We are going to take a slightly different approach to the layout of The Ambush for Week 13, and there are a few reasons for this but one of the main reasons is that we have an increased amount of seasonal fantasy players who might be jumping into the DFS landscape for the first time this week in 2020 because their seasonal teams are winding down now. And with that comes a reset chance to make sure that the analysis on the FULL slate of options being tossed around is addressed in a way that you can actually build a lineup or two or twenty while being able to directly tie it back to the recommendations. The structure of my Ambush plays has always been to provide a solid CORE recommendations of a narrow player pool with my five favorite plays/themes/thoughts for the weekend. For this week and likely the remaining weeks this regular season I am combining the two together. Hope you enjoy it and I am confident we’ll have a great week.

As always, we start with asking if there are any issues that warrant monitoring. Unfortunately I cannot predict things like a team losing all their QB options the night before a game like what happened to Denver last week, but lets do our best with what we somewhat know as of Saturday morning.

Some good news is that there are no major weather issues to monitor this week.

As far as the notable injuries ….

Julio Jones – Questionable. He’ll play and probably fumble, because that’s what Julio Jones does vs the Saints.

Allen Robinson II – Questionable. Late addition on Friday, I suspect he plays but I am not in love with this game. More on it below.

All the Dolphins RB not named Myles Gaskin – Likely Out. Obviously makes Gaskin more attractive.

These are the only big spots that I am monitoring.

QUARTERBACKS

This week sets up as one where we can take some gambles at the Quarterback position in our lineups. The Mahomes easy button is playing Sunday Night, the always polarizing Josh Allen is on MNF and the upside of Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers gets negated a little bit by facing better than perceived defenses. DeShaun Watson who seems to get it done every single week because he is that good just lost Will Fuller for the season which really drops him down as well. And then there is Kyler Murray, who will be forced into huge divisional game but the play calling is showing true signs that his shoulder is more of a concern than they’re admitting.

So with all these usually popular options having some warts this week it opens things up to potentially not spend as much at QB.

JARED GOFF

This is a game that I have circled as the best of the weekend and we have some good trends when it comes to NFC West battles. While everyone seems to split with the Seahawks, the Cardinals do well against the 49ers, the 49ers do well against the Rams and the Rams do well against the Cardinals. The last two games between the Rams and Cardinals have produced over 80 plays on average for the Rams with back to back 40+ attempt games for Jared Goff. All total, Goff has gone over 300 yards in three of their last four meetings and went over 27 DK points in both meetings last year. We fully know that the Cardinals pass defense has improved this season from a year ago, but it still sets up as a spot where the Rams are more likely to attack through the air than on the ground and Arizona hasn’t exactly been lock down at home recently giving up over 30 points in each of their last three games against Seattle, Buffalo and Miami.

There was once a time in DFS when we did not play Jared Goff on the road, but this season his best games have come away from SoFi Stadium and with this being a near must win game for both teams I expect a strong back and forth outing with Goff being the better QB to play in this game.

TAYSOM HILL

Something that Taysom has to work on is his timing on passes in the red zone. There are essentially two passing plays that they’ll trust him with in the red zone right now, one is a quick hit to Michael Thomas and the other is a screen pass to a TE (Adam Trautman most likely over Josh Hill in this scenario). Otherwise he’s going to run it with power or hand the ball off. We’ve seen him run it in from within the 10 lots of times over the past three years, including twice last week, the week before and also once a year ago in Atlanta when he went in from outside the 20 on a QB power run. The big power run is coming too against a fast but smaller Atlanta defense this week so his rushing floor of 60 yards and a rushing touchdown alone gets him into double digits and he’ll be called upon to throw more this week so Taysom getting near 20 points again is not a stretch.

SAM DARNOLD vs DEREK CARR

Raiders at the Jets actually sets up as a nice potential back and forth game and the Jets offense is in a position where it’s now or never with finally having a full set of options available and getting the Raiders in a really tough spot. Las Vegas obviously was horrific last weekend in Atlanta following their big prime-time game vs the Chiefs the week before and will be flying back to the east coast as they had to go back to Las Vegas per the COVID restrictions this year. Darnold has two main weapons I think will do well in this game in Jamison Crowder and Denzel Mims who should thrive against a mediocre Raiders secondary.

For the record I do not have any issues with Derek Carr in this game either as the Jets will force the Raiders to funnel everything through the air this week, but Darnold is going to put up 3 TD, just wait.

CHALK FADES

Russell Wilson (Projected Ownership: 15%)

Mitchell Trubisky

RUNNING BACKS

KENYAN DRAKE

There’s some gold mines on DraftKings this week for value and none better in my mind than Kenyan Drake at $5,700. For the first half of the season I refused to touch the Cardinals RB because Kyler Murray was a cheat code inside the 10 yard line and took all the rushing touchdowns. But ever since his shoulder injury we’ve seen Drake start to get into the box again with three touchdowns over the last two weeks. Teams who have had the most success against the Rams stout defense have done two things. Number one they try to avoid going after Jalen Ramsey on the outside so sorry DeAndre Hopkins (who by the way has had arguably the hardest schedule in terms of facing lock down CB’s this year) and number two they try their best to make sure Aaron Donald does not murder their Quarterback.

Drake got the ball 22 times last week and I don’t think that was just some one off spot against New England because I really do think the Kyler Murray shoulder injury is a concern for Arizona. What is even more juicy here is how Drake suddenly is getting used in the passing game with 9 targets over those last two weeks. If he can get that again this week he’s in line to have a big game at a very reduced price at home.

Miles Sanders

What is going on with the Packers rush defense? Well, the same thing as last year which is they’re leaking out big runs too often. This rush defense has allowed David Montgomery, James Robinson and Dalvin Cook to just run all over them in their last three home games. Philadelphia has massive offensive line issues but they should still be able to get Miles Sanders going to hopefully avoid Wentz taking a beating in the passing game. There wouldn’t be anything more shocking than to see the Eagles in a 4:25 window game this weekend go on the road and upset the Packers, so take that Money Line bet and back it up in your DFS contests with some Miles Sanders and his 120 all purpose yards this weekend.

Dalvin Cook

To me this is a classic trap spot for the Vikings playing their third straight home game and coming off a last second come from behind win over Carolina last week. But throw all that out because Jacksonville is a good spot for anyone as they’re bad against the run, the pass and whatever other offensive plays you want to run. If Cook can stay on the field he’ll get around 20 fantasy points, which can be good enough on DK, but I wouldn’t touch him at all on FanDuel.

Derrick Henry

Welcome to D-Hember as we like to call it. Late in the season when most teams are beaten up on defense and the freight train of Derrick Henry is cranking up. If you think he is going to be very chalky this week then just wait until his upcoming games which are even better on paper than this one. The Titans for some reason which I cannot find anything to support are using Henry a ton more when they go on the road than they are at home but this doesn’t mean he suddenly is going to the bench at home because he’s likely to see 20 carries still in this game. I like Cleveland a lot on defense to give the Titans troubles in the passing game as Myles Garrett returning is a huge swing back for Clevelands defense, but with tons of value this week it’s very easy to fit in both Henry and Cook as fairly certain plays to get you 15-20 fantasy points and even though that’s not a sexy 4x or 5x return it’s still a good chunk to anchor lineups.

VALUE PLAYS

Myles Gaskin (Miami) … Gaskin was a respectable RB in college and draws a really bad Bengals defense in a game they should have short fields and the ball quite often. I wouldn’t rush to plug him in, but of all the late week chalky guys he’s the only one I would consider.

Jalen Richard (Las Vegas) … I prefer him over the late Booker chalk because Richard is the change of pace guy and I expect the Raiders to have more success passing than running, which is a Richard spot.

CHALK FADE

David Montgomery (Projected Ownership: 25%)

WIDE RECEIVERS

The mid range value at WR this week is fantastic. You can certainly make a case for playing guys like Davante Adams, Keenan Allen, AJ Brown, Michael Thomas every single week but they aren’t the ones who stand out as must owns this week.

ROBERT WOODS

The man they call Bobby Tree’s has made a habit of running all over the state of Arizona like he’s road runner torturing Wile E. Coyote every Saturday morning. Speaking of which, does anyone know what the E. stands for? The answer will be at the bottom of the article and when he scores this weekend in Patrick Peterson just imagine the Road Runner going Meep Meep as the Coyote just stands their in confusion. Obviously Robert Woods isn’t Tyreek Hill when it comes to speed but he’s had no problems matching up against Peterson and Arizona in the past with 20 combined catches in their two meetings last year and the added bonus of being used on rushing attempts in the red zone seemingly every other week (he got none last week), so it’s clear that McVay will look to get him the ball in scoring situations more than anyone else. If we lock in Goff at QB, we gotta pair him with one or both of his primary WR’s and Bobby Tree’s gets the nod for me.

JAMISON CROWDER

Crowder didn’t do much last week with Darnold back at the helm, but it was against the strong Dolphins pass defense. This week he’ll certainly be featured more against the Raiders who haven’t had much luck defending slot receivers on the year and will be without Safety Jonathan Abraham as well.

MICHAEL PITTMAN

The big young rookie has had his ups and downs this season and yes this is a spot where T.Y. Hilton has dominated in his career but time has caught up to Hilton too much and the changing of the guard to Pittman as the #1 receiver is all but complete. We have two guys in this mid range on DK between Pittman and Jamison Crowder (mentioned below) who are both good plays, but at the end of the day the Texans pass defense is far worse than the Raiders pass defense.

TWO STUDS TO STACK TOGETHER

MICHAEL THOMAS

Alright so I had my article done last week before the Broncos Quarterback news broke and it wound up completely dismantling what I thought was going to be the strategy of the week for the Saints and that’s lots of Michael Thomas. He’s dominating the volume from Taysom Hill and I have a strong late week feeling that Atlanta is going to try and go no huddle against the Saints this week which could put the Saints in a come from behind position for the first time in a long time. That means more and more Thomas volume and with his price continuing to drop we must jump on it once again this week.

CALVIN RIDLEY

This is not a “he has tore up the Saints in the past” recommendation. Okay, yes it is. But only because Janoris Jenkins is now out along with Marcus Davenport which hurts the pass rush for New Orleans just every so slightly. If you want a sure thing 16 fantasy points you can’t do much worse than Calvin Ridley this week. Atlanta has no chance to do anything on the ground again and Ridley should catch his usual 7 to 8 passes for 80 to 90 yards.

VALUE SHOTS

Denzel Mims

In five years when we’re all looking back at this 2020 WR draft it will be funny to see how Denzel Mims ranks among the top WR in the draft and everyone’s love boy Jalen Reagor is on his fourth NFL team trying to stay in the league. Mims is getting targets in this offense finally and with the Jets having three reputable WR and finally Darnold comfortably back at QB1 he should continue to build upon three straight weeks of 8 targets in a row. (Side note: I still believe Sam Darnold is competent enough with good coaching – but that’s a topic for another day). The only spot I’d trust a Darnold-Crowder-Mims stack is in a full stack of this game on the early slate, but on your main lineups it’s very hard to ignore a guy at $4,100 with his usage who’s talent passes the eye-test and is not facing a lock down defense.

FORGOTTEN MAN

DJ Chark

Chark returns this week and gets a dream spot against the Vikings who have been torched all season by WR on the outside. For some reason the Jaguars are expected to get blown out by a team who couldn’t beat the Cowboys and needed a late miracle to beat the Panthers at home? Gimme some Jags this week and that’s gotta be Daddy Shark…

CHALK FADES

Brandin Cooks

Keke Coutee

TIGHT ENDS

DARREN WALLER

There have only been two consistent TE’s every week and the other one is Travis Kelce who you obviously cannot roster on most sites since he is in the SNF game. The Raiders were down right pathetic in Atlanta last weekend and so this sets up as a “get right” spot not for the entire team. Waller is at the top of that list of players who barring something crazy like an injury or COVID-19 outbreak should be reliable enough to see 7+ targets and haul five or more of them in for 75 yards with good touchdown upside. Not a spot where he likely winds up breaking the slate but with some good mid range value at other positions we can definitely justify paying for Waller who isn’t that bad himself at $6,100 on DraftKings. Jacobs being ruled out only makes Waller that much stronger.

ADAM TRAUTMAN

Saints rookie TE Adam Trautman continues to transition into the teams #1 TE much in the same way Jimmy Graham started to push forward late in 2010 in his rookie year. Trautman is a big strong TE who has shown to have really good route running abilities, but where he has gained his playing time is in his trust in run blocking. New Orleans increased their play action usage drastically under Taysom Hill because Brees is known for not liking to turn his back to the defense. This new added wrinkle in the Saints offense is allowing for greater opportunities to utilize TE’s who can sell a run with their blocking and then slip out underneath. The Saints almost tried to hit Trautman for a touchdown last week against Denver in the red zone and he took a defender from the 9 yard line all the way down to the 2 showing his strength. He’s going to out snap Jared Cook again this week and is only $2,500 on DraftKings. This is a fantastic value play for someone who’s trending up.

OTHERS

Dallas Goeddert (DK: $4,300)

CHALK FADE

Jordan Aikins

Anthony Firsker

DEFENSES

MIAMI

The highest priced defense on the board is one that I’d love to find a way to poke a hole in but honestly I cannot. The Cincinnati Bengals offense this week might resemble something that makes what the Broncos and Ravens had this past week look good. With no Joe Mixon, a banged up Gio Bernard and no Joe Burrow this Bengals offense is down to trusting the Bengals passing game led by Brandon Allen and that’s not a recipe for beating the Dolphins and their stud CB1/CB2 combination of Xavien Howard and Byron Jones. Cincinnati might be able to manage to move Tyler Boyd around enough to have him catch 6 or 7 passes, but it’s not enough to sustain long drives and eventually the Dolphins will get enough sacks and turnovers to make their price worth it. Miami has not had a game without a forced turnover and only went without a sack two weeks ago against a much better OL in Denver than what the Bengals roll out.

INDIANAPOLIS

The Houston Texans lost too much finally with the loss of Will Fuller this past week. They’re welcoming in a Colts team who just got whooped at home by the Titans but now get a key defensive stud back in DeForrest Buckner, so an already bad rushing offense will go even further backwards this week, creating more passing opportunities for Watson to get sacked while the Texans fail to move the ball without any real play makers on offense.

Combine this with the slow pace the Texans move at in this game and the Colts offense will have plenty of opportunities to provide DFS value as well, but the real key is going to be the Colts defense shining through.

NY GIANTS

If you look for a defense below the $3500 range on DraftKings this week you are essentially taking a punt. The Giants are not going to be a defense that is looked at by anyone because facing off against Russell Wilson, Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf doesn’t tempt anyone. But Seattle as explosive as they can be at times is generally only high scoring when their defense is getting torched and the Giants aren’t going to be able to move the ball enough to make this a high scoring affair. So I expect the Giants to get their usual 2 to 3 sacks and they make a little bit of a leverage play against the chalky Seattle passing attack.

1. Rams vs Cardinals Stack: Jared Goff / Robert Woods / Kenyan Drake

Any game that features my favorite QB, favorite RB and favorite WR is gonna be something that I gotta invest into heavily. The contrarian play on this game is that I believe Kenyan Drake gets a featured role for the Cardinals and that’s the strongest path for Arizona to stay in this game. Load up this stack on the main slate and certainly on the 4PM only slate.

Ambush Play #1: Stack of the week is in Arizona between the Rams and Cardinals

2. Find the right value. Play these mid-range Receivers.

A week after watching Tyreek Hill go absolutely bananas there might be a temptation to find a high $ WR who is going to give you 200 yards receiving in the first quarter. You have a better chance of nailing an 8 team parlay than seeing that repeat itself this week and there are a bevy of mid range WR who have their “needle” moving in the right direction if you will. Robert Woods, Michael Pittman, DJ Chark, Henry Ruggs, Jamison Crowder/Denzel Mims just to name a few. With Michael Thomas and Calvin Ridley basically needing each other to go off, that creates a correlation play for those two into a lineup. Otherwise it’s spending below $7,000 this week on DraftKings where the true value at Wide Reciever lies.

Ambush Play #2: Lock in on the mid range WR’s

3. Better than the Heidi Bowl

Winless on the season, there’s been rumblings out there about a lot of analysts finding the Jets as possibly a sneaky team to finally win. Well, the offense has been putrid but if ever they were going to get a spot to go off it would be against a Las Vegas team flying west to east on back to back weekends and in a game where the clock should move very slowly due to two non-existent running games. Darnold will get to throw 30+ times and he has three WR we can trust with Crowder, Perriman and Mims. The two in bold are the ones I expect to have the biggest value in DFS. To me this game sets up perfectly as the 1PM undercard to a nice 4PM slate and it would be the early game to stack or build a second lineup around. Las Vegas will funnel everything through Waller and their speed WR’s Agholor/Ruggs which creates an opportunity for big plays and a great back and forth Heidi Bowl shootout.

Ambush Play #3: Want a contrarian early only stack? Don’t just look at the Raiders and assume the Jets won’t keep up. Darnold connects with Crowder and Mims on his way to a 3 TD game.

4. Ignore Friday afternoon Chalk

In this COVID-19 world there are far fewer Friday afternoon trips to the local watering hole on your way home from work. But back when many of us used to enjoy that routine we always had to avoid seeing Friday afternoon news drop around 4pm or 5pm and letting it cloud our judgement. The same is extremely true for news that breaks late in the week this week as it pertains to now some horrific chalk plays. Why in the world would you want to suddenly consider Anthony Firsker? Don’t give me this garbage about oh he is safe for cash. I’ll put anything out there that Firsker won’t even come close to sniffing 10 fantasy points this week and furthermore, he’s going to get doubled up by Adam Trautman.

But the horrible Friday afternoon happy hour chalk doesn’t stop there, it continues with sudden news that now Josh Jacobs is going to be out this week and suddenly everyone wants a $5,500 Devontae Booker on DraftKings. I had a hard time even considering Josh Jacobs in a prime bounce back spot because the Jets actually have a very good rush defense. And the difference Jacobs and Booker is that Jacobs IS ACTUALLY GOOD AT FOOTBALL. Stop with the “volume” or “value” reasoning for playing the Brian Hill’s of the world to get you 8 fantasy points while every single week we need 20 fantasy points from our Running Backs. Move on with that garbage and play guys who are in spots that are good based upon the teams and their profiles and not just what some manual projections that are updated on a Friday shift onto.

Firsker and Booker are horrible plays. Period.

The following ‘hyped’ up players are guys I have 0.0% desire to roster to this week

Mitch Trubisky, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Russell Wilson, Austin Ekeler, Devontae Booker, David Montgomery, Brandin Cooks, Keke Coutee, Anthony Firsker, Packers Defense

Ambush Play #4: There seems to be so much bad ‘late’ chalk to add to the early week bad chalk. Above are the Ambush fades.

5. Colts Dominate

Ambush Play #5: Indianapolis ROMPS the Texans with a huge defensive performance and everyone eats on offense.

THE AMBUSH Q&A

QUESTION: Who is getting overlooked this week and why is it Alvin Kamara?

Just too cheap and he will catch 4 passes this week to silence all the critics about him not having any value in the passing game with Taysom at QB. If you watch the games the past two weeks you’ll see that yes there are check downs that Brees would have done immediately to Kamara which are lost but the drop from his usual 8 or so receptions is more realistic down to about 4 per game instead of 0 per game. At only $7,000 Kamara is worth considering but I don’t see a huge 3 TD type game that you saw early in the season from AK41.

QUESTION: Random off the wall prediction?

The Cleveland Browns sack Ryan Tannehill five times, score a defensive touchdown and put the Titans in their place.

The New York Jets get their first win of the season over the Las Vegas Raiders

The Philadelphia Eagles upset the Green Bay Packers behind a massive Miles Sanders game and Wentz looks okay.

QUESTION: Favorite 1PM and 4PM only stacks and plays?

1PM only is a toss up be tween going Raiders-Jets or Saints-Falcons

4PM only as mentioned is Rams/Cardinals with an honorable mention to the Eagles/Packers

QUESTION: What’s the game you do not have a lot of players in which scares you to go off?

Packers/Eagles

QUESTION: Favorite Bets of the week?

Colts -3

Browns ML

Eagles ML

Jets ML

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