Sunday, January 18, 2015

Fantasy football advice, NFL playoffs 2015: NFL championship game suggestions

Posted by Doc Fantasy
Sunday, January 18, 2015 | 0 comments

The Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks square off Sunday afternoon in the NFC Championship game. Time to consider what FanDuel options they provide.

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We've covered the AFC game this week, hopefully giving you enough of a reason to join me in rooting wholeheartedly against another Patriots Super Bowl. Today, we'll turn to the NFC Championship game, a far dicier game for fantasy but easier on the rooting interests.

For the non-partisan, this matchup might be the best game of the year. We can enjoy watching Aaron Rodgers, hobbled or not, dropping a millimeter-perfect pass on the move with a rusher in his grill. We get another week of Marshawn Lynch destroying all tacklers and sports reporters, of Russell Wilson casually rushing for first downs, and the fearsome Seahawks' secondary battling the fantastic Packers corps of wideouts.

We also have three FanDuel ideas to try and find some value in the matchups.

Devante Adams might be your best Packers WR

An interesting analogue for today's game is the New England/Green Bay game earlier this season.Facing a Patriots' secondary that had two top-tier cornerbacks, the Packers chose to attack the third cornerback with Adams. Adams enjoyed 11 targets, turning that into 6 catches for 121 yards. Today, they face a Seahawks' secondary with similar styles and quality as the Patriots. If Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb are stuck battling the top two corners, Aaron Rodgers may turn toward Adams again as the matchup-induced safety value.

His yearly output brings me pause, with occasional glimpses of strong results surrounded by weeks of subpar production, but we're talking a $6,000 wideout with a chance at double-digit targets from Aaron Rodgers. Fire up Adams as your wide receiver sleeper.

Don't chase last week's production

I know the allure of a flashy point total popping up in the previous week's game can be blinding. Chasing last week's production is an easy way to rage through the game, and Jermaine Kearse is a great example. Look at the following splits for his last five weeks: 20.4, 1.3, 10.3, 6.7, and 4.9, respectively. He had one touchdown the entire regular season and only managed three catches during his breakout last week. I'm positive that, at his price point and fresh off the 20-point game, a ton of FanDuel lineups will feature Kearse. If I had to play a Seattle wideout, I much prefer Doug Baldwin this weekend. He has a higher floor -- his low score over the same five weeks was 6.6 -- and he's got a a better touchdown rate over the course of the season. Pairing Baldwin with Adams gives you a cheap duo with the salary flexibility to pay for Gronk.

Russell Wilson is a great play as the cheapest quarterback

Russell Wilson has had the strangest production the last six weeks. He alternates huge weeks with poor outings, going over 30 one week only to plummet back down to 9.26 the next. I'm planning on him bucking that trend against the Packers this week. Last week against the Packers, Tony Romo went 15-for-19 for 191 yards and two touchdowns, with a third called back due to the NFL's idiotic possession rules. His production was also limited by the gameplan, as DeMarco Murray had 25 carries.

This is a meandering attempt to prove that the Packers have a good, but not great, defense, more than capable of being burned by the Seahawks' offense. Russell Wilson is the cheapest quarterback this weekend, offering $300 savings on Andrew Luck and $200 on Brady and Rodgers. He enjoyed 24.92 points last week against the Panthers on only 22 passing attempts and 7 carries. Stacking Wilson and Baldwin is definitely risky, but the money freed up by those two will let us fill out the rest of the lineup with high price-point players. Here is a potential lineup incorporating these three strategies.

schopp nfc