Fantasy Football: 5 Historical Vegas Trends You Should Know for Week 6

Start Dustin Hopkins as a Heavy Favorite

Our own Jim Sannes wrote a very useful article on how kickers performed based on measures such as Vegas spreads, implied totals, and favorites versus underdogs. Based on his findings, we need to target kickers on heavily-favored teams, with implied team total as the tiebreaker.

In Week 6, the Washington Redskins are favored by 10 points, making them one of the largest favorites on the board. They also have the third-highest implied total at 28.25 points, which should lead to a good game for Dustin Hopkins.

In a week where there are four teams favored by ten or more points, why did we choose Hopkins? It's because he is the cheapest of those four kickers. Oftentimes, the kicker position is the most difficult to predict, so getting a kicker with value is key.

According to Sannes, kickers on teams favored by 10 points or more scored an average of 9.77 points per game between 2012-2014. And when kickers are on teams with an implied total of 27.00 to 29.75 points, they scored an average of 8.64 fantasy points.

Hopkins has the upside of the top kicker on the slate and is priced at $4,700. His price is just $200 above the FanDuel minimum at kicker which should permit you to fit in higher-priced players elsewhere.