This is shaping up to be an awesome DFS week.

We’ve got 10 games on the Sunday Main Slate and multiple fun games to attack:

  • Cowboys/Lions—52-point total
  • Ravens/Commanders—51.5-point total
  • Cardinals/Packers—47.5-point total
  • Panthers/Falcons—47-point total

Due to a plethora of strong nominees, the DFS Awards Academy had their work cut out for them this week. Fair warning—there will be some snubs, that's what happens in a competitive environment.

If your favorite play doesn't take home some hardware today just know that there's always next week. 

OK, the envelope please …

🏆 THE FLOP LAG STACK OF THE WEEK (Jordan Love DOUBLES)

With no Romeo Doubs or Luke Musgrave last week, the DFS bros. lined up in droves to jam Jordan Love double stacks against a weak Rams secondary. But outside of Tucker Kraft (4-88-2), the stack flopped.

You know what that means—once the field has touched the hot stove and been burnt, they want nothing to do with it the following week. The Academy, however, thinks you should go right back to the cheese well:

The macro here is simple: the Packers are 5-point home favorites with a team total of 26.5 vs. one of the worst secondaries in football … and I don't think this is going to be remotely close to a chalky stack.

Per Matthew Freedman, Love is No. 2 with 291 yards passing per game and the Cardinals are No. 32 in defensive dropback SR (57.4%).

Reed is expensive, but he's an automatic play every week as our generation's Deebo Samuel. In his three games with Love, he's finished as the overall WR1, WR2, and WR22. 

Wicks is the lynchpin of this play, though. He burned everyone last week and the drops got all the pub, but his underlying usage is still stellar (25% targets, 40% air yards). 

If you are truly a sick pup, you could include Doubs ($5,200) instead of one of Reed or Wicks and play the "squeaky wheel" angle, but he just hasn't shown an ability to earn targets on par with Reed and Wicks this year.

It's also worth mentioning that Kraft ($4,800) is significantly more expensive this week. I will never say it's a bad idea to correlate your TE with your main QB, but the price hike coupled with a likely ownership bump, makes it more of a stayaway. Kraft still only has a 15% target share on the year.

BONUS: I like the idea of playing Trey McBride ($5,700) as a Cardinals bring back, though, if you want to correlate a TE in this game.

🏆 DO YOU GOT THE STONES FOR A STONE-MIN QB? (Spencer Rattler)

With Derek Carr ruled out with an oblique injury, the Saints will turn to rookie QB Spencer Rattler for the Week 6 start vs. the Bucs.

Normally when this happens, DraftKings will adjust the salaries and price the new QB in the 5K range. However, because the salaries were already out before the Carr injury on MNF, Rattler was stuck with a rock-bottom salary of $4,000.

This creates one of the more unique decision points in DFS because QBs have such a high floor and paying off a $4K salary is not that difficult. It might seem hard to believe, but Rattler will likely end up as the biggest "points per dollar" value play on the entire slate.

There's a reason I didn't award Rattler as "The Vomit Stack" of the week and that's because I don't think it's actually that gross. He gets a start at home in the dome vs. a beatable Bucs secondary that just got lit up by Kirk Cousins for 500+ passing yards.

There's all kinds of ways you can stack him up, too: Rashid Shaheed ($5600), Juwan Johnson ($3100), and, of course, Chris Olave ($6600). In fact, Rattler is already on record as planning to force feed Olave targets. 

🏆 THE VOMIT STACK OF THE WEEK (Will Levis DOUBLE STACK)

Alright, you thought Rattler was gross? Well, hold my beer because I'm about to tout something that is actually gross … a Titans double stack of:

This sets up as a sharp play for two reasons: 1) Tony Pollard ($6,000) is in the fast lane to uber chalk this week and 2) The Colts secondary is getting shredded this season, having allowed the third-most passing yards per game (280). This has resulted in a 4.3-fantasy-point boost for the WR position, per our DvP tool.

Like any good Vomit Stack this requires a leap of faith, but the pieces are cheap enough for this stack to get home. Hopkins has commanded a 22% target share the past two weeks and he is my favorite play of the bunch. Still, I think you can turn to Ridley as well. He ran 91% of the routes last week and can put up a nice score in the right game environment.

I think you could play both of Nuk and Ridley, but my preference would be to choose one and then fill the TE slot with Okonkwo, who had a solid TPRR (18%) and target share (18%) last week.

One note on the Pollard thing … if you are playing large-field contests, I like the fade. But if you are playing smaller contests—let's say sub 5k entries—I like the idea of including Pollard with the Levis double stack and onslaughting the offense. Even though Pollard will be popular, it will be extremely unique to use him as part of a larger Titans stack. 

🏆 THE SCROLL THE EFF DOWN RB SLEEPER PLAYS (RICO & J.K.)

It's time to head to Underdog where we have two RB plays who will go mostly overlooked in Battle Royale drafts, but have the potential to be the scroll-down gem you need:

For Dowdle, there's a lot to like here. The main selling point is the leverage he provides on the other more-popular pieces in this game. Basically every other piece on both offenses (DAL/DET) is getting selected in the majority of drafts. This makes it tricky to attack this game in a unique way, but Dowdle could be the exact fly in the ointment we need. 

Dwain highlighted his usage rise earlier this week and there's room for even more growth as he's been hovering around the 50% snaps mark. If Dowdle scores a couple TDs and slows down this game, you could easily leapfrog thousands of teams who attack it via the passing games.

The thesis behind the Dobbins play is a little different. People are scared by the Broncos matchup, but there's a few things to like here. One, the Broncos pass defense is far more intimidating than their run defense. And two, Gus Edwards is unlikely to play this week, which means Dobbins is going to get saddled up with a ton of touches. There's some wishcasting that rookie Kimani Vidal could see a role this week, but I very much doubt it will be anything significant.

One of the recurring themes to scroll down RB gems is chasing volume for talented backs who the market is over-discounting due to matchup. That's the Dobbins play in a nutshell.

For more Underdog draft strategy angles and hidden gems, I'll be posting a strategy video on the Deposit Kingdom channel on Friday afternoon. 

Good luck this week.Â