Week 16 DFS Picks: Tournament Plays

Every Sunday in the weekly fantasy chats, I get asked about my favorite plays of the week or who is in my player pool that weekend for DFS.

This article series covers exactly that.

Every week, I will go through the players I am targeting to play in DFS for all games, tournaments, and game stacks.

The idea is that this will paint a clearer picture of framing lineups.

Week 16 DFS Content:

It is not that tournament players cannot be used in cash games.

If a player here works out for your team structure in cash games surrounding your primary core, use them.

These are just the players who come with some element of inherent risk but are the primary players I still want to be ahead of the field compared to the percentage of rosters they are projected to make this weekend.

I will analyze the player selections and game writeups, but for a detailed breakdown of the players and games, check out the Week 16 Worksheet.

Quarterback

Jalen Hurts ($7,800/$8,600)

You can always pay up for a red-hot Josh Allen, but I do like the Hurts the most of the “pay up” quarterbacks based on the Philadelphia and Washington matchup projecting to be more competitive.

Hurts was excellent in a drop-back passing game against a front-end defense, while Saquon Barkley was held in check.

Hurts completed 25-of-32 (78.1%) of his passes for 290 yards (9.1 Y/A) with 2 touchdowns against the Steelers.

He added 45 yards and a touchdown on the ground, scoring the most fantasy points allowed by Pittsburgh this season (28.1).

The Eagles' dropback rate through three quarters was 57.3%, their highest rate in a game since Week 3.

If that holds here again, there is plenty of upside.

Washington is still a pass defense that ranks 28th in passing points allowed per attempt (0.489) and has allowed a 5.6% touchdown rate (31st) when it fails to pressure the opposing quarterback.

Sam Darnold ($6,500/$7,700)

Darnold did not play a game on Monday, but he has given us far more good games than bad ones this year.

It was only the third time this season that Darnold has finished in the back half of weekly scoring.

One area where Darnold and this passing game can exploit Seattle is with the play-action passing game.

Darnold uses play action at the sixth-highest rate in the league (29.3%).

Using play action, Darnold has a 136.1 rating, second in the league behind Lamar Jackson.

He leads the league with an 11.2% touchdown rate and 10.9 Y/A using play-action.

Against play-action passes, Seattle has allowed a 71.8% completion rate (26th), 9.3 Y/A (28th), and a 7.7% touchdown rate (31st).

Seattle has allowed a 63.2% completion rate (14th), 5.9 Y/A (2nd), and a 3.1% touchdown rate (6th) against non-play action passes.

Running Back