DFS guide: Week 17 in DraftKings cash games

We made it! Sadly this is the final installment of the “cash guide” series, as the regular season comes to an end here in Week 17. Thank you to everyone that’s joined me all season and allowed me to be your DraftKings Sherpa in guiding you through the treacherous waters of cash games this 2017 season. I hope you’ve made a decent amount of jelly beans along the way with a quality spike in that ROI. We have a massive, full 32-team slate to dive into here this week. Some teams are playing for nothing. Some teams are playing for everything. Let’s get right to the good stuff and break down the Week 17 main slate on DraftKings for cash games.

(For the DraftKings tournament guide, click here)

Quarterbacks

I cannot explain what happened to DraftKings’ algorithms for quarterback pricing. Everyone is $7K and below and it may be the most challenging week to figure out where to go that we’ve seen all season. We’ve regularly paid down at the position all season long here, but we finally may not need to given a condensed player pool of quarterbacks that are playing for something this week.

There aren’t many salary situation matchups that I like this week, but Philip Rivers ($6,600) may be the one exception. Rivers has a great home matchup against the Raiders’ struggling pass defense where the Chargers need to win. Oakland has had a fairly soft string of quarterback matchups over the past few weeks, so their recent numbers look a bit better than they truly are, but this defense is certainly one that Rivers can exploit. They’ve allowed the fourth-highest passer rating to opposing passers this season and have allowed some ceiling game with four quarterbacks scoring 27-plus DK points. I’ll be chasing that ceiling with Rivers this week with the Chargers having the fifth-highest implied point total of the week (25.0).

For $1,100 cheaper, I think there’s a case to be made for Jacoby Brissett ($5,500). He’s facing a Texans secondary that features two of our worst graded cornerbacks in Kareem Jackson (No. 96) and Kevin Johnson (No. 121 of 121). Over the last four weeks, the Texans have allowed the sixth-most passing touchdowns and sixth-most fantasy points to opposing quarterbacks. In fact, over the course of the season the Texans have allowed 11 of the 15 quarterbacks they’ve faced to score at least 16.5 fantasy points (3x cash value for Brissett) against them. Brissett had one of his best games against Houston earlier in the season, putting up 23.52 fantasy points and makes for a strong cash option this week.