This week’s against-the-spread picks noted how wild Week 17 tends to be with the amount of teams potentially resting their players, but it is amplified further when we approach this slate of games from a fantasy perspective. Thankfully, all 16 games are being played on Sunday, leaving more-than-enough matchups to provide value.
Sporfolio’s NFL Daily Fantasy Sports game-by-game analysis columns are driven by expected game flow. Based on a combination of our Week 17 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.
Green Bay Packers at Detroit Lions
Luke’s DFS Take: This is one of many games this week in which both teams have been eliminated from playoff contention, and thus have very little play for. It’s hard to get overly excited about a game like this because it is hard to know what to expect from each side. Will they come out hard and play for their pride, or be disconnected and and unenthused? The key in this game is the timing of their individual playoff eliminations: Detroit was still playing with purpose last week before their loss to Cincinnati. With the recency of their elimination is seems likely that they are still feeling the pain of what could have been, and looking back at that disappointing loss and others throughout the year. With all of that in mind, I don’t see the Lions playing anywhere near their beat football this week which makes me very unlikely to jump into using any of their players. Green Bay on the other hand, has been eliminated for an extra week, but in reality their season ended back when Aaron Rodgers originally got hurt. Add that to the fact that the Packers were shut out last week, and there is good reason to like them. Jamaal Williams is in line for a heavy workload with Aaron Jones doubtful to play, and he could have a big game like we had seen earlier in Brett Hundley’s tenure as starting quarterback. Depending on the status of Jordy Nelson and Devante Adams, Randall Cobb may be a great cheap option as he would be the only remaining weapon that Hundley has any familiarity with.
Mario’s DFS Take: If you have read either my picks column or DFS articles over the past few years, you are aware that one of my favorite outcomes from a given game is a shutout. This is not because of some favoritism for defense, but the boost it gives the team that failed to score the following week. The Green Bay Packers are the first-of-two teams I will address that were shut out in Week 16, and it isn’t the first time it happened to the franchise. Baltimore handed Green Bay a 23-0 loss in Week 11 and rebounded exactly as predicted with an impressive 28-point performance in Pittsburgh. I’m looking for points from Green Bay, even if the team doesn’t win, but there appears to be nowhere to turn with the high number of injuries to the team’s skill position players. This leaves quarterback Brett Hundley as the lone man to target from the Packers, and his ability to run – he now has twice as many rushing yards as Aaron Rodgers – gives him some sneaky value. Matthew Stafford should be in for a big afternoon against a poor Packers’ secondary, but he might slow down production if Detroit gets a big lead.