College Football DFS: DraftKings CFB Week 3 Main Slate

Whew doggy. Week 2 was an absolute blast, and the vibes are still sky-high going into this Saturday's main slate on DraftKings. 

12 games. Five with totals of 54.5 or better. Five teams with implied totals of 40.0 or better. We've got options, folks. 

We'll get started by recapping what worked and what didn't on last week's main slate before digging into stackable games and sides. Then, we'll identify some of my favorite plays at each position this week. Enough preamble. Let's boogie. 

Week 2 DFS Recap

I went ahead and grabbed the data from one of the big DFS contests on DraftKings last weekend and here were the big takeaways from the Top 25 placing lineups.

• Mississippi State Stacks were prevalent and profitable: Nine of the top 25 lineups had a Mississippi State stack. 
• Duke/Illinois was the best game stack: You pretty much needed Nate Sheppard from Duke and Collin Dixon from Illinois to win big on Saturday

Salary Increasers 

Below is a table of players who have seen their salaries jump the most from last week's slate to this week's slate. It's not perfect -- it's only grabbing players who were on the slate last week -- but I'll try to make this more inclusive going forward. 

Still, it's a good snapshot of how the DraftKings decision-makers view these players early in the season. 

Slate Overview

High Totals, Narrow Spreads

South Carolina (-3.5) vs Mississippi State (59)

I can't wait for this one. So many SEC implications. The winner will officially hold the crown for Team Nobody Wants To Play the rest of the way. For our DFS purposes, it's about as good as it gets on this slate. Total pushing near 60 and a competitive spread. Elite quarterbacks and run games, too. 

If we want to get on South Carolina, I can see a QB/RB stack being the way to go. South Carolina's pass-catchers are cheap, but for a good reason. None of them are doing much. LaNorris Sellers ($8,100) himself was surgical in the opener against Kent State, completing 82 percent of his passes with three touchdowns. But he was under 50% against Towson. I don't know what to make of that. What I do know is that South Carolina's best path to moving the ball on the ground comes via Sellers and Matt Fuller ($4,900).

I gave my spiel on Kamario Taylor last week, so we don't need a huge explainer on who this guy is anymore. He's electric. Dropping back or making a run, he's going to put a scare into the defense. The Bulldog pass catchers are more lively here; Anthony Edwards ($6,500) is still a relative bargain given that he's got a 30% target share at 12.6 YPT. The second receiver seems to be a little more variable. Zion Ragans ($4,000) had seven targets in the opener then dropped down to four last week. He and Sanfrisco Magee ($4,200) are clipping along at roughly the same target share and efficiency so really, if you want to roster either, it may just boil down to whether you have the extra $200 for Magee or just want to save it and drop down to Ragans.

South Carolina has shut down the run so far, which will likely keep a lid on Fluff Bothwell's roster % at $7,700. Of course, South Carolina hasn't played anybody so those numbers are almost meaningless. But it's better than, say, getting gashed by Towson or something.

TL;DR: I'm mostly playing Sellers + Fuller with a Taylor + Evans bringback, or Ragins/Magee depending on my remaining cap.

Louisville (-1.5) vs SMU (59.0)

This is the other game I view as fully stackable on both sides. We've got a couple of elite offenses going at it with SMU heading to Louisville. A lot of attention will be paid to the passing games with Kevin Jennings and Lincoln Kienholz as the headliners, and deservedly so. I'll get to them in the quarterback section. I'm interested to see how the ground games perform, though.

Isaac Brown has been a superstar for each of the last two years. However, he hasn't gotten on track this year. Is facing an SMU defense that's middling against the run the time he gets himself going? And if not, does Keyjuan Brown have some appeal at just $5,200?

For SMU, it's been a bit of a frustrating committee. Most, myself included, expected Kendrick Raphael to be the guy this year. He took on 232 carries for Cal last year and racked up 13 rushing touchdowns along with 34 receptions. I would guess he sees the most carries here, seeing as SMU opted to put him on ice against UC Davis following his 12-carry outing vs Florida State. 

Derrick McFall had impressive explosiveness in Raphael's stead last weekend, but how much of that was a function of the competition? Or did he do enough to work his way into the rotation against ACC opponents? The interesting wrinkle is DraftKings listing him as a receiver. It's hard to justify a running back with a shaky role, but $4,300 is a totally fine range to for a dart throw at a receiver spot. Like we've established in these slate recaps, it's often best practice to pay up at running back and find your values at receiver. I think McFall fits that bill here. 

I am curious how the defensive SP+ ratings hold up here. Both rank inside the top 25 in that metric. Of course, both are top 25 in offensive SP+ as well. I would guess this game will be chalky. Let's hope the chalk is good like it was last week. 

Big Time Team Totals

• Ohio State (56)
• Penn State (45.5)
• Utah (42.5)
• USC (42)
• Georgia (39.5)

Quarterback

I love the board at quarterback this week. There are a ton of options at varying price tiers that let us get good values and build unique lineups. Since there are so many QBs on my radar, these will be quick-hitters.

Gunner Stockton, Georgia ($9,200) at Arkansas

People will likely just scroll on past Stockton on their way to cheaper plays. It's far from a guarantee that Stockton will be needed all four quarters Saturday with how the spread is shaping up. Stockton has shown he doesn't need that much time though. 

In 11 offensive series this year, Stockton has completed 28 of 32 passes for 436 yards and eight touchdowns. Jeez. 

Imagine if Arkansas puts up even a little bit of a fight and Stockton plays well into the third quarter. You may say that Georgia hasn't played anybody yet, and that's true. But Arkansas is the worst team in the SEC by a margin, and near the bottom of the P4 overall. This isn't a massive leap in competition. 

Stockton will be efficient on a per-pass basis here. The hope is that we can get to 20 dropbacks. I think 25-30 DK points are possible for Stockton here with a sub-10% roster percentage. 

Kevin Jennings ($8,200) and Lincoln Kienholz ($7,400): Louisville vs SMU

I love both sides of this one, as mentioned earlier. Jennings is a well-known commodity at this point with two impressive seasons under his belt at SMU. He has been ripping it up so far, completing 77% of his passes at a 14.8 YPA clip. Cooking UC Davis certainly helped, but he also carved up Florida State for 430 yards and three touchdowns. He tossed two picks in that game, which is a continuation of turnover issues he's shown throughout his career. He'll need to clean that up here, but all in all, Jennings is a strong play here. Our projections like him the most of any QB on this slate.

Kienholz has exceeded my expectations so far. I was curious about his fit in the Brohm scheme but he has been a natural. 300+ pass yards and two touchdowns in each game so far, plus a team-leading 111 rush yards (3TD). I'll do a slight shot call here and say this is the last time we'll see Kienholz under $7,500 the rest of the way. 

This should be a fun, back-and-forth matchup with plenty of production from both quarterbacks. Both are viable on their own, and I'll definitely have a lineup or two with both Jennings and Kienholz.

Marcel Reed ($8,700) Texas A&M vs Kentucky

Kentucky showed some fight last week against Alabama. In the first half. Then, things fell apart. 

My thought on Reed is not too different from my read on Stockton in that the roster % should be on the lower end due to salary, but the setup is favorable nonetheless. Texas A&M has a solid but not spectacular implied total of 33. Reed will have his fingerprints all over the points this week, and I think it's worth noting that he hasn't even run much yet. I'm guessing that changes against an SEC opponent, so look for more points coming that way. 

I think A&M ends up scoring closer to 40 on Saturday, with Reed accounting for 3+ touchdowns along the way. He's good leverage with this soft home matchup. 

Others to Consider

• LaNorris Sellers ($8,100) and Kamario Taylor ($8,800), South Carolina vs Mississippi State
• Keelon Russell, Alabama ($8,600)
• Walker Eget, Duke ($7,800)

Running Back

Nate Sheppard is becoming Ahmad Hardy or Cam Skattebo. Dude is just inevitable. The pricers are trying to keep up, bumping him to $9,200. That makes him a little tougher to jam into your lineup, but with 40-point potential, it's probably best to just budget for him and figure out the rest. He gets Stanford at home this week. Stanford has actually been alright against the run (83.5 RuYd/G, 3.1 YPC). It also hasn't faced anything like Sheppard, who is also dynamic as a pass-catcher. Don't let the big $ scare you off of him this week. 

Wayshawn Parker, Utah ($7,000) vs Utah State

I see that 42.0 implied total for Utah and I feel the need to find out how to get the right pieces of that. Devon Dampier ($9,400) and Byrd Ficklin ($9,000) really throw a wrench in things. Both hurt each other's ceilings, and of course, both are quarterbacks. So maybe there's a way to get the right lineup by playing one of them (or both??), but we need some additional pieces.

The backfield is luckily a little more straightforward. It's been the Parker show thus far with 22 carries for 124 yards and three touchdowns to go with eight grabs for 88 and three touchdowns on eight targets. No other Ute back has more than nine carries. 

The Utes have Utah State coming to town and are nearly four-touchdown favorites. Grabbing the running back with this much of the backfield opportunity share for just $7K is a nice thing to target on this slate. Parker's ceiling is extremely high, and the $7K salary gives him a relatively low bar to clear for him to be useful. 

Nate Frazier, Georgia ($6,700) at Arkansas

Frazier is sort of like the Gunner Stockton analog for running backs thus far. He only has 10 carries, but they've gone for 127 yards and four touchdowns. Arkansas held up okay against the run vs Utah in terms of efficiency (4.12 YPC). Unfortunately for the Hawgs, they still gave up four touchdowns on the ground.

I expect this to be the busiest we've seen Frazier so far this season. The way he's running right now, even 12 carries might do the trick Saturday. 

Isaac Brown, Louisville ($7,600) vs SMU

The field might be a little leery of using Brown this week, and understandably so. He's not a core play for me, nor is he a target in 50/50s. However, the tournament appeal is real. This is a guy who averaged 7.7 YPC in his first two seasons and piled up 18 rushing touchdowns. That's rare explosiveness across solid volume (266 attempts). 

Things haven't been the same this season. He was nicked up in fall camp and has been ineffective over his 29 carries so far this year, piling up just 97 yards through two games. Brown is listed as probable coming into this game so he should be good to go, and the Cards will need him more this week than they did when they could easily dispatch of Richmond. There's a perilously low floor here for Brown considering how he's looked so far, but if he's back to being himself, he could be a slate-changing play. 

Others to consider

• Legend Bey, Ohio State ($4,000)
• King Miller, USC ($7,500)

Wide Receivers

Here's this week's target cheat sheet. I filtered it to receivers on this slate with at least a 16% team target share who also average at least 9.0 yards per target. Those are fairly arbitrary thresholds, but they still tend to paint a good picture of who is A.) Getting Volume and B.) Maximizing It. 

Two games is not a ton of sample to go on, and most of these teams have played a cupcake game so egregious that it's hard to make much of it. Even so, we need to know where the targets are flowing. Here's what we've got.

Penn State vs Buffalo

I wouldn't have circled this game to have much DFS upside in the passing game, but here we are. Benjamin Brahmer ($4,900) absolutely smashed last week at the expense of my Koby Howard shares. I'll forgive him eventually, and still like Howard this week.

 Buffalo has been one of the more pass-happy teams in college football to start the year (60%), and that should continue in this spot as they're massive underdogs.

Chance Morrow ($5,400) leads all receivers on this slate and is second in the nation in targets with 31 through two games. He's only caught 18 of them for 221 yards, but five have gone for touchdowns. You don't ignore target shares like this in full PPR scoring. This is Skyler Bell-esque.

 The issue with playing Morrow is he will be a little chalky, especially as a bringback option in Penn State-heavy builds. I worry that he's a high-floor, low-ceiling play in that Penn State is not expected to give up a lot of points. In fact...Buffalo's implied total is just 4.3. Not a typo. Although, just thinking it through, 10 catches for 80 yards is still over 3X return on $5,400. 

Yamir Knight, SMU ($4,100) at Louisville

Knight is in for a big season, in my opinion. My buddy and RotoWire CFB editor Chris Benzine put me on him this summer when we were drafting best ball teams, and I think we're close to his breakout game. If anything, it helps that he's flown under the radar to this point.

The signal is there. He leads the team in target share (17.6%) and has caught nine of his 12 opportunities at a solid 9.3 YPT clip. Knight drew nine targets in the opener in a competitive spot against Florida State, which indicates that he's SMU's go-to guy in matchups like the one on Saturday.

He's a great play as a one-off, and close to a must-play for any Kevin Jennings lineup. 

Benji Blackburn, Stanford ($4,300) at Duke

Blackburn caught my eye during the Miami game, and it's not just because of the awesome rec specs.

He's a big, physical tight end with good hands and a big-time target share (23.4%). No one else on Stanford is above 13 percent. If you're loading up on Duke options (solid idea this week), Blackburn is a great bring-back option. 

Others to Consider

• Eli Wood, Utah State ($3,700)
• Tanook Hines, USC ($5,400)
• Isaiah Horton, Texas A&M ($6,400)
• Braden Pegan, Utah ($6,000)
• Elyiss Williams, Georgia ($3,000)