DFS guide: Week 11 in DraftKings cash games

There’s no sugar coating how poorly the chalk fared last week. It was a very tough week in cash games, and if you were even the slightest bit contrarian in your cash game lineup, you probably profited. But like a badly-burned cornerback on a deep pass, we need to learn from it and not let it faze us moving onto the next week. We’re onto Cincinnati.

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Quarterbacks

Paying down at the quarterback position is a common move to provide some salary relief on tightly-priced weeks. We don’t necessarily need to pay top-shelf dollar in Week 11 for a quarterback, so it looks like it’ll be a common move by many to save some money and punt at the position.

Blake Bortles ($5,200) will be a popular option this week against the pass-funnel defense of the Cleveland Browns. Cleveland is holding their opponents to a league-best 3.1 yards per carry, forcing teams to throw on them instead. While the Jaguars lead the league in run play percentage (50.3 percent), Bortles surprisingly ranks seventh in pass attempts since Week 6. He’ll likely need to keep that rate going in this matchup if they hope to win. Cleveland hasn’t allowed a ton of big counting stats on the year, but eight of the nine quarterbacks they’ve faced have scored multiple touchdowns against them. Bortles is averaging 17.4 DK points over his last four outings, which would let him clear 3x cash game value with ease.

Priced uber-cheap at just $4,900, it’s shaping up for Blaine Gabbert to get the starting nod in Arizona this week.  Gabbert’s bottom-barrel price is what’s most appealing, as I typically like to target cheap quarterbacks in cash and Gabbert showed last year he’s not completely inept. He made a living off dinking-and-dunking with Jeremy Kerley in San Francisco last year, and Gabbert is in for a world of change with the upgrade to Larry Fitzgerald in the slot. The Texans secondary should also make life easy for Gabbert, as they are allowing the seventh-most passing yards and third-most passing touchdowns to opposing quarterbacks. Gabbert also presents significant upside with his rushing ability. He’s taken off on the ground on 18 percent of his dropbacks over the past two years (including preseason). 15 points isn’t much to ask for from Gabbert in cash — the Texans allowed that in six out of their nine contests this year to opposing quarterbacks — and that’s really all I’m looking for in a quarterback punt for cash games.