By Will Helms
The NFL season seems to be flying by, as we’re one game away from the end of Week 5. We have one final game to discuss, where we’ll search for value in the DFS slate on both DraftKings and FanDuel.
Best Monday Night Football DFS Lineup Options for Week 5
FanDuel
We’ll start on FanDuel with a couple of ways of setting up our 5-player team. Obviously, there’s one guy I’m rostering in every lineup.
MVP Option
Notice I took the S off of this subtitle. It’s FanDuel, so without a difference in price for captaining versus rostering a player, there’s only one guy I’m touching in my MVP slot.
That’s right, Josh Jacobs! (I’m kidding).
Obviously, we can’t leave Patrick Mahomes ($17,500) out of our lineup, so we should also make him our MVP. Unless you’re going for a contrarian lineup in a lower buy-in contest, don’t overthink it. Mahomes has scored at least 17 points in every game this season and has added a small amount of rushing value the last two weeks. The Raiders’ pass defense is awful, so make Mahomes your MVP.
You’ll get very, very little added value from doing so (He’ll be in 90+% of lineups and probably an MVP in over half of those) but at least you’ll keep pace with the field. From there, it’s all about playing the right combination of other players.
Value Plays
I really like Isiah Pacheco ($7000) as a low-priced option tonight. He had 11 carries last week against the Buccaneers and most came when the game was actually close. I could see him getting some short-yardage touches. He’s only +235 to score a touchdown, in the same range as guys like Hunter Renfrow.
If he’s healthy, I also like Foster Moreau ($5500). The price suggests FanDuel doesn’t expect him to play, but if he does, that’s a really low price point for a guy that’s gotten four targets in each of his last two outings. Follow the injury news on this one.
If you want a riskier play that could really work, Skyy Moore is priced at $5000. I’ll have more on him below.
Lastly, a trio of starting receivers have relatively low price points. Marquez Valdes-Scantling ($8000) for the Chiefs and Hunter Renfrow ($8500) and Mack Hollins ($7500) for the Raiders are all priced at $8500 or below. All three have averaged at least five targets and 40 yards this season, though their paths have been very different from those numbers.
I’m playing one of those three in every lineup tonight and which of the three has the best game will go a long way towards deciding which lineup is the best.
DraftKings
Because we have to pay up for captains here, there’s a chance you can actually benefit from somebody other than Mahomes as your captain.
Captain Options
Because of the price discrepancy, I actually captained Derek Carr ($15,300) in a few lineups. Captaining Carr and playing Mahomes saves you $900. If you need it, that can be helpful. However, I found that with most of my lineup choices, I had the $900 left over to switch Mahomes and Carr. Captaining Mahomes is $18,000 but likely still worth it here.
I’m riding with Mahomes here, though I may sprinkle a few Carr-captained lineups. It’s simply too risky to leave Mahomes completely out unless you’re going with a MNF upset and rostering a bunch of Raiders. That’s too risky, so Mahomes is in all of my Carr-captained lineups.
Value Plays
Here, I like playing one of the backup running backs in most of my lineups. I highly doubt we see Josh Jacobs run it 28 times like last week, so a guy like Brandon Bolden ($2000) with receiving upside is a nice value play.
I like the opportunity to capitalize on Jacobs’ overusage last week because it’s highly unlikely that he tops his career-high snap percentage from a week ago. Zamir White is riskier, but at just $1400, playing him can give you the money to spend elsewhere and the possibility of a big play.
I see some opportunity with a couple of Chiefs backups as well. Mecole Hardman hasn’t been great this year and rookie Skyy Moore ate into his snaps last week as Moore had a career-high 11 snaps and Hardman had a season-low 19 snaps. Moore also had an ADOT of 15.2 on four targets. Every year the Chiefs have a guy step up out of nowhere. The difference here is that Moore is a second-round pick with ridiculous talent.
Moore is $2400 here and there’s a chance he has a big game tonight (Not just for a cheap value play, but in general). I’m capitalizing before his stock actually soars and playing him in a number of lineups.
