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8 contrarian DFS picks for Week 12

Tennessee Titans quarterback Marcus Mariota (8) passes in the first half of an NFL football game against the Tennessee Titans in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 8, 2015. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)

“To buy when others are despondently selling and to sell when others are euphorically buying takes the greatest courage, but provides the greatest profit.” – John Templeton

Last week was the perfect week to go contrarian in GPPs. The two highest-owned running backs, Devonta Freeman and Charcandrick West, both exited their games within the first half due to injuries. The highest-owned quarterback, Derek Carr, scored the second-fewest points at the position. The third-highest owned receiver, Amari Cooper, finished his day with just one-catch and four-yards. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t a great week for the article – and you guys made sure to let me know as much in the comments section. The one saving grace was the Marshawn Lynch-call, which then turned into a Thomas Rawls-call, which then turned into 250 total yards of offense and two touchdowns, ending his day as fantasy's top scorer. Outside of that, it was my second-consecutive down week.

I’ve been keeping track of my calls within this article and it appears we're in a slight two-week slump. We were on an incredible hot streak from Week 5 to Week 9 where he had accurately predicted nine guys who ended up in either the winning DraftKings’ Millionaire Maker lineup or the FanDuel NFL Sunday Million lineup. This is fairly impressive considering we’re only looking at players under five-percent-owned. This is also impressive considering that list isn’t even including our super-contrarian calls of Martavis Bryant in Week 6 (who finished as the WR2 at 0.8 percent owned in the Millionaire Maker) or Darren McFadden in Week 7 (who finished as the RB5 at 0.3 percent ownership). For the season, if you include Rawls, we’ve nailed 13 players in one of the two winning lineups over the span of 11 weeks.

Over the last two weeks, I’m not looking so hot. Over the course of the season, we’re doing pretty great. That’s how things tend to go with GPPs. Whereas in cash games, your profit sees a steady but small increase week-to-week, with GPP games (especially among players who incorporate a contrarian strategy), your profit seems much more volatile. If we were to track it on a chart, you’d see a steady but small decline over the course of several weeks, then a big increase one week, then several more weeks at a decline, and then another big increase. GPPs are inherently more volatile than cash games, but your potential for immense profits are much higher in GPPs.

This week, we’ll be mostly fading the following highly-owned players: Carson Palmer (21.8%), Brian Hoyer (13.2%), Thomas Rawls (31.3%), Doug Martin (27.6%), DeAndre Hopkins (47.9%), and Delanie Walker (21.4%)

Some of the contrarian plays we like this week are:

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