Updated: Friday, Oct. 6 at 11:45am ET

Welcome to the NFL Week 5 DFS Watch List. After cashing like champs during the first three weeks of the season, we hit our first real speed bump of the season last week as the winning DFS lineups were filled with people stacking Bears against the Broncos, as well as hitting with Christian McCaffrey and De'Von Achane. We had McCaffrey in the Playbook and I included him in a few of the Example Lineups, but I wasn't touching the Bears based off what I had seen from them this season and while Achane had a tremendous performance last week, the match-up against the Bills was not a good one and no one was really sure of his snap count or touches. While Justin Fields, DJ Moore and Achane were fine to use for GPP tournaments, especially if you are a multi/max-lineup player each week, those people who used them in cash games because that's what the NFL DFS lineup optimizers pushed out are going to suffer in the long run. Those plays aren't going to hit regularly in cash. They just won't. You cannot build a cash lineup with zero-floor players in bad match-ups. It worked this week, but be very careful moving forward.

But as I always say, we need to look forward. The process doesn't change, no matter how frustrated you were about losing this past week. We push on. We do our research the same way. We analyze the data the same way. And we build our lineups for Week 5 the same way. We got this and we are ready for a big rebound.

 

 

As always, I would like to welcome all of our new subscribers. I've seen a lot of new screen names in Discord and I see a ton of new sign-ups for the All-Pro package, so before we fully dive in to the NFL DFS Week 5 Watch List, please allow me to welcome all of the new members of the Fantasy Alarm #FAmily. There are a lot of you and we thank you for joining. Now it's up to us to help you cash consistently on your NFL DFS action and we are psyched to make that happen. Since you are new to the Watch List, allow me to share some thoughts real quick:

“If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.”

We take this adage to heart when it comes to playing NFL DFS. The Fantasy Alarm Playbook isn’t just about handing you a list of players and a lineup to use each week. It is designed to help you learn to be a better DFS player. It’s about teaching you the process used in selecting which players to scout and, eventually, which ones to use.

Therefore, we will begin each week with the Weekly NFL DFS Watch List which is designed to keep tabs on marquee names, chalk plays and, of course, the weekly bargains who may not see the same coverage and exposure. This piece will be continuously updated throughout the week, based on the most recent news and injuries, which means you may see a name or two removed as we get closer to Sunday kick-off. You may also see a few late-week additions who pique our interest for some reason too, and by the end of the week, this Watch List will eventually become your Playbook. Again, it’s about teaching you the process.

So what exactly did last week's Playbook deliver? As always, we like to check in to ensure we remain on the right path.

Scoring The Playbook Week 4

Not gonna lie – this was a tough week for me, personally and for anyone else who tailed my pick of Javonte Williams for all of your lineups. Injuries happen and there's nothing you can do about it, but while one injury can sink your GPP lineups, it shouldn't necessarily be that way for cash games. In one cash lineup, I had Josh Allen paired with Stefon Diggs which helped negate the Williams play, but without strong support from other player such as George Kittle, Tank Dell and even Ja'Marr Chase, your cash lineups can get trashed as well. But before we take a look at what could have been for Playbook subscribers, allow me to reiterate that so many winning DFS lineups had Justin Fields, DJ Moore and De'Von Achane in them. If you're a multi-lineup player and you're throwing money into GPPs then that's perfectly fine. But I saw all three of them in cash lineups and, under normal circumstances, you would have crushed them. Simply put, those were not good cash game plays and nine times out of 10, you'll beat anyone who plays zero-floor players in cash. But enough of that. Let's look at what the top lineups created off the Playbook and Dart Board looked like.

Not bad at all, right? Some super-strong plays and what's best is that those plays were just as good for cash games as they were for GPP tournaments. Think about it – you don't even see Diggs in there, do you? So for those who cashed, congratulations. If you didn't, we'll get back to it this week!

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