FIRST DOWN – DFS BARGAIN BASEMENT BLUE LIGHT SPECIALS

Time to go deep and cheap for week 8 DFS plays. These plays won’t be for the faint of heart, that much is for sure. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you; I have IDP players listed below. No, you won’t find DFS IDP at Draft Kings, Fan Duel or FantasyScore, but you will find it a ReDraftHero, a new DFS site. For transparency, the chart below on the right shows how last week’s BBBLS selections performed.

Lots and lots of hits last week, so many I’m thinking maybe I should retire…nah. It’s like golf. You hit that one perfect drive or shot and you know you’ll never hit one like that again but you can’t help but to keep trying. This week I like Teddy Bridgewater’s value against the Bears secondary. Both Shane Vereen and Charles Sims rely on catches to be fantasy relevant and both do a good job getting those catches. With Leonard Hankerson likely to miss week 8 for the Falcons, Roddy White has some added upside. Everyone is just waiting for the Ben Roethlisberger and Martavis Bryant hook-up but Ben likes his TE, and he’ll mean a boost for Heath Miller’s value this week. On the defensive side of the ball, there are some big names at very good prices. Hey, don’t bag on me for picking big names, get on ReDraftHero for having them priced so low. In case you don’t know who Jaquiski Tartt is, he’s the replacement for Antoine Bethea who was put on injured reserve.

SECOND DOWN – CHALLENGES, CHALLENGES, AND MORE CHALLENGES

As we approach the halfway point of the season I thought that readers might be interested in seeing numbers on challenges. Some teams are good at challenging, some bad, some challenge a lot and some don’t. The booth, it gets a workout.

THIRD DOWN – STEVE’S SEVEN SLEEPERS

Last year I made my seven sleepers an ongoing part of this article and I’m going to continue with it for 2015. Week 1 I’ll be picking guys with ADPs outside of what most would consider starters but going forward the following criteria will be used:
To qualify the player can’t rank in the top-36 (top-12 for QB & TE) at their respective position based on the season long rankings in the Huddle IDP Expert League, and when possible I’ll pick players that are available on waivers.  Just like last year, the following week I’ll include how this week’s sleepers did score wise.

Picking a sleeper QB is still a hard thing to do since there are so many big names that rank outside the top-12. However, I have to pick one so I’m going with Brian Hoyer. After all, he has no challenge for playing time since Ryan Mallet has been released. I love the upside that Dexter McCluster has this week. Of course the same can be said for all 384 RBs that get touches in the Titans backfield. Eddie Royal coming off a bye week should be able to get enough action while Xavier Rhodes focuses on taking Alshon Jeffrey out of the game. Heath Miller, with Ben Roethlisberger back under center, makes for a very nice upside and sleeper play. At DL, Robert Ayers is part of a Giants rotation that is close to adding Jason Pierre-Paul back in the mix. That won’t happen this week so play Ayers while he still has some upside. Have you seen the Broncos pass protect this year? If so then you know that Julius Peppers, even if he is 74 years old, is likely to net multiple sacks this week against the Broncos and Peyton Manning. Jaquiski Tartt is next man up to replace Antoine Bethea who had started 119 straight games but is now on injured reserve.

FOURTH DOWN –TRENCH WARFARE

With Ben Roetlisberger back, the game of the week has to be the Bengals and their unblemished recording, heading to Pittsburgh to take on their arch rival in Roethlisberger’s first game back from injury. So rather than how I normally do this by posting one team’s defense and the other team’s offense I’m going to show both team’s defenses against the run and the pass.

BENGALS

STEELERS