Fantasy Football: 5 Historical Vegas Trends You Should Know for Week 16

Start Graham Gano as a Heavy Favorite

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

The Carolina Panthers are favored by 10 points against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Carolina has the third-highest implied total of all teams at 28.25 points. Graham Gano should do well on a team expected to score a shade over four touchdowns.

According to Sannes, kickers on teams favored by 10 or more points scored an average of 9.77 points per game between 2012 and 2014. And when kickers are on teams with an implied total of 27 to 29.75 points, they scored an average of 8.64 fantasy points.

Gano is priced at $4,800, the sixth-most among kickers on FanDuel. There are other kickers such as Stephen Gostkowski who have better metrics for kicking but are priced too high for use. Gano makes for a good play in all formats.

Matt Blair is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Matt Blair also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username grizzlyblair. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his/her personal views, he/she may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his/her personal account. The views expressed in his/her articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel