The Week 9 NFL Dashboard
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Saints at 49ers
This game currently has a 52-point implied Vegas total. The 49ers are three-point home underdogs implied to score 24.25 points. The Saints are implied to score 27.75 points as road favorites.
New Orleans Saints
Writer: Tyler Buecher
QB – Drew Brees
Brees’ home-road splits are always necessary to point out. Over his last 15 games he’s done quite poorly playing away from the Superdome, averaging 16.2 FanDuel points per game on the road versus 27.9 at home.
The good news for Brees is that the 49ers have given up the sixth-most passing touchdowns on the season and have allowed the most points to opposing offenses. San Francisco is also giving up the sixth-most red zone trips to opposing offenses. Brees has been money inside the opponent’s 20-yard line, completing 74.5 percent of his passes. Brees is generally difficult to roster in an away matchup, but he gets the perfect mix of volume and efficiency this week going against a San Francisco squad that routinely pushes the tempo and gets burned by it.
RB – Mark Ingram
After committing his second fumble of the season, Ingram was benched for the remainder of last week’s game. He played just six snaps in total. His situation leaves DFS players unsure about how to approach Ingram in Week 9. The matchup is a great one against San Francisco, who has allowed the most rushing yards, the second-most rushing touchdowns, and the third-most DK points to RBs. However, with unclear usage at this time, Ingram (and Tim Hightower, for that matter) can’t be relied on in cash games but can be used in guaranteed prize pools.
RB – Tim Hightower
Hightower finished last week with 26 rushing attempts for 102 rushing yards but was stuffed on five different goal-line attempts. Sean Payton has said that Hightower has earned a role moving forward, but his degree of usage remains cloudy. He has a very real chance of out-snapping Ingram against the 49ers.
WR – Brandin Cooks
The 49ers are giving up a +2.0 DK Plus/Minus to opposing wide receivers and have allowed the most receiving touchdowns to the position (13). Cooks has scored in three straight games and possesses the third-highest ceiling (per our Player Models) at 23.0 fantasy points. He has averaged 8.3 targets over that span, seeing an 18.9 percent target market share. This game is one of the highest-projected scoring games by Vegas and leaves all three of Brees’ primary receivers as potential plays in what should be an abundance of snaps and volume.
WR – Willie Snead
Snead has run 78 percent of his routes from the slot this season. Per our Matchups tool, he’s likely to run most of his routes against Jimmie Ward, Pro Football Focus’ 25th-ranked cornerback. Slot receivers have fared quite well against the 49ers, led by Doug Baldwin‘s 33 DK points and Larry Fitzgerald‘s 26.1. Snead currently is projected for 14.7 points and five to eight percent ownership — the lowest ownership projection among Brees’ three WRs.
WR – Michael Thomas
Thomas makes for an intriguing play on FD this week with his 95 percent Bargain Rating. Per our Matchups tool, Thomas should run most of his routes on the outside against Rashard Robinson, the lowest-graded of San Francisco’s three starting cornerbacks. Thomas has been lights out lately, averaging 8.8 targets over his past five games and surpassing expectations by a landslide.
Thomas has emerged as a major factor in this offense. He leads all FD WRs in Upside.
TE – Coby Fleener
Josh Hill out-snapped Fleener 61-26 last week. However, Fleener saw four targets to Hill’s one. It really just makes both of them rather unusable, especially considering that San Francisco ranks eighth against TEs in Football Outsiders’ pass Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA). Fleener’s red zone appeal from this summer has dissipated quickly, as he’s seen just one target inside the opponent’s 10-yard line in his last four games.
San Francisco 49ers
Writer: Bryan Mears
QB – Colin Kaepernick
It’s Week 9 of the 2016 NFL season and Kaepernick is being seriously discussed in the DFS community as a viable cash-game option. That’s . . . something no one was expecting a couple of months ago. In two starts, Kaep has now exceeded salary-based expectations both times, scoring 16.1 and 18.1 DK points. He’s been miserable throwing the ball — his 4.06 adjusted yards per pass attempt is easily the worst in the NFL and laughably low — but that hasn’t mattered for DFS purposes, as he’s cracked the Konami Code, rushing for a combined 150 yards on 17 attempts. This week he’ll face another fast-paced offense in New Orleans, and defensively the Saints rank 28th against both the run and the pass, per DVOA. He’s the second-highest rated DK QB in the Bales Model. He’s actually in play this week.
RB – Carlos Hyde
Hyde (shoulder) is officially questionable. He was a limited participant in practice this week. His situation should be monitored. He every well might not play this weekend.
If Hyde were healthy enough to play Sunday and give it a full go, he’d be an elite tournament play against a Saints defense that ranks 28th against the run and has allowed FD RBs to score 3.1 points above salary-based expectations in the past year. Unfortunately, per our NFL news feed: “When asked if he’ll play Sunday, [Hyde] said he doesn’t know but hopes so.” Hyde is currently the second-highest rated FD RB in the Bales Model with a 96 percent Bargain Rating. He’s projected for low ownership on both sites of five to eight percent, although his injury uncertainty is certainly baked into that. Hyde is definitely unrosterable in cash unless things drastically change, and he’s a risky (albeit potentially incredibly rewarding) play in GPPs.
RB – Shaun Draughn, Mike Davis, and DuJuan Harris
I listed them in that order because that’s the order of their projected DK points currently with Hyde in the game: 5.8, 4.6, and 3.2. What is odd, though, is that their rushing market share last week without Hyde was the exact opposite: Draughn got 3.57 percent of the rushes, Davis got 25.00 percent, and Harris got 39.29 percent. None were particularly efficient in the running game. Davis and Harris both averaged less than 3.6 yards per attempt. Draughn was the active pass-catcher, hauling in five of his seven targets for 37 yards and a score. If Hyde were to miss time, we’d likely see a similar usage distribution.
WR – Torrey Smith
As mentioned in the Kaep paragraph above, San Fran’s current starting QB been a serviceable DFS asset only because of his legs. That said, Smith was actually decent in Kaep’s first game, catching three of seven targets for 76 yards and a touchdown. However, in Week 8 he saw only two targets and caught a single one for 17 yards. You can believe in the first game, but it’s much more likely that the second is more indicative of Smith’s role in the offense. Per our NFL Matchups tool, Smith could line up against CB Delvin Breaux, who hasn’t played since Week 1. This Saints secondary is poor, but Breaux was good last year: Per PFF, he allowed only 50 percent of defended passes to be completed. (He also allowed a league-high 10 touchdowns, but that’s a different story.) The point is that Smith is a very hard player to predict, although that could be a good thing for tournaments. He comes with two to four and zero to one percent FantasyLabs projected ownership on DK and FD.
WR – Jeremy Kerley
Two weeks ago, Kerley led the entire league in team target share over a four-game period. That has since dropped off a bit, but he still leads the 49ers in targets (29.82 percent) and Air Yards (27.97 percent) over the past month (per the Market Share Report). That still probably oversells him, though, as he has seen only 25.00 and 15.63 percent of the targets in the two weeks with Kaep as QB. That has equated to four catches on 12 targets for 27 yards and five combined FD points. This is obviously a dream matchup for WRs — the Saints rank 28th in pass DVOA — but there will likely be low volume in the passing game. He’s a GPP dart.
WR – Quinton Patton
Like Smith and Kerley, Patton isn’t getting much volume. In his last two games, he has a combined 10 FD points on seven receptions. He has a nice matchup against CB Ken Crawley, who has an awful 45.6 coverage grade from PFF. This is likely a naked Kaep week, but the matchups are good enough to have minimal exposure in large-field GPPs.
TE – Vance McDonald
The 49ers have not used their tight ends in the passing game at all in 2016, but in Week 8 McDonald did see a season-high six targets. He caught only one of them and ended the game with 2.9 FD points, but you have to start somewhere, right?
News Updates
After this piece is published, FantasyLabs is likely to provide news updates on a number of players herein mentioned. Be sure to stay ahead of your competition with our industry-leading DFS-focused news blurbs:
