The Week 13 NFL Dashboard
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Redskins at Cardinals
The Redskins travel to Arizona to face the Cardinals, who are favored by 2.5 points at home. This game has the second-highest total on the slate at 49.5 points. The Cardinals are currently implied for 26 points; the Redskins, 23.5 points.
Washington Redksins
Writer: Kelly McCann
QB – Kirk Cousins
Cousins has scored at least 25.5 DraftKings points in four of his last five games and has averaged 27.14 DK points per game during that time. Per our Trends tool, he has produced a healthy +11.31 Plus/Minus with 100 percent Consistency in those games:
The Cardinals are ranked third against the pass in Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) and will be a stiff test for Cousins and the Redskins passing game. Patrick Peterson is Pro Football Focus’ No. 17 cover cornerback and D.J. Swearinger is PFF’s No. 9 cover safety. Playing Cousins against this defense is certainly risky, but he has a top-five Upside Rating (per our Player Models) on both DK and FanDuel and zero to one percent FantasyLabs ownership projections.
RB – Rob Kelley
Theoretically, the Cardinals stout pass defense should inspire teams to run against them, given that they are ‘only’ 11th in rush DVOA. In fact, in Arizona’s past four games they have allowed more than 20 FD points to both Jonathan Stewart (22.5) and Devonta Freeman (20.7). Since taking over the starting job, Kelley has averaged 20.25 carries across four games, dropping below 20 carries just once. Opportunity is everything for RBs, and opportunity Kelley gets! Coming off a down week, Kelley is a discerning GPP play, especially on FD, where he has an 82 percent Bargain Rating.
RB – Chris Thompson
Thompson is a nice football player, but his value in DFS is severely limited. Last week, the Redskins were forced to throw the ball 53 times, and Thompson was targeted six times but he accumulated just 8.4 DK points. “Meh” is what the fox says.
WR – Jamison Crowder
Because Cousins spreads the ball around, it is difficult to handicap the Redskins wide receivers each week. Per Bryan Mears’ Market Share Report, Crowder has led the Redskins WRs with an 18.6 percent target share the past four weeks. Crowder has had at least 88 receiving yards or a TD in seven straight games. Per our Trends tool, in those seven games JC has averaged a very healthy 18.39 DK points per game with an +8.11 Plus/Minus at an average ownership of just 8.1 percent.
Stacking Crowder with the Redskins D/ST is always in play for large-field GPPs like the Millionaire Maker, given his return capabilities.
WR – Pierre Garcon
Garcon has led the Redskins skill players in snaps over the past four games and is second among Washington WRs with a 16.28 percent target share during that time. According to our Matchups tool, Garcon will run most of his routes against Marcus Cooper, whose 45.5 PFF grade ranks him 108th at CB.
WR – DeSean Jackson
Jackson is coming off his best game of the season and appears to be recovered from the various issues that slowed him down earlier in the year. This week, he’ll be running most of his routes against the aforementioned Peterson, who makes a sizable living by slowing down WRs. Jackson is a TD-dependent boom-or-bust GPP play with two to four percent projected ownership.
TE – Vernon Davis
With super-stud Jordan Reed (shoulder) already declared out, Davis will take over the Redskins TE duties. Davis has been productive when given opportunities this season. He scored double-digit DK points in four straight games when Reed was dealing with an injury earlier this season. Davis is currently a top-10 TE in the Levitan Model for FD, where he sports an 89 percent Bargain Rating.
Arizona Cardinals
QB – Carson Palmer
Palmer has exceeded salary-based expectations in four of his last five games, but those performances have been right around 15 to 20 DK points. He hasn’t really shown the high-ceiling games we saw last year, and he completed only 25 of his 45 passes last week against a poor Falcons defense. This week, he’ll face a Redskins defense that isn’t much better — it ranks 26th in DVOA — but the Redskins have a funnel defense, specifically ranking 18th versus the pass but dead last against the run. This very well could and probably should be a game in which the Cardinals heavily feed RB David Johnson. That said, Palmer has a nice Projected Plus/Minus of +3.65 on FD, where he has a 69 percent Bargain Rating. He’s projected for zero to one percent ownership.
RB – David Johnson
As mentioned above, the Redskins are the worst team in the league against the run and are facing perhaps the best RB in the league in Johnson. This could get ugly. As expected, DJ is the highest-rated RB in Bales Model for FD, where he comes with a ridiculous +7.73 Projected Plus/Minus, 11 Pro Trends, and a 99 percent Bargain Rating. Also as expected, he’s projected for a very chalky 31-40 percent ownership there. DJ has crushed value lately, exceeding salary-based expectations in eight of his last nine games and averaging a +9.26 Plus/Minus in that time. He is the Cardinals offense: Over the past four games, he’s owned 85.33 percent of their rushes and 21.84 percent of their targets. He’s seen 11 targets in each of his last two games, and he had a receiving line of 8-103-1 last week. If he lined up at WR, he’d probably be the team’s best player at the position.
WR – Larry Fitzgerald
Fitzgerald leads the Cardinals with 22.99 percent of the team’s targets over the last four games. However, that number is buoyed by high target marks of 18 and 11 three and four games ago: He’s gotten only four and seven targets in the last two games. He’s exceeded 100 receiving yards in only one game this year and hasn’t gotten into the end zone since the beginning of October, when he put up a 6-81-2 line against the 49ers. This is a tough matchup for Fitz in that the Redskins are better against the pass than the run, but he has a nice individual matchup against slot CB Kendall Fuller, who has a poor 51.2 coverage grade from PFF. Fitz could have a big game, but his recent workload makes him a GPP-play only.
WR – J.J Nelson
Per our NFL Matchups tool, Nelson is expected to run most of his routes outside against CB Josh Norman, who ranks 19th at the position per PFF with an excellent 81.3 coverage grade. Nelson was a thing in DFS a month ago, when he grabbed eight of his 12 targets for 79 yards and two touchdowns against the Panthers, but he’s since scored a combined 6.4 FD points in his last three games. He’s gotten only 15 targets in that time frame, converting them into a miserable 59 receiving yards. Given the matchup and poor volume of late, Nelson is a highly unattractive option.
WR – John Brown and Michael Floyd
Both Brown and Floyd were limited in practice this week. Brown (illness) is officially questionable to play while Floyd (hamstring) finished the week off of the injury report. With Nelson drawing coverage from Norman, one of Brown and Floyd is likely to be running the majority of his routes against Bashaud Breeland, who is PFF’s 103rd-ranked CB with an awful 47.9 coverage grade. If both WRs are active, though, neither one is likely to be enticing: They’ve owned 8.05 and 9.20 percent of the Cardinals’ targets over the past four games.
TE – Jermaine Gresham
Gresham has seen 13.22 percent of the team’s targets over the past four games, and he’s facing a Washington team that ranks 26th in pass DVOA against TEs. Gresham has nice ratings in several of our Pro Models, but that’s mostly because he’s the $2,500 minimum on DK, where he comes with a +3.82 Projected Plus/Minus and a 69 percent Bargain Rating. Gresham has back-to-back double-digit DK outings — he had 14.5 points on 10 targets last game — and is worth some GPP exposure given his price.
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:
