The Week 14 NFL Dashboard
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Cardinals at Dolphins
The Cardinals travel to Miami to take on the 7-5 Dolphins, who opened as 2.5-point favorites, but they’ve since seen massive line movement: They’re currently two-point dogs. This game has a low Vegas total of 43.5 points. The Cardinals are implied for 22.75 points; the Dolphins, 20.75.
Arizona Cardinals
Writer: Bryan Mears
QB – Carson Palmer
After struggling for the first half of the season, Palmer has since rebounded, exceeding salary-based expectations in five of his last six games. He has scored at least 15 DraftKings points in each of those contests and has thrown the ball at least 45 times in five of the six. The Dolphins defense is difficult to analyze: It ranked eighth in Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) before last week but then got steamrolled by the awful Ravens offense, allowing 38 points and four touchdowns to Joe Flacco. Because of that performance, the Dolphins defense now ranks 18th in DVOA. Palmer is in play this weekend, as his low $5,700 DK price tag comes with a +3.56 Projected Plus/Minus, seven Pro Trends, an 83 percent Bargain Rating, and a +3.7 Opponent Plus/Minus. At just zero to one percent ownership, he’s a worthy consideration in guaranteed prize pools.
RB – David Johnson
As mentioned in the RB Breakdown, DJ is just ridiculous. Over the last four games he owns 80.9 percent of the Cardinals’ rushes . . .
. . . and 23.8 percent of the targets:
DJ has a higher target share than WR1s like Golden Tate, Allen Robinson, Doug Baldwin, and Stefon Diggs over the last month. Johnson is debatably the best RB in the league and a top WR. In that context, his slate-high salaries of $9,800 DK and $9,700 FanDuel aren’t unreasonable. He has a poor Opponent Plus/Minus of -1.1 this week against the Dolphins, but he leads the position with an FD floor projection of 10.0 points. He’s projected for 26-30 percent ownership on both sites and should be the chalk stud yet again.
WR – Larry Fitzgerald
It has now been seven games since Fitz has gotten into the end zone, despite seeing heavy volume (74 targets) during that time. This week he could see some positive regression against a Miami defense that ranks 22nd in production allowed to the middle of the field. Fitz should run out of the slot as usual, and (per our Matchups tool) he’ll match up against Dolphins CB Bobby McCain, who is Pro Football Focus’ 71st-ranked corner with a poor 69.3 coverage grade. Like most of the top WRs this weekend, Fitz is a much better play on FD, where his $6,800 salary comes with a +3.80 Projected Plus/Minus, eight Pro Trends, and a 99 percent Bargain Rating.
WR – J.J Nelson, Michael Floyd, and John Brown
This seemed like a formidable WR cohort coming into the season, but now TE Jermaine Gresham sits third behind DJ and Fitzgerald on the team in target share over the past month. Floyd is fourth, but none of these guys owns a target share over 13.95 percent. Of the three, Floyd is the highest-rated FD WR in the Bales Model and actually boasts a high +4.25 Projected Plus/Minus. That said, he’s gone over 100 yards just once all season, and he’s very touchdown-dependent: He had a 3-18-1 line last week on eight targets. These guys all have the talent to break a long one, but they’re GPP-only plays with their current roles in the offense.
Brown (illness) is officially questionable but likely to play after having two limited practices this week.
TE – Jermaine Gresham
Gresham has seen the same recent uptick in production that Palmer has, exceeding salary-based expectations in each of his last five games. He’s caught five balls in each of his last two and has two touchdowns in his last three. That said, he’s also very touchdown-dependent — his season high in yardage is 52 — and he has a scary projected floor of only 1.5 FD points. He does have a positive Opponent Plus/Minus of +2.6, but there are likely better punt TE options in this slate.
Miami Dolphins
Writer: Joe Holka
QB – Ryan Tannehill
Tannehill’s been a bad quarterback in anything less than cupcake matchups this year. The Cardinals are the opposite of cupcake — they’re third against the pass in Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA). Miami’s offensive line is still in shambles, and Tannehill is still #badatfootball. Tannehill has the slate’s second-lowest ceiling projection and Projected Plus/Minus on DK.
RB – Jay Ajayi
Theoretically, the Cardinals stout pass defense should inspire teams to run the ball, given that they are ‘only’ 11th in rush DVOA. Per Player Profiler, Ajayi is fourth in the NFL with 1.2 carries of 15-plus yards per game, and he gets a lot of carries, so there’s a reasonable path to success — but he doesn’t catch passes . . . which might not matter anyway, since the Cardinals are first in pass DVOA against RBs. He’s projected for only two to four percent ownership.
RB – Damien Williams
Williams has touched the ball just six times since his two-touchdown explosion three weeks ago.
WR – Jarvis Landry
Landry was due for positive target regression, and he got it in Week 13. The ‘high-volume, high-floor’ player was averaging just six targets per game over four contests, but last week he had 14 targets, which he turned into 11 catches for 87 yards. Per Player Profiler, things are looking up:
His TD equity is extremely low, but he does have a decent matchup against Tyvon Branch in the slot. He’s $5,600 DK.
WR – DeVante Parker
Parker is expected to run most of his routes against shotdown CB Patrick Peterson — and Parker (back) is still dealing with injury issues. Even in the Quarter Arcade, it’s hard to invest in Parker.
He’s officially questionable but expected to play after practicing in full on Friday.
WR – Kenny Stills
Stills is expected to see the majority of his snaps against Marcus Cooper, who has an unbelievably low PFF coverage grade of 40.9. Stills doesn’t rate highly in the Models, but Stills probably has the best chance of any of the Dolphins receivers to get deep. If you roster Stills, hope that Tanny can get the ball to him for the big play — and then hope some more that Stills doesn’t drop the pass. Enjoy.
TE – Dion Sims
Sims scored his first TD of the season two weeks ago, and he has four targets in each of the last three games. That’s not nothing, but it’s not something either. Tannehill has never paid much attention to his TEs, as he’s targeted the position on just 10.2 percent of his pass attempts over the past 12 months. Sims is the second-lowest rated DK TE in our Tournament 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:
