Below are positional rankings for the 11-game night slate of Week 10 DraftKings contests on Saturday with some commentary along the way. Keep in mind that salary has a huge impact on a player’s ranking.

Matchup Chart

Below is a matchup chart I create each week that includes information from Vegas and information on each team’s opponent in terms of their defensive strength. The defensive numbers are rankings from Football Outsiders’ S&P+ ratings. All the info is color coded as follows from most favorable to the offense to least favorable: purple-blue-green-yellow-orange-red-burgundy.

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Quarterback

1. Baker Mayfield – $8,000 – Oklahoma
2. Kyler Murray – $7,400 – Texas A&M
3. Quinton Flowers – $5,700 – South Florida
4. Jerrod Heard – $5,800 – Texas
5. Cody Kessler – $7,300 – USC

Good lord, picking a quarterback is tough in the night slate. The safest option is Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield, but you can even find reasons not to love him as a play. First, his price is a tad high, though reasonable enough. The bigger concern is his matchup against Iowa State who has at least an average defense. And with Oklahoma being a 25-point favorite, there’s some game flow concern as well if the Sooners are up big early. That said, Baker has 34-point performances in two of his last four games. He was off against Texas and Texas Tech, but the Tech game was more just OU committing to the run against one of the nation’s worst run defenses.

If you’re looking for safe cash games play, Mayfield and Kyler Murray may have to be your choices. Murray delivered huge value in his first start of his collegiate career last week, and his price has spiked as expected. But despite having less value potential, he’s still a good option against an Auburn team that rates 76^th in total defense. They’re worse against the run than they are the pass, but given that Murray ran for 156 yards last week, that actually might be preferable.

If you’re looking for upside, there are plenty of options. Mayfield and Murray actually provide plenty of upside themselves, they just don’t have the value potential of the guys ranked three through five.

Cody Kessler has a matchup that is about as good as it gets against Arizona. The Wildcats rate 115^th in total defense and 128^th against the pass, which is dead last in the nation. The problems are that Kessler may not have his top target, and he hasn’t been throwing that much since Steve Sarkisian left. In his last two games he hasn’t reached 30 pass attempts, and USC backs combined for 50 carries last week. With USC being about a 20-point favorite, it wouldn’t be a surprise if that kind of game script continues. But, again, the matchup couldn’t be better, so there’s upside there.

Finally you have your very cheap, GPP only options in Jerrod Heard and Quinton Flowers. Flowers is coming back from a left thigh injury that knocked him out late last week. Heard is coming back from a 1.34 DK point performance against Iowa State last week. If you want to go cheap with one of them, you’ll have to decide which of those risks scares you less.

Heard has the better matchup against Kansas that rates 122^nd in total defense and 114^th in run defense. Kansas’ struggles against the run are important because Heard has always done damage in the three good games he has had. He combined the ground game with good passing stats in his one great game, but odds are his legs will lead him to his next good performance. Flowers’ matchup against East Carolina isn’t a bad one as ECU rates 85^th in total defense. And Flowers has been more consistent than Heard with an average of 23.2 points per game to Heard’s 14.8 points per game, which includes a game of 50-plus points. Pick your poison.

Running Back

1. Tra Carson – $5,000 – Texas A&M
2. Royce Freeman – $8,500 – Oregon
3. Ezekiel Elliott – $8,400 – Minnesota
4. Tre Madden – $4,600 – USC
5. Johnathan Gray – $4,900 – Texas
6. Khalfani Muhammad – $3,600 – California

As mentioned, Texas A&M’s opponent, Auburn, is worse against the run than the pass, so Tra Carson can benefit from the matchup as well. And Carson was not hindered last week by Kyler Murray running the ball frequently. Carson got 22 carries and racked up 122 yards and a score. His upside is only in the low-20’s, but he’s almost a lock to hit double digits. He’s a good piece for cash games.

A good number of the nation’s stud running backs are playing in the night slate, including Leonard Fournette and Derrick Henry, who are not ranked above. Those two will square off against each other and their team’s rate third and 12^th in run defense. But Royce Freeman and Ezekiel Elliott will have more favorable matchups. Freeman faces Cal who rates 60^th in total defense and 68^th against the run, while Elliott faces Minnesota who rates 12^th in total defense but 43^rd against the run. Because Freeman has the better matchup, that’s who I prefer. The two have a similar per-game fantasy output, so give me the guy with the better matchup. Though, to be fair, you could make the argument that game flow could be more in Elliott’s favor.

As for the cheaper options, Tre Madden is one of the beneficiaries of USC’s new run-heavy approach. The problem is that he is “one of” the beneficiaries, not the only beneficiary. The Trojans may have run the ball 50 times last week, but Madden only carried the ball 14 times. Still, he has been USC’s most productive back this season, so he’s the Trojan back I’d prefer to own.

I also mentioned that Texas has a great matchup on the ground against Kansas, and Gray is the guy other than Heard most likely to take advantage of it. He hasn’t scored since Week 3, and he has only reached 100 yards once this season. But the matchup could hardly be better. Cal also has a great matchup on the ground against Oregon who rates 97^th in total defense and 113^th against the run. Khalfani Muhammad is Cal’s second-string running back who has come through big a couple of times with two 20-point-plus performances. But he has also had fewer than five points in four of his eight games. He’s a GPP upside gamble.

Wide Receiver

1. Christian Kirk – $5,600 – Texas A&M
2. Bralon Addison – $5,100 – Oregon
3. Adoree’ Jackson – $4,500 – USC
4. Rodney Adams – $3,700 – South Florida
5. Steven Mitchell Jr. – $3,900 – USC
6. Michael Thomas – $4,900 – Ohio State
7. Josh Reynolds – $4,400 – Texas A&M
8. Trevor Davis – $3,600 – California

With quarterbacks being tough to pick, it should be no surprise to me that picking receivers would be tough as well. But damn, there’s just nothing obvious going on here. This might be a good time to tell you that I won’t be investing as much in the night slate as I normally would for a slate.

The best way to pick your receivers is probably just to go with the receivers of the quarterbacks that you choose. I don’t have an Oklahoma receiver ranked here, because I don’t love the value on any of them, but I suppose Durron Neal at $4,000 is probably where I’d go there.

As for the A&M receivers, I’m going with Christian Kirk. But I’m not sure I’ve ever been less sure about who to rank #1 at a position. Kirk has done next to nothing the last two games. The first of the two was the game where Kyle Allen was wholly ineffective. And then the second was last week when Kyler Murray took over. Josh Reynolds and Ricky Seals-Jones were more productive in the first game with Murray, but I’m not nearly ready to say the switch to Murray is going to kill Kirk. This is still a guy who averaged 24.7 DK points per game in his first six games. I like him to bounce back here. But if you feel more secure with someone who has had success with Murray, Reynolds isn’t a bad option and provides a bit of salary relief.

If you decide to use Kessler, which receiver you use all depends on whether Juju Smith-Schuster is able to play. Juju broke a bone in his hand last week, but he’s apparently a game time decision. He has had surgery this week and is currently in a soft cast, so my guess is that he doesn’t play. If he does, I don’t know that you can use a USC receiver. Juju would be hard to trust, but his presence on the field would also make it too risky to start Adoree’ Jackson and Steven Mitchell Jr. Of course, Mitchell is a game time decision himself, so if he and Smith are out, Jackson would become an even more attractive option.

The only other stack option is USF’s Rodney Adams who could be paired with Flowers. But with Flowers being a possible play primarily because of his legs, Adams isn’t a must-play with Flowers, though he is good salary relief.

The best non-stack option is Oregon’s Bralon Addison. Addison has between 19 and 22 DK points in each of his last three games, so he’s a fairly reliable option. Adding to his reliability is the fact that he leads the team in targets with 23.4 percent of Oregon’s targets directed towards him. His matchup with Cal is a good one as they rate 80^th against the pass. And if you’re looking for salary relief, consider a receiver on the other end of that game, Cal’s Trevor Davis. He’s a bit boom-or-bust with an average of 19 yards per reception, but that’s what you have to expect with a salary relief GPP option.

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