This is the Athletic Football Show.

Hello everybody and welcome in to the Athletic Fantasy Football Podcast and The Athletic Football Show.

It is Friday, December 11th.

It is week 14, one week 14 game in the books.

The rest of week 14 still ahead of us here.

And what is the first week of the fantasy football playoffs?

Obviously, we spend most of the week talking about season-long fantasy football, but we do things a little bit differently on Fridays. I'm Michael

Beller, and first thing that's different on Fridays is this is the weekly appearance from Derek

Van Riper. DVR, what's going on? Not too much. Excited for another week of DFS. I like the way

this board comes together. I think there's a lot of fun ways to build lineups. How are things going for you? Things are going good for me. I am looking forward to those fantasy football playoffs, but happy to pivot a little bit here to use a DFS term and talk DFS and some against the spread gambling with Vic Tafer a little bit later. Let's jump right into the board here.

Derek, let's jump in at the running back position. Here's where I want to start. Here's what I want to ask you to get things going, because I think it's really the first question you have to ask yourself as you're building your lineups this week. There's a pretty decent amount of guys in the $6,900 to $7,600 range. a good amount of guys who you could really get behind, I think, as an R.B1, from most expensive to least expensive, got Aaron Jones at 7,600, James Robinson at 75, Alvin Camara, 71, Austin Echler is an even 7,000, and Chris Carson is at 6,900?

So, with all those options available to you, is this a week where you could realistically, even in cash games, fade the Dalvin Cook and Derek Henry pairing? Christian

McCaffrey's in there too, but things are trending poorly for him this weekend. Yeah, so I think in

a cash game, I think you're still going to want to play probably Derek Henry. I think the

price difference between Cook and Henry when you account for the extreme differences in

matchups still makes Henry the smart play. I think that's reflected in what I'm seeing from the early

projected usage over at rotel grinders, the field is all over Derek Henry,

and the field is kind of scared of Dalvin Cook. Part of that's the price difference. A lot of it,

though, of course, is the matchup. I think if you're playing in tournaments, you could stay in that

middle range, as I'll call it, the 6 to 7k range

for the core pieces of your lineup. And you can build a lineup that can take down a tournament like

that because typically a $6,000 to $7,000 player has enough ceiling. If everything breaks right,

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