In what feels like an instant, we are into the final quarter of the 2016 season. The temperature has dropped, the stakes have risen, and the matchups for this weekend’s action are conveniently excellent. At least, for the football fan. Not so much for the fantasy football owner.
As a combination of weather and matchups, Week 14 appears to be filled with lower-scoring games throughout the schedule. Not only are defenses in the spotlight, but the amount of offensive skill players to target are comparatively small.
Sporfolio’s NFL Daily Fantasy Sports game-by-game analysis columns are driven by expected game flow. Based on a combination of our Week 14 NFL picks against the spread and our expectations for a given game, we project the actions necessary to make these picks come to fruition. We aim to pinpoint players integral to our predicted game flow for each game of the week.
Luke May is our resident NFL DFS expert, and Mario Mergola operates Sporfolio as our expert for NFL Picks Against the Spread.
Pittsburgh Steelers at Buffalo Bills
Luke’s DFS Take: From an offensive – and, therefore, fantasy – perspective, the Bills and Steelers are fairly easy to predict at this point of the season. We know that Le’Veon Bell will be getting his 25 touches and will be able to make some big plays because of his dynamic abilities. We also know Ben Roethlisberger loves to sling the ball around and will surely be looking to get it to Antonio Brown as often as possible. For the Bills, it is all about their ground attack. Tyrod Taylor is always intriguing because of his running ability but he has been too inconsistent throwing the ball, this year, which makes him and his receivers hard to trust on Sunday. Buffalo’s game plan revolves around LeSean McCoy and that will not be any different this week. It is always a bonus when you can confidently choose the people that will be heavily involved for a team, but unfortunately, the actual game flow might not allow it. Because of the skill level of each of the players mentioned, they all carry hefty price tags for DFS and, if this game isn’t high-scoring, it may not be worth it to pay their premiums.
Mario’s DFS Take: Sometimes, we need to accept the matchup and roll with it. In the case of the Bills and Steelers, Buffalo thrives on running the football – first in yards, touchdowns, and yards-per-attempt on the ground – where Pittsburgh is relatively poor at stopping opposing rushing attacks. The Steelers have caught a break, however, as most teams are not given the opportunity to run against Pittsburgh, since they tend to be playing from behind – they have faced the third-fewest rushing attempts in the league. Buffalo is not one to allow game situations to divert its game plan – it has attempted the fewest passes in the league – and LeSean McCoy should be involved heavily throughout. The game has all the makings of