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 and Sleeper. 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, you will seriously never understand how you got by without. 

 

We didn’t always hit the nuts, but overall last year was very profitable, especially if you followed along via the article and our FREE Underdog Pick’em Tracker on Fantasy Life, where I load tickets as I make them. 

Let’s get to the Week 2 plays…

Underdog Pick’em (5-Way; 15.31x)

We have Matthew Stafford projected for right around 34.0 pass attempts in his Week 2 matchup with Arizona. The Cardinals are a poor defense (31st in EPA per play in Week 1), so while the Rams may be able to move the ball, we’ll likely see more explosive plays from Los Angeles in this spot as well, which should limit the overall volume for Stafford. I also love correlating the LOWER on Stafford with the HIGHER on Kyren Williams, who took 18 of the 20 carries the Rams doled out to RBs in Week 1 and has a much better matchup this week against Arizona, which allowed 91 yards rushing to the Bills last week. 

For the second half of this 5-way play, I like looking at the Baltimore-Las Vegas game and correlating another QB-RB pair in Derrick Henry and Lamar Jackson. With the Raiders allowing over 100+ yards to J.K. Dobbins on 10 carries last week and the Ravens being -9.5 favorites, the most likely scenario in this one is that we see a lot of Henry. We have Henry projected for 73 rush yards on FantasyLife+, giving up a decent edge on his 69.5, which has moved lower since open. We also have Jackson projected in the 18.5-19.0 range for completions in this game, a lower number but one that makes sense if we projected the Ravens to be ahead more and running the ball. 

Finally, as a comeback play to finish off our 5-way entry, I love targeting Brock Bowers’ HIGHER this week. 

The HIGHER on Bowers’ receiving yards is one of the strongest edges we have for this game in our Fantasy Life Pick’em builder and correlates well with our first two plays from Baltimore. 

PrizePicks (6-Way; 13x)

We came close to hitting on the PrizePicks 6-way ticket last week, but missed the More Than on our QB-RB yards correlation stack from the Broncos. I’m sticking with that strategy for Week 2, though, and targeting a couple of QB/WR combos to hopefully bring us home. 

First, in Atlanta, the lower yardage totals on Kirk Cousins and Drake London look worth buying up this week. 

Cousins had a terrible start but he was playing his first game in a new offense against one of the best secondaries/defenses in the league. Additionally, the Eagles corners aren’t known for stopping explosive plays and present a much better matchup for Drake London, who isn’t likely to be the fourth-best receiver on this team most weeks. We have the More Than’s on both players with significant enough edges that I like pairing them together, even if we have to take a reduced payout. 

On the flip side, despite having some success through the air in Week 1, I expect the Eagles to keep the ball on the ground in this game against Atlanta’s solid secondary (6th in success rate per dropback in Week 1). We have Jalen Hurts projected for 229 pass yards in this game making the Less Than on his 241.5 passing total an attractive play. 

The second portion of this Week’s play feels a little more dangerous, but I do like buying these lower totals on the Browns’ passing game. Amari Cooper went for 80+ yards in 3 of 5 games with Deshaun Watson last year and they have a much better matchup against Jacksonville, which is without their top corner Tyson Campbell this week (Jacksonville also allowed 8.6 yards per attempt in Week 1). 

As a comeback play in that game, I also like taking a More Than on Evan Engram’s receiving total, which has come down almost 5 yards after Week 1. Engram went for 11 catches and 95 yards against Cleveland last season, and with Cleveland having such solid outside corners, this makes sense as a spot where Trevor Lawrence will choose to distribute the ball more over the middle on shorter throws to counteract the Browns' strength on defense.  

Sleeper Pick’em (3-Way; 12.14x)

For the Sleeper 3-way play this week I went back to our plays from the Raiders-Ravens game, but used Sleeper’s Milestone options to get access to bigger payouts. 

This not only allows us to profit off this 3-way ticket if the other two plays on our Underdog ticket (from Rams-Cardinals) don’t come through, but allows us access to the true upside of both Henry and Bowers, who should be focal points for their offenses in this game. 

Just to reiterate from above, Bowers had a 23% target share in Week 1, which led the team, and the Ravens as a defense also allowed 71 yards on six catches to the Chiefs TE group last week. 

As for Henry, he’ll be up against a Raiders defense that allowed 6.5 yards per carry to the Chargers, who were relying on an assortment of RBs, including the oft-injured Dobbins. The sky is the limit this week for Henry, who also comes in on 9 days of rest since the Sept. 5 opener.