson
Because the Cardinals got up big in Week 2, CJ got an unexpectedly high number of rushes:
The Cardinals are big favorites this week, but it’s a bit too risky even in large-field GPPs to try and predict garbage time.
WR – Larry Fitzgerald
Fitz has owned the Cardinals’ highest percentage of targets in each of his first three weeks: 27.03 percent, 31.43 percent, and 24.00 percent. He’s the most important non-DJ part of this offense and will continue to see a ton of volume. This week is a tough matchup, as the Rams have held WRs to only 0.7 points over salary-based expectations in the past year. With the struggles of Michael Floyd and the up-and-down usage of the Brown bros, Palmer could again lean heavily on Fitz, who has double-digit targets in each of his last three games. If you’re playing him this week, get your exposure on FD, where he is $7,500 and boasts a 95 percent Bargain Rating.
WR – Michael Floyd
Floyd practiced in full on Thursday and looks ready to play in Week 4. He’s gotten a ton of opportunities this year — he had 11 targets just last week against the Bills — and he hasn’t done a darn thing with them. He caught just four of those targets and racked up a mere 65 yards and no touchdowns. He has clearly been the No. 2 receiving option so far this season, but that could change come Week 4. One of the Browns — we’ll get there in a sec — already saw a jump in target share last week. Floyd is probably fairly priced at $6,500 — he has a +0.8 Projected Plus/Minus — but he doesn’t inspire too much confidence even in GPPs.
WR – The Brown Bros
Here are the target share numbers by week for the Cardinals:
After oddly getting few targets in Weeks 1 and 2, John Brown got a large share of targets in Week 3. He was able to reel in six of his 11 targets for 70 yards. Jaron Brown, on the other hand, saw only six targets in Week 3 and finished with three catches for 49 yards. Perhaps the most encouraging thing for JoBro is the Cardinals’ distribution of Air Yards: JoBro owns the second-highest percent of Air Yards on the team at 25.34 percent. Obviously, the split between that percentage and his percentage of total targets (14.75 percent) is very high. He could be due for 1) regression and/or 2) a big game. He is only $4,300 on DK and has an 87 percent Bargain Rating and +3.4 Projected Plus/Minus.
TE – Darren Fells
As you can see in the graphic above, the Cardinals rarely use their tight ends as pass-catching options. Fells and Jermaine Gresham split snaps (although Fells has seen a larger share lately) and neither possesses either a high enough floor or ceiling to use in DFS.
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:
