Week 9 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 9 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 that come with some element of inherent risk but are the primary players that 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 9 Worksheet.

Quarterback

Jayden Daniels ($7,500 DraftKings/$8,700 FanDuel)

Daniels is the QB5 in fantasy points per game (20.5) through eight weeks, closing six of his seven full games as a QB1 scorer.

The Giants are predicated on pressuring the passer, but their pass defense has struggled when they do not get to the quarterback.

Without pressure, the Giants have allowed a league-high 83.2% completion percentage with 8.8 yards per pass attempt (31st).

When they did not pressure Daniels in Week 2, he was 21-of-25 for 8.0 Y/A.

The Giants are 24th in passing points allowed per attempt (0.462).

Matthew Stafford ($5,700/$7,600)

That finally jump-started Staffor’s regression last week, getting Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp on the field.

Getting both back on the field, Stafford completed a season-high 73.4% (25-of-34) of his passes against Minnesota for 8.2 Y/A and 4 touchdowns.

Since last season, Stafford has thrown for 8.1Y/A and a 6.5% touchdown rate with both Nacua and Kupp on the field.

We may not have Nacua at 100% this week, but there is potential here for Stafford to be effective.

Stafford uses play action on 26.3% of his dropbacks, his highest rate under Sean McVay.

Seattle is 29th against play-action passes in terms of rating allowed, allowing a 72.4% completion rate (27th), 9.9 yards per attempt (29th), and a 7.9% touchdown rate (26th) defending play action.

Seattle has gotten leaky as the season has progressed.

They have allowed 20.0 fantasy points per game to quarterback over their past five games, allowing Jared Goff (27.2 points), Daniel Jones (22.1 points), Brock Purdy (24.1 points), and Josh Allen (19.8 points) to have strong weeks.

Running Back