You aren’t going to build a room without both a ceiling and a floor. At least I hope you aren’t as it simply doesn’t make sense and even suggesting otherwise sounds crazy. No you are in the right place, this is still a DFS website and not how to guide on home construction.
Based on sheer quantity, you can have up to four wide receivers on your team each week, the argument could be made that this is the most important position in your DFS lineup. Most likely by percentage of salary cap that is going to be the case. It is for that reason we need to make sure we secure a solid floor of production from the wide receiver position regardless of the contest. But since you are likely playing in a GPP and looking to smash while taking down the big payday we want that ceiling to be as high as possible.
At some level you are going to have to diversify. It’s just not prudent lineup construction to make all of your wide receiver selections from the same salary tier; either expensive or cheap. Salary does come into play here but there a few factors under consideration when setting your lineup. It is very possible that one of your selections will be of the budget variety, and that point there likely will be more ceiling than floor involved, but the same general criteria does come into play.
Wide receivers are dependent. Aside from the occasional rushing opportunity they are similar to a baby as if you don’t feed them (or target them) they don’t eat (generate any fantasy production). We are looking for wide receivers with quarterbacks we can count on. That doesn’t mean every receiver has to be attached to an elite quarterback or one that we would consider rostering, but we need to make sure their signal caller is capable of not only targeting them, but also connecting.
Based on that dependency we are looking for receivers with either a clear path to targets or a historical trend of being targeted early and often. It is not that easy though as the quality of targets also has to be considered as well as the percentage of those targets that are turned into receptions. I could get under center and “target” a receiver, but throwing the ball 10 feet over his head isn’t going to lead to winning a GPP.
Game script also comes into play here as it must allow for targets. Some receivers are almost immune to this but for the most part all fall into the same bucket here. We are looking for close, high scoring games that will generate a lot of passing opportunities as that will ultimately lead to production. When it comes to blowouts you have to truly feel confident in your receiver as there is often a small window for production if your team is forecasted to be on the winning side. The losing side of a blowout though can prove to be quite profitable as teams often abandon the running game and focus on just throwing the ball downfield. Couple that with the opposing defenses likely falling into a “prevent” type scheme and receivers suddenly have a lot more room to operate.
While defense is a team effort and some are better than others at defending receivers this is a situation where things often come down to just one player. When selecting your receiver it is important to note who will be covering them and in what manner. That stud option does you no good if he is shadowed by the best cornerback in the league who has shut everyone else down all season.
When looking to find value and the greatest return on investment possible the goal is exploit as many of the factors we considered above as possible. Often times the greatest bargains do come from role changes and we have to really take note of situations where a receivers’ targets are set to increase markedly from one week to another.
I hope you enjoyed this free look into some of the methods used to pick wide receivers for our DFS squads. Come back and see our free picks not only for each position across entire football season but other DFS sports as well. And if you’d like even more of the best of what we do there are full access subscriptions that start at $5 per week.
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