Week 17 DFS Picks: Core Players and Best 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 17 DFS Content:

Our core players are the players we will have the most exposure to at their positions.

They can be played in cash games and tournaments.

I will analyze the player selections and game writeups, but for a detailed breakdown of the players and games, check out the Week 17 Worksheet.

Quarterback

Jayden Daniels ($8,500) FanDuel

This is a weaker quarterback slate overall if you are not jamming in Josh Allen, but FanDuel has a game that is implied to be competitive with Daniels in a great matchup.

He is not hard to pay up for over there, either.

After a 3.4% touchdown rate through 11 weeks (26th), he has had an 8.7% touchdown rate since (2nd).

We have already seen Daniels deliver in soft matchups, which he has here.

The Falcons are 25th in the league in passing points allowed per attempt (0.462).

Atlanta has also struggled to slow down quarterbacks who can move.

They are 22nd in rushing yards allowed to quarterbacks.

Justin Fields (57 yards), Jalen Hurts (85), Baker Mayfield (42), and Dak Prescott (30) all added strong rushing lines against them while Desmond Ridder (28 yards) and Andy Dalton (21 yards) chipped in production on the ground.

Daniels is averaging 49.1 rushing yards per game.

Sam Darnold ($6,400 DraftKings/$7,700 FanDuel)

Darnold has thrown multiple touchdown passes in 11 games this season.

One of those games with multiple scores was when these teams played in Green Bay in Week 4.

In that game, Darnold had 3 touchdowns and 9.8 yards per pass attempt on his way to 20.5 fantasy points.

Since that game, the Green Bay defense has been improved, allowing 6.7 Y/A (4th) and a 3.0% touchdown rate (2nd).

When you look at the passers who have had success over that span against Green Bay for fantasy purposes, Darnold shares overlap with those passers.

They have allowed QB1 scoring weeks to Tua Tagovailoa (25.2 points) and Jared Goff (22 points).

We highlighted Darnold’s use of play action last week as an avenue for upside against Seattle, which held up.

Darnold was 8-of-11 for 104 yards (11.3 Y/A) and a touchdown using play action.

When Darnold did not use play action, he completed 58.3% of his passes for 5.1 Y/A.

Green Bay has shown similar vulnerability against play action passes.

The Packers allow 6.3 Y/A on non-play action passes (6th in the league) but spike to allowing 8.8 Y/A on play action passes (23rd)

When these teams played in Week 4, Darnold was 6-of-7 for 9.4 Y/A using play action.

Running Back