Football is back! Which means that daily fantasy football is back!
For those of us who love to have a little extra rooting interest in each game, Opening Week is a holiday. With the exception of the Thursday night game, we have 30 teams playing in 15 games, and two on Monday night – allowing for a deeper Primetime slate.
Of course, the one major hangup with Week 1 is that it’s hard to predict how each team will approach its respective game, but its our jobs to pick apart each matchup and work through its expected flow.
Sporfolio’s NFL Daily Fantasy Sports game-by-game analysis columns are driven by expected game flow. Based on a combination of our Week 1 NFL picks against the spread and our expectations for a given game, we project the actions necessary to make these picks come to fruition. We aim to pinpoint players integral to our predicted game flow for each game of the week.
Luke May is our resident NFL DFS expert, and Mario Mergola operates Sporfolio as our expert for NFL Picks Against the Spread.
Cincinnati Bengals at Indianapolis Colts
Luke’s DFS Take: The return of Andrew Luck is finally upon us, and I am excited to see how he performs in his return. I so badly want to roster him and T.Y. Hilton without any second guessing just because of what a lock they used to be, but I think I will hold off for now. There have been reports that Luck hasn’t been throwing with the same velocity he used to, and if there is any concern or lasting effects of his past should injuries I’m not sure I can stomach that chance. Couple that with his still shaky offensive line and I can see this return not going how I’d like it to for him. With all of that said, I see the game script working in favor of him throwing the ball a lot, and he is an elite quarterback if he is truly healthy so I wouldn’t be overly surprised to see him put up big numbers especially at his discounted price compared to his previous standards. As I mentioned, the game flow should lead to Luck throwing a lot because I am expecting the Bengals’ offense to come out and run circles around what is expected to be a putrid Colts defense. Andy Dalton has a bevy of weapons at his disposal, and I like them all. A.J. Green is always a top option, Joe Mixon should see plenty of work to have a strong showing against a beatable defense, John Ross is healthy and looking to show he was worthy of his high draft selection a year ago, and Tyler Eifert is also finally healthy and always a huge threat in the red zone. I like all five of those Bengals options and, if you’re playing multiple lineups, I would recommend having shares of all of them in a game that has shootout potential and lots of valuable options.
Mario’s DFS Take: I have a few arguments that I have made persistently over the weeks leading up to this season, and one is the belief that Colts quarterback Andrew Luck is not only healthy, but ready to return to Pro Bowl form. And, if we are strictly considering the game flow for Sunday, the Colts don’t even try to move the football if it isn’t via Luck – at least, not if they want to win. Luck will be involved no matter the situation and, if the game gets out-of-hand in either direction, he is poised to shine. The same is true for Cincinnati’s Andy Dalton. I’m still not ready to buy into the Bengals’ running game from a fantasy perspective, but it’s clear that Dalton is the key to the offense sinking or swimming. And he should coast against the Colts’ pass defense, which ranked dead last in 2017 in net-yards-per-pass-attempt. If I’m pairing Dalton with a pass-catcher, the first one I’d want is Tyler Eifert. After missing all but two games, last year – and not recording a touchdown reception in either – Eifert’s presence will be greatly welcomed by Dalton. Expect the quarterback to thank him appropriately via Redzone targets.