Week 7 Underdog and PrizePicks Pick'em Plays: Brock Bowers
Geoff Ulrich projects the full cards for Week 7 Pick'em Plays for Underdog and PrizePicks.
Welcome back to the weekly NFL Pick’em Plays article on Fantasy Life.
If you’re new, last year I put together a five-way Pick'em ticket using Underdog’s selection of Higher/Lower offerings. I would also sometimes include some extra suggestions at the end and a list of “play to levels” using our Fantasy Life projections.
This year, I’m changing things up a bit. We’ll still be doing the Underdog section (and a full ticket), but I’ll also be doing entries for PrizePicks. The writeups will be a little shorter but there will be more picks.
Less boring analysis from me, and more of those sweet, sweet picks, driven by our FantasyLife+ projections and our awesome new Pick’em Lineup Builder—which, once you try it, you will seriously never understand how you got by without it.
Week 6 recap: The Houston Stack stopped us in our tracks
We nailed the DET/DAL game last week. Everyone on the Detroit side went off, which made it easy for Rico Dowdle to get over his receiving prop as well. The issue came with our Texans passing stack, which was working, but ran out of real estate so to speak as the Patriots just continued to turn the ball over inside their 30-yard line and make it easy for the Texans to run the ball.
Had Drake Maye not turned it over so much, we likely hit all five last week, but the rookie faltering should have factored into my plays.
As always, I loaded up this week’s plays on Thursday in our FREE Underdog Pick’em Tracker on Fantasy Life, where we are now up well over 60 units on the season. Keep checking there for more plays as I’ve already loaded this week’s main card plays plus more to take advantage of some early lines.
Now let’s get to the Week 7 plays …
Underdog Pick’em (5-Way; 27.92x)
- Will Levis HIGHER 199.5 passing yards
- DeAndre Hopkins HIGHER 49.5 rec yards
- Brock Bowers HIGHER 69.5 rec yards
- Aidan O’Connell HIGHER 219.5 passing yards
- Jayden Daniels LOWER 30.5 pass attempts
I’m once again using the alternate lines on Underdog to bump up our totals and payouts on the 5-way ticket this week with a couple of passing stacks that I think are great buy-low candidates.
Will Levis takes a lot of heat, but the fact of the matter is, when one of your receivers drops half the passes you throw his way, it’s hard to gain yards. That’s what happened last week when Levis went 0-for-8 targeting Calvin Ridley. He had much better success targeting DeAndre Hopkins, who went 3-37 on 3 targets in the first half and could have had a bigger game against the Colts had the Titans not turtled and gone conservative in the second half.
Tennessee won’t have that luxury against Buffalo, whose offense is too good to sit back against. The Bills have also regressed as a defense, allowing 8.3 yards per attempt over their last three games. Levis’ regular total on Underdog is only 174.5, but taking the Higher on 199.5 means still put him within striking distance of the 191 projection Matthew Freedman has on him this week on Fantasy Life.
Just like Levis/Hopkins, I’m targeting another castaway duo on the Raiders with Aidan O’Connell and Brock Bowers, and using their alternative lines to boost our payout again. Our projections are relatively bullish on O’Connell this week as he comes in at 227 passing yards, which is 10+ yards above his regular projection and still above the alt line of 219.5 I used for our ticket. If O’Connell does hit his HIGHER, it’s almost a certainty that Bowers is having a big day as the receiving options outside of him are limited at best.
The Rams are also a poor pass defense to begin with, and have a weaker linebacker crew that allowed some massive plays to Tucker Kraft, who went for 88 yards on just 4 catches against them in Week 5. Bowers is projected for 9.7 targets this week on Fantasy Life, so the opportunities for him to go off should be plentiful.
Finally, I’m targeting Jayden Daniels to go for LOWER than 30.5 pass attempts this week to round out the card. Daniels has been under this line in four of six starts this season and the Commanders enter this game as 8.0-point favorites, so game flow will likely push them toward a more run-heavy approach this week.
We have Daniels for just 28.0 attempts this week, making this a solid edge to attack for Week 7.
PrizePicks (6-Way; 25x)
- Jerry Jeudy More Than 6.5 targets (proj 6.7)
- AJ Brown More Than 8.5 targets (proj 9.6)
- Dalton Schultz More Than 5.5 targets (proj 6.2)
- Drake London Less Than 10.0 targets (proj 9.2)
- Jordan Addison Less Than 6.5 targets (proj 5.4)
- Terry McLaurin Less Than 7.5 targets (proj 6.8)
I decided to switch things up a bit on PrizePicks this week and go with a card of reception target props, a market I’ve been dabbling in week after week with exceptional results (thanks to our Fantasy Life Projections).
My process on creating these cards has been pretty simple. I go through the offerings on PrizePicks, cross-reference them with our projections, and pick out the top six or seven edges that also make sense to me from a common-sense basis.
By common sense, I just mean that our projection isn’t missing some glaring development (like a coach talking up or talking down a player, or a player playing through injury).
The six I chose this week all had nice edges and made plenty of sense (to me, anyway) and I’ll quickly break down the thought process below into why I sided with these six. However, if you want to see more, you can check out our weekly target projections, which are available with a FantasyLife+ subscription.
- Jerry Jeudy: No Amari Cooper and the Browns are nearly TD underdogs. Game flow is likely in his favor and now gets the primary targets
- A.J. Brown: Good matchup against an undersized corner Deonte Banks and the Giants should be able to keep the game close given the Eagles' defensive woes
- Dalton Schultz: Road underdogs and no Nico Collins. Expanded target share likely
- Jordan Addison: Good matchup, but secondary option and the projections have him as a strong fade
- Terry McLaurin: Commanders may not need to throw much, and the Panthers have a terrible rush defense
- Drake London: Atlanta should be able to run the ball and their poor secondary will mean Mooney, Pitts, and McLeod will all demand targets
Full PrizePicks Card (25x):