There were a lot of significant favorites last week, which resulted in a pretty interesting slate for our members. Let’s dive right in.

Main Event Winner: “ryanjudge2”

Green Bay Quarterbacks: Last Monday night Chicago jumped out to an early lead built on big plays, forcing Green Bay to play from behind throughout the first half. On top of that, Aaron Rodgers was truly on as Green Bay hung 45 points on rival Chicago. All of Green Bay’s options were in a potential smash spot as 12-point home favorites, but this game played out as well as it could have for anyone that deployed those options in this matchup, as Chicago pushed this game into a shootout by scoring 30 points themselves.

Denver Running Backs: Minnesota running backs posted a hefty 36.9 score last Thursday night, so if we didn’t have access to that card we already knew we had to beat a substantial score in this week’s Main Event. Both Melvin Gordon and Javonte Williams had a realistic path to putting up difference making production against Detroit, and that’s exactly what they did. When sharp, more contrarian plays like this hit they can be real difference makers, like they were for “ryanjudge2” here.

Green Bay Wide Receivers: Stacks don’t always land, but if a quarterback is going to have a big day in the air the chances of him bringing along one or more of his pass catchers is pretty high. Deploying this stack, in this lineup, is a primary reason that “ryanjudge2” is headed to Miami. Big congrats.

San Francisco Tight Ends: George Kittle went off for the second time in two weeks, posting 151 yards and a score in Cincinnati. Kittle is one of the few elite tight ends in football and he was in a strong game environment in this matchup. This card is a standard top play going forward.

Tennessee Defense: The Jacksonville offense has been atrocious this year and Tennessee was coming off their bye as a significant home favorite with a well prepared, physical defense. This was a top play that provided a ceiling performance.

Side Hustle Winner: “spyder67”

Kansas City Running Backs with Los Angeles (National) Wide Receivers: This is another case where a standard top performer in a good matchup (The Los Angeles Wide Receivers) was paired with a much more contrarian option in a good game environment (The Kansas City Running Backs) and that duo took the top spot over several sharp, but duplicated lineups.

Lowball Winner: “themiddlepiece”

Jacksonville Quarterbacks: You could argue that no one has been more disappointing this season than Trevor Lawrence. To be clear, that’s far from being his fault entirely, but all of the options in this offense are Lowball considerations every week.

Jacksonville Running Backs: The Jacksonville offensive options were a good Lowball play for the same reasons that the Tennessee defense was a good play in our other formats.

New York (National) Wide Receivers: This was a very sharp Lowball play as New York has been one of the worst passing offenses in football and Los Angeles is a much better pass defense than a run defense.

New York (American) Tight Ends: While this group has had a few moments this season, they have been a consistently mediocre performer throughout the year.

Houston Defense: The name of the game in Lowball is play the worst plays, and that’s what the Houston defense was against the surging Russell Wilson.

Island of Misfit Cards Winner: “Big Mo”

San Francisco Tight Ends with Kansas City Defense: I wasn’t kidding when I recently said “Big Mo” is a great player, and here he is again at the top of one of our contests. Here we have the San Francisco tight ends card, which was a standard top play in one of the better game environments, paired with a still solid, but much more contrarian option in the Kansas City defense against Las Vegas. What truly impresses me about the Kansas City play is that there were a handful of other defenses in great positions as significant favorites against worse offenses than Las Vegas that “Big Mo” had to pass over to enter this lineup. If you’re looking to analyze the potential difference making value of a good play that’s less chalky than several other options at the same position, look no further than this one.

Various Things

The Los Angeles (National) wide receiver card was the top option at the position last week with 44.8 points. What’s interesting about that is the Los Angeles quarterbacks card was sixth at that position with 29.48 points.

Denver running backs, Kansas City running backs, New York (National) running backs, Pittsburgh wide receivers, and Pittsburgh quarterbacks are some of the less reliable options on a week-to-week basis that had an impact for many of our users this week.

Defenses made a big difference this week, as the top performing lineups this all deployed a defense in a plus matchup as a significant favorite. Dallas and Tennessee hit big, while New Orleans and Denver did their jobs as expected but didn’t quite post difference making scores for fantasy purposes.

Analyzing Thursday

This Los Angeles (American) vs Kansas City matchup has the highest game total (52-points) on this week’s slate by 4 ½ points, which is a pretty considerable amount. That hardly guarantees that this will be the highest scoring contest in Week 15, but that type of outcome is very much in play with these two offenses.

The Los Angeles run defense has been terrible throughout this season, which puts the Kansas City running backs card, who just posted a spike week against Las Vegas, as a potential top play on this slate. The Kansas City passing attack has been largely disappointing and far less reliable for fantasy purposes than we’d have expected this season. With that said, the ceiling remains sky-high for this group and Patrick Mahomes exceeded 300 yards passing during the first matchup between these two teams earlier this season. If Derwin James misses this game for Los Angeles, that would be a big benefit to everyone on Kansas City’s offense, but especially Travis Kelce.

On the Los Angeles side their offensive line will be down both of it’s offensive tackles and one of their guards, but Kansas City will also be down it’s best disruptor in Chris Jones. I wouldn’t call that a wash, but the absence of Jones makes the loss of these foundational pieces more manageable for Los Angeles. Austin Ekeler has been framed as likely to play, but we can reasonably expect this offense to struggle on the ground some given their losses along the offensive line. While pressure could be more of a factor for Justin Herbert this week than it has been throughout the season, Herbert has shown that he’s already a borderline top-five quarterback in the league and that alone makes this passing attack dangerous in a potential shootout like this one.