DraftKings Week 7 UFL DFS Tournament Plays

A lack of NFL football, or football in general, is a terrible thing. But football is still hanging around, thanks to the UFL! And since DraftKings is offering DFS tournaments, it’s time to discuss the top plays and contrarian options so we can bink some UFL tournaments.

I’ll go position by position, highlighting my favorite plays for tournaments. I'll include a TL;DR for those who don’t want to read my reasoning and just want the top-value plays. I’ll also include teams’ implied totals directly below to help readers get a sense of the offenses Vegas thinks will put the most points on the board.

Team Totals

Memphis Showboats (20.0) @ Arlington Renegades (25.0)

St. Louis Battlehawks (21.75) @ Birmingham Stallions (25.75)

Michigan Panther (22.0) @ DC Defenders (21.0)

San Antonio Brahmas (21.0) @ Houston Roughnecks (18.0)

Injuries

Injury reporting can be a mess in these spring leagues. Thankfully, Justin Freeman and the great team at RunTheSims have a public document where injuries and injury reports are being tracked. Be sure to check this document each week, along with the updates I post in this article and in our Discord, to get a full sense of available injury information on a given slate.

TL;DR

In the TL;DR, I’ll list the top plays in order of value (according to me). This isn’t super strict, it does not factor in ownership, and in some cases, it’s sort of arbitrary. It also doesn’t matter nearly as much as my readers think it does. What matters is maximizing the correlations within your lineups, and ensuring you include at least a few players on each tournament team who should be on the lower end of ownership (I highlight a few in my write-ups). Get creative!

Plays ranked in order, with tier 1 in bold, and assumes notable questionable players suit up…

QB: Adrian Martinez, Troy Williams, Luis Perez, AJ McCarron, Jordan Ta’amu, Quinten Dormady, Jarrett Guarantano, Brian Lewerke

RB: John Lovett, Jacob Saylors, Darius Victor, Darius Hagans, Mark Thompson, Matt Colburn, CJ Marable, Ricky Person, Wes Hills

WR/TE: Daewood Davis, Sal Cannella, Kelvin Harmon, Ty Scott, Hakeem Butler, JP Payton, Deontay Burnett, Jontre Kirklin, Justin Smith, Marcus Simms, Siaosi Mariner, Justin Hall, Deon Cain, Keke Chism, Marlon Williams, Sage Surratt

QB

Adrian Martinez ($10,800): Martinez is going to be the most popular QB of the week, and it’s easy to see why:

Martinez is putting up fantasy points like he’s 2019 Lamar Jackson, averaging an absurd 35.0 DraftKings FPG in his three starts. The case that he’s the best QB play of the slate essentially ends there – he’s literally lapping the field in terms of fantasy production right now (the UFL’s QB2, AJ McCarron, is averaging 20.1 DraftKings FPG).

That said, this will be the toughest challenge Martinez has faced this year. St. Louis is allowing just 149.8 passing YPG (toughest), 5.2 YPA (toughest), and is PFF’s 2nd highest-graded defense (80.3 team defense grade).

This has been a brutal matchup for opposing QBs, but Martinez has shown he can dominate through the air (two games over 300 passing yards) and on the ground (69.0 rushing FPG per start). Martinez remains a strong play, but our projections reflect that a ceiling performance may be tougher in this matchup.

Troy Williams ($8,600): Williams is the listed starter for Memphis this week, and while it’s difficult to have significant faith in the Showboats’ offense, they should get a decent boost against Arlington.

The Renegades allow the 2nd-most YPA (7.4) and the 2nd-most total YPG (323.3), trailing only the Memphis defense in both categories. The total here is 45.0 (the 2nd-highest of the slate), so Vegas assumes the poor defense on both sides will lead to points.

Williams is more than capable of scoring fantasy points here – he dropped 21.4 fantasy points in his lone start this season, and he provides the offense with a designed rushing element that Case Cookus simply doesn’t. Combine all that with one of the lowest price tags among starting QBs in Week 7, and there is a decent argument for playing Williams in tournaments this week.

RB

Weighted opportunity, snap/route shares, and raw opportunities since Week 1:

Darius Victor ($6,900): Victor hasn’t been good this season – averaging just 8.6 DraftKings FPG despite a workload that (according to weighted opportunity) should be worth about 12.6 FPG.

Still, his stranglehold over backfield usage is incredibly encouraging. He’s captured 78% of backfield-weighted opportunity (most), and has exceeded 85% of backfield-weighted opportunity in three straight weeks. His 77% snap share and 57% route share lead all RBs, and he’s ranked top-4 in weighted opportunity in 80% of his healthy games. Victor’s usage is rather impressive for a player priced as the RB9 on DraftKings, especially in a strong matchup…

Arlington is allowing the most YPC (4.8), most rushing YPG (122.3), and the 2nd-highest rush rate (41%). With Troy Williams ($8,600) starting, the Showboats' overall rushing efficiency should be a bit stronger this week. I understand being skeptical of Victor due to his poor fantasy performances thus far, but if there was ever a week to play him, it’s Week 7 against Arlington.

Darius Hagans ($5,000): Cam’Ron Harris ($6,600) earned the first 4 backfield touches for DC in Week 6, but once Hagans touched the ball in the 2nd quarter, he commanded 68% of backfield carries and looked pretty great (4.8 YPC). Harris hasn’t been particularly compelling as a runner this season – he’s 3rd-worst (of 15 qualifiers) in YPC (3.2) and bottom-5 in missed tackles forced per attempt (0.11). Based on DC’s desire to get significant carries to recent signing ZaQuandre White ($5,500) in Weeks 4 and 5, we can safely assume the Defenders are still trying to find their RB1.

That’s where Hagans comes in. He helped DC close out their biggest win of the season in Week 6, and he ranks 2nd among 15 qualifying RBs in yards after contact per attempt (3.3) and 4th in YPC (3.8, +0.8 more YPC than the non-Hagans backfield average). I tentatively assume he will be the lead RB this week, and perhaps every week going forward if he continues to play like this.

There are obvious concerns, but I do think we can largely write them off on the basis of Hagans’ absurdly low price ($5,000, RB18). Still, they warrant mention. This backfield has been the least valuable in the UFL for fantasy (15.7 WO/G), Michigan is a top-3 run defense (3.1 YPC allowed), and backfield usage has generally been erratic – the team has tended to a ‘hot-hand’ approach.

These concerns have merit, but pricing is looking fairly tight this week, and we will need ways to punt certain positions so we can pay up for the top plays. Hagans looks like the best way to punt RB this week.

RB Quick Hits:

The Mark Thompson ($8,200) saga continued this week with 14 touches – his best workload of the season from a raw volume perspective. Encouragingly, Thompson started the first half and the second half of the Roughnecks' Week 6 loss (despite being listed as RB2 on the depth chart for the third straight week), so he’s clearly close to a true bell cow workload. HC Curtis Johnson noted that Thompson isn’t “in tip-top shape,” which is why TJ Pledger ($6,200) is still earning serious snaps (47% over the last two weeks). Houston is only a 3.0-point underdog this week, and if they can keep this game close (or take a decent lead), Thompson could finally break through with something resembling the incredible workload he had last season.

CJ Marable ($8,000) earned a better workload (13.0 WO) than Ricky Person ($8,800, 8.6 WO) in Week 6 despite being listed as the RB2 on the Stallions Week 6 depth chart. While neither Birmingham RB is a compelling value, I do largely prefer Marable this week – as St. Louis is the first team that could push Birmingham into serious negative gamescript. This season, Marable has averaged an +18% higher route share (54%) and +1.2 more targets per game (3.2) than Person.

WR/TE

Daewood Davis ($7,700): Troy Williams ($8,600) is Memphis's listed starter, which could notably boost Davis's usage.

Williams has attempted 51 passes over the last two weeks, targeting Davis 19 times (37% target share). In the first four weeks of the season, Davis managed a 21% target share, as Case Cookus handled 79% of team pass attempts.

You could certainly argue we are extrapolating too much from a small sample, but this is – at the very least – rather encouraging for Davis. And, just from a film perspective – Williams’ deep balls have largely been overthrown or on target, while Cookus’ deep passes have almost always been underthrown. I’m not sure Cookus has the arm strength needed for Davis to realize many of his league-leading 587 air yards, but Williams does.

Especially in tournaments, I’d rather take the chance that Williams is the key to unlocking Davis rather than waiting to see it happen first.

Steven Mitchell ($4,000): Mitchell is a tempting salary-saving option, although his workload is a bit more ambiguous than that of similarly priced options. Last week, Mitchell ran as many routes as superstar WR Jahcour Pearson (27) and ranked 3rd on the team in targets (5). Mitchell appears to be a borderline full-time player within this stacked WR group.

And St. Louis may need to rely on their passing attack even more this week as a 4.0-point underdog to the league’s best run defense (2.7 YPC). Mitchell’s projection has some serious fragility – we still don’t have a great grasp on how St. Louis plans to work him into the rotation. But, he’s likely to see at least a few deep targets, which gives him a clear path to pay off his meager price tag.

WR/TE Quick Hits

Jontre Kirklin ($10,500) is very ‘due’ for a big game. Kiklin leads all players in target share (28%), route share (98%), and air yard share (42%) this season, yet he’s only averaged 13.7 receiving FPG after averaging 16.1 receiving FPG in the same offense last year. In Week 6, Kirklin fell over on almost every route (due to the brutal field conditions in DC), so I’m not shying away despite just 4.9 fantasy points last Sunday.

Marlon Williams ($6,100) is a pretty interesting stacking partner for Adrian Martinez now that Amari Rodgers has been ruled out, but his price is a notable obstacle. The Birmingham slot role is worth 12.8 FPG if treated as one player (4th-best this season), and we tentatively expect Williams to claim about 80% of that role. Williams’ Week 7 projection isn’t quite as strong as that analysis implies (largely because of how incredible the St. Louis pass defense has been), but that should give a sense of his potential upside if Isaiah Zuber ($3,000) doesn’t steal many snaps.

Sal Cannella ($5,900) is a great value in our projections, but he’s more viable in cash games and smaller tournaments than in the flagship GPP. I’m just a bit skeptical of the upside here – Cannella has exceeded 15.0 receiving fantasy points twice in his last 16 games, never going over 17.8 in that span.

Ty Scott ($4,700) pops as one of the premier salary-saving values of Week 7. DC coaches told the broadcast crew of their Week 6 game that Scott would play more – citing his impressive ability to earn targets on a limited route share as the primary reason. This is one of the sharpest moves DC has made all year, leading to Scott ranking behind only Kelvin Harmon ($7,800) in route share (83%). Among players with 10 or more targets, Scott ranks 1st in PFF receiving grade (75.1) and 1st in YPRR (2.87). He’s clearly very good, and continuing his full-time route share will eventually lead to some great fantasy scores.