Some say that it gets easier to play DFS with the smaller player pool in the playoffs, but not for those who study the entire slate of games every week. It’s so important to walk through every game, noting who you should be avoiding, and which players you should be making it a top priority to target. With the smaller slate, there are a lot of people who have the time to ingest every matchup.
During the season in this article, you were accustomed to finding players to avoid in both tournament and cash lineups, or at least limit your exposure. With the playoffs here, this article will be solely focused on players to avoid cash-game lineups. I say that because in order to win a tournament during this time, you need to play some of the not-so-obvious players. So below, I’m offering a quarterback, two running backs and wide receivers, and a tight end to fade in cash-game lineups during the Wild Card round of the playoffs.
Quarterbacks
Matthew Stafford, Detroit Lions (at Seahawks)
Stafford stepped up in Week 17 and make it a game against the Packers, which is different from what we’ve seen from him throughout the season. His name was mentioned in the MVP conversation up until a couple of weeks ago, though I was arguing that it shouldn’t have been. Once Marvin Jones started to fall off, so did Stafford, where he failed to throw for more than two touchdowns from Week 7 through Week 17, and actually failed to throw for more than one touchdown in seven of those 10 games. So when you see him going into Seattle to play a team that has allowed just 17 points per game at home, it’s going to be tough sledding. If there is a way to attack the Seahawks, it’s on the ground, as they have allowed five rushing touchdowns over the last two weeks, and six of them over the last four games. Granted, the loss of Earl Thomas was catastrophic for this defense, and the reason that the Seahawks will likely not make it further than the divisional round. But they should be able to hold Stafford in check, as they have most quarterbacks since he went down. In the six games since Thomas was placed on IR, the Seahawks have allowed 213.7 passing yards per game to go along with just eight passing scores, or 1.33 per game. This game also has low volume written all over it, as the Seahawks allow their opponents just 62.0 plays per game at home, while the Lions allow just 60.2 per game.
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