From the Slot: Wild Card Sunday NFL Picks Based on Awesemo’s Grades

Wild Card Sunday features far fewer values based on Awesemo’s grades than Saturday does so finding the sharp places to save salary is going to be crucial. Finding good values at reasonable levels of ownership will be the key to taking down tournaments. The biggest question facing the Sunday main slate on DraftKings will be the statuses of Michael Thomas and Alvin Kamara. Thomas ended the regular season on IR with an ankle injury but the beat writers’ sentiments suggest that his three-week absence was mainly a precaution. Kamara missed last week while on the reserve/COVID-19 list but is eligible to come off it just in time to play. Neither player has been confirmed to be playing in the Wild Card round but the expectation is that both are able to go. We’ll be operating under that assumption when going over NFL DFS picks for this article.

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Wild Card Sunday NFL DFS Picks

QB: Lamar Jackson: Points Grade – A, Value Grade – A

Jackson is the only player on the Sunday NFL DFS main slate with two “A” grades. Every other player is at best a high-scoring but fairly priced player or a modest-scoring but underpriced player. Jackson firmly checks both boxes. The middle of his season was mediocre from a fantasy perspective but he has gotten things back on track at the perfect time. After missing Week 12 while on the reserve/COVID-19 list, Jackson has come back on a tear. He is averaging 161.8 passing yards but 2.2 passing touchdowns per game with just three total interceptions.

His real draw has been reemerging as the best rushing quarterback in the league. Since Week 12, Jackson has posted 11.2 carries for 86 yards and .8 scores per game. His yards and touchdowns per game over that span are even well ahead of his 2019 pace. That’s on top of him playing a full four quarters of football just twice in his five games back. He was rested in the fourth quarter three times.

Jackson’s team has a 29-point total. That mark is the highest of the weekend and his role as a runner in addition to being the team’s QB makes him likely to capture most of those points. The only question with Jackson is how to get different with him. Playing Marquise Brown over Mark Andrews or even going as deep as Willie Snead are both ways to create leveraged Jackson lineups. He is projected to be owned by a third of the field but Andrews is currently north of 50%. Fading one half of the stack and pivoting to a Baltimore wide receiver looks like the route to take with Jackson in tournaments.

Projected NFL DFS ownership: DraftKings: 33.7%

RB: James Conner: Points Grade – C, Value Grade – B

There are two players with value grades of “B” at the running back position and not a single one at an “A.” Conner and David Montgomery are the two backs but Montgomery projects the be rostered in over half of lineups, while Conner is slightly under 30% ownership. Conner is also in a far better position for a running back. His team is favored at home and has a 26.25 implied team total. The Bears, on the other hand, are on the road with an 18.25 implied team total. Only Washington is projected to score fewer points as a team.

Conner returned from the reserve/COVID-19 list two weeks ago and although he hasn’t done much, his market share numbers are encouraging. He has seen 14 of the team’s 22 running back carries in those two games. The reason he doesn’t have more attempts in those two games is that the Steelers have held a lead for a combined seven minutes and 38 seconds in the past two weeks. If Pittsburgh is to live up to their 5.5 spread, Conner has shot at 20 carries and the 100-yard bonus.

Projected NFL DFS ownership: DraftKings: 29.7%

WR: Jarvis Landry: Points Grade – B, Value Grade – B

There are a handful of receivers with “B” grades in both points and value but Landry and JuJu Smith-Schuster are the only two coming in below 30% ownership. having already planted a flag in the Pittsburgh backfield, we’ll correlate our receiver position with Conner by looking at Landry. The Browns are known as one of the few run-first offenses in the NFL and that is mostly true. Their 52% pass rate is 29th in the NFL. However, they are much more sensitive to game-script than other run-first teams. They simply haven’t been put into an overwhelming number of positions that forced them to throw this year. Cleveland is just 10th in gam-script adjusted run rate and their pass percentage jumps to 62% when trailing by more than a field goal.

As big underdogs this week, we should be privy to a pass-friendly Cleveland offense for once and that makes Landry an obvious target. Dating back to Week 8 (the Browns’ first game without Odell Beckham), Landry has posted a 23% target share and averaged 7.8 targets per game. Expect that number to rise as Cleveland plays from behind.

Projected NFL DFS ownership: DraftKings: 27.6%

TE: Jonnu Smith: Points Grade – C, Value Grade – B

Mark Andrews has a better points grade and the same value grade as Smith but playing him in the same lineup as Jackson is begging to be duped. Instead, we’ll use the Brown – Jackson leverage stack and play a different tight end in the same game. Even though the Titans are 3.5-point underdogs, their 25.5-point implied team total leads all teams that Vegas projects to lose on Wild Card weekend. It also ahead of one of the weekend’s favored teams, the Seattle Seahawks.

The game total of 54.5 points makes the Ravens/Titans games hard to avoid as well. High-total contests tend to go well for the Tennessee passing game. The Titans have played in eight matches with a total of over 54 points. In those games, Tennessee has posted 267.9 passing yards per game. That mark would be good for seventh-highest in the NFL across the entire 2020 season. Smith is simply a cheap attachment to one of the best offenses to target for fantasy points and leverage on the Sunday slate.

Contrarian DFS Stack: Tennessee Passing + J.K. Dobbins

Finding ways to leverage the Jackson ownership is going to be the key to winning Sunday Wild Card tournaments. Playing Ravens onslaughts or other unique Ravens builds like Jackson/Browns/Snead is one way to achieve that goal. The best way could be simply to stack up his game from the other side. Ryan Tannehill has six games over 25 DraftKings points and four games over 30 DraftKings points this year. The lowest total at the end of any of his six games over 25 has been 58 points. Tannehill even has more 30-point games than Jackson does this year.

On the other side, one player has the ability to steal multiple scores from Jackson. Dobbins returned from the reserve/COVID-19 list in Week 13. Since then, he has seen six of Baltimore’s 11 rush attempts inside the five yard-line. He also leads all non-quarterbacks with at least 100 carries in yards per attempt (6.0).

Projected NFL DFS ownership: DraftKings: 20.7%


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Author
If you like fantasy football and care about data, there's a 50/50 chance I've written for your favorite site. In a few short years I've covered, season-long, dynasty, best ball, and DFS for football. I used to be watching games and pretend to know what I was talking about but now I just spew numbers that forecast outcomes better than any scout. Come for the numbers, stay for the bad jokes and Zach Zenner references. RIP XFL.

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