Daily Affirmation: Your Daily Fantasy Week 1 Primer

Daily Fantasy Sports is cruel, and that's a big part of the fun of it. DFS squeezes us for every salary-cap dollar, and forces us to make budget-conscious compromises up and down the roster. You know the basics: scoring includes a full PPR, special teams touchdowns count for your defense, and the flex position really matters. The rest is where it gets difficult.

I'll mention specific players I like for Week 1 in a moment. First, here are three questions I ask about players when considering them for my entries.

Will Player X be on every winning ticket?

Every week, it will turn out that there were players you had to select to win big money in a G.P.P. With that in mind, I evaluate elite players for their upsides and their expense, and try to decide whether they'll wind up on a huge number of winning entries. For instance, in Week 1, Odell Beckham ($9,200) has potential to be on the winning ticket: Sunday night, bad Cowboys defense, coming off that monster rookie year. Can't you just imagine him going for 35 points? Who doesn't want a piece of that? But he's so expensive! Maybe Dez Bryant ($8,500) offers a better ratio of upside-to-expense, so I can afford a slightly better team around him. And maybe C.J. Anderson ($7,000) offers an even better ratio.

Having selected a few elites whose upside/expense quotients look like winners, next I'll ask myself this question about decent-scoring players:

Can Player X be on a winning ticket?

If I squint hard, can I imagine a player doing enough to be on a top entry? I'm looking for value, so I can fill the gaps between the elite players for which I've decided to pay up. My guidepost is 20 points. Can I imagine a world in which comparatively affordable players reach upwards of 20 points? For instance, in Week 1, John Brown ($4,500) is deliciously inexpensive. I can also imagine Chris Ivory ($4,100), Doug Martin ($4,500), Charles Johnson ($4,900) and Marvin Jones ($4,200) all scoring 20 in a PPR format. Most of the guys listed in my picks below are also players I think have a chance at 20 points, but with less risk and thus generally more expensive.

Finally, there are the price anomalies: players whose values are artificially deflated either because of past injury, or because their current upside isn't yet baked into their cost. So I ask myself:

Am I with Player X or am I against him?

The DFS market will know which players are artificially cheap, and that means many, many entries will contain such players. They're obvious. For instance, when DraftKings set their Week 1 price for Davante Adams ($4,400), Jordy Nelson wasn't injured. Think you're being sharp for picking Adams? You're not—everyone I've talked to has him. We're predicting 35 percent ownership here. That doesn't mean you shouldn't pick Adams. It simply means that you should be aware: if you don't pick him, you're actually betting against him. So you have to specifically decide if you're with or against Adams, and make that decision before you go on. In this case, Adams is the kind of player who can do more damage to you if you don't have him and he scores big than if you do have him and he doesn't. If he puts up 20 points, he'll definitely be on the winning ticket. But if he scores nothing, he'll take down a big swath of tickets. So which side are you on? To a lesser extent, Ameer Abdullah ($4,000) and Alfred Blue ($3,600) are like this too, although their ownership percentages won't get as high as Adams'.

Now for some suggestions on players I like for your Week 1 card:

QB

Peyton Manning ($8,200) – I want to see how the ball gets distributed in Denver

Sam Bradford ($6,900) – Peyton-esque upside without the cost

Carson Palmer ($6,500) – Lots of pent-up fantasy frustration here; the Cards could surprise

RB

Jeremy Hill ($7,100) – Love the matchup with Oakland and we know he'll get work

Demarco Murray ($6,700) – Not sure how he'll be used, but another great matchup against Atlanta

Jonathan Stewart ($5,800) – It's not like the Panthers are going to hand it to anyone else

WR

Randall Cobb ($8,000) – With Jordy down, you could afford to play the whole Packers battery

Jordan Matthews ($7,200) – You won't be alone, here

Jeremy Maclin ($6,900) – Sneaky pick or Sisyphus? I say sneaky pick

Steve Smith ($6,400) – Huge presence on Week 1 winners last year

Jarvis Landry ($5,600) – Great price and great receiver for PPR, and Washington does not intimidate

TE

Nothing looks all that appealing to me here, so I'm not paying a premium. In fact, I'm picking a price and not a player: $3,400 or $3,500. That means I'm choosing from Kyle Rudolph ($3,500), Ladarius Green ($3,500), Owen Daniels ($3,400), Delanie Walker ($3,400), and Josh Hill ($3,400).

D

Again, there's no incredible value on the board. I'll roll with Houston ($3,000), Miami ($3,000), and maybe Denver ($2,800).

My Ticket:

Sam Bradford, CJ Anderson, Chris Ivory, Dez Bryant, Randall Cobb, Davante Adams, Owen Daniels, John Brown and the Dolphins defense.

Craig Clark is a Daily Fantasy Sports expert who appears weekly on the Harris Football Podcast (www.HarrisFootball.com). You can follow him on Twitter @pcclark59.