Larejo is a mid-stakes tournament mastermind who specializes in outmaneuvering 150-max players with a small number of entries
We’re officially in the “expect the unexpected” weeks of the NFL regular season. In a week like this, one of the last feelings I want to pursue is to feel comfortable about the slate ahead. Instead, we should all share the expectation that things could get nutty this week, with only Weeks 1 and 18 possibly giving this Week 17 a close competition for craziness. This opening may sound more like a coming reflection piece on the previous week’s of games, but it’s the only thought I had when starting to write this penultimate Willing to Lose. As we strategize and maneuver our brains into building winning lineups this Sunday, we should be working more and more away from what is logical.
The overview of this slate comes a bit late for most of us after the mid-week holiday, so I’ll admit to being a bit in catch-up mode, but I think it’s all for the better. This is NOT a week for overthinking. It’s not a week for logic, nor is it a slate that leads toward comfort. With just nine total games on this main slate, and two late window matchups, plus sixteen weeks of data to look at, and only four teams projecting for over 25 points, this slate shows as both boring and attractive all at once. Projected ownership shouldn’t matter much to anyone, but with only a few games jumping off the page in terms of expected shootouts, it will make predicting where ownership congregates just a bit easier this week. The Bengals, Patriots, and Jaguars are our guilty parties: three offenses expected to have little resistance applied, and we can throw the Seahawks in this conversation, too. Building lineups centered around these offenses seems to make sense, albeit in a different way in large-field GPPs, and then additional scenarios that don’t anchor on a “top” team are also always viable. It should be a weird week, but we also know by now how to get unique without sacrificing upside.
