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Five Key Injury Updates For Week 15

by Peter Overzet

5 hours ago

In today's Fantasy Life Newsletter, presented by Mike's Hard Lemonade:

If you need any proof that we’ve reached the silly point of the season, look no further than the Carolina Panthers being favored to win their first game in nearly two years today vs. the Cowboys.

Luckily, things aren’t quite as silly on the injury front today. Here are the situations to monitor up until lock …

Tony Pollard is trending in the right direction. After not practicing earlier in the week, Pollard is going to test his ankle in pregame warmups. We have him ranked as a back-end RB2. The matchup is great, so I wouldn’t hesitate starting him if he’s active.

All signs point to Bucky Irving playing. Similar to Pollard, Irving missed practice time this week with back and hip injuries but is expected to play today vs. the Chargers. The team didn’t elevate another back, so I lean toward assuming he plays.

Can you trust Ladd McConkey? Ladd is officially listed as questionable with knee and shoulder injuries, but the team is “optimistic that he can go.”

One thing to note about both Irving and McConkey is that Chargers/Bucs is a late game. If you are planning to start either, make sure you have a contingency plan (i.e. Rachaad White/Joshua Plamer or another player in a late game to turn to if things go sideways).

Breece Hall is back. After missing last week’s game with a knee injury, Hall is expected to play after practicing in full on Friday. It’s a great matchup vs. the Jags, but there’s certainly concern for a workload split with Braelon Allen and Isaiah Davis. I wish I could help more, but our rankers are torn:

Don’t count on David Njoku. He’s going to test things out pregame, but he didn’t practice all week with a hamstring injury. If you’re looking for a TE streamer today, I like Brenton Strange stepping in for the injured Evan Engram. If you’re looking for how to attack the Browns in DFS today, read on …

What else is in today’s newsletter?

Week 15 DFS Picks: Jameis time, baby
Watercooler: Start-Sit recommendations for Week 15

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Week 15 DFS Picks

by James McCool

The Week 15 Sunday slate is here, and, as always, leveraging matchups is critical to crafting effective daily fantasy strategies.

I'm looking at all of them and scouring data to help you make good DFS choices with my Week 15 NFL DFS picks, featuring my top stack, value plays, GPP plays, and fades.

Our NFL DFS Projections and DFS Pick'em Tool are also great resources; if you're interested in college DFS, we have projections here, too.

Top NFL DFS Stack For Week 15

Cleveland Browns

With a salary cost of just $16,700, the combo of Jameis Winston/Jerry Jeudy/Elijah Moore has one of the highest median projections and ceilings of any QB+2 available. They have the third-highest top finish rate at 13.50% with the only mediocre metric being a team total of 20.50.

To make things even sweeter for this combo, David Njoku and Cedric Tillman are out for the week, meaning that we get an even skinnier target tree for Jeudy and Moore. If you wanted to get a little extra value, you could go with Winston/Jeudy/Atkins and leverage Njoku being out. That combo only costs $14,400 and has a 4x rate of 13.90% along with a median of 45.32.

Week 15 NFL DFS Value Picks

RB: James Conner

James Conner is never a sexy name to click, but it’s worth considering him as a value this week for a couple of reasons.

While he doesn’t command a true bell cow role, he does have a season Utilization Score of 7.6 that jumps to 8.1 since week 8. He consistently runs 50%+ of the routes and has around 61% of the rushing attempts for the team. He also has a strong share of the inside-the-five attempts with a 67% rate. Averaging 15.9 PPR points per game and in a slightly positive matchup against the Patriots, I think you should look to Conner in the midrange for smaller fields and single-entry contests.

TE: Pat Freiermuth

Over the last two weeks, Freiermuth has averaged 16.3 PPR points per game on 18% of the targets and 24% of the air yards. Importantly, Freiermuth runs very high-efficiency routes and has 3.54 of his 3.69 targets per game deemed catchable.

With no George Pickens, we saw Russell Wilson default to Freiermuth more frequently last week, and with an opponent that should push them this week, he will be needed. Freiermuth isn’t elite, but he is better than the price suggests and makes for a strong value play in all formats.

Top NFL DFS GPP Picks For Week 15

WR: CeeDee Lamb

Over the last five games, Lamb is averaging 14.2 PPR points per game. In week 14, he had 21.4 PPR points with 25% of the targets, 26% of the air yards, and a Utilization Score of 8.3.

Now, granted, the Cowboys' offense isn’t pushing down the field right now, as evidenced by an aDOT of just 6.3 over the last five weeks for Lamb, but the targets are still there and his endzone presence is undeniable.

Furthermore, he gets the Panthers who are a helpful matchup for QBs, which should help the efficiency of the targets Lamb gets. At $7,300, Lamb has a median projection of 19.14 and projected ownership of just 2.53%, making him a strong large-field GPP play.

MORE WEEK 15 DFS PLAYS