The NBA trade deadline is trying to crash Super Bowl week...

In today’s Fantasy Life Newsletter presented by Zingeroo:

• Kadarius Toney has a crazy range of outcomes
• The Big Game: Underdog Fantasy Contest Strategy
• Geoff's Bets: MVP ideas
• A NO Brainer Boost from Underdog Fantasy
• It's 2/10. Take it away, Peter Overzet...

In the lead-up to the Conference Championship, the big question was whether Patrick Mahomes would be effective on his injured ankle.

The answer: yes.

In the lead-up to the Super Bowl, the big question has been whether the rest of the Kansas City skill position weapons would be healthy.

The answer: cautiously optimistic.

Over the past couple of days, we’ve started to get hints on who will be able to contribute and who won’t.

On Monday, the team announced that Mecole Hardman would be placed on IR while Clyde Edwards-Helaire would be activated off of IR. And then, on Wednesday, the entire offense practiced in full except for one man…

🃏 Kadarius Toney, the X-factor

Toney is still dealing with a nagging ankle and hamstring injury that has kept him limited at practice until Thursday when he finally got in a full practice.

And now there’s plenty of buzz that he’s going to be just fine.

Here’s what Andy Reid said about his Wednesday practice:

“He was spirited yesterday and running around like crazy…”

I have no idea what “running around like crazy” means in this context, though the words “Toney” and “crazy” are practically synonymous at this point, so I guess it’s fitting.

Jesse Palmer followed that up with another interesting report yesterday where he passed along intel suggesting the Chiefs have big plans for Toney on Sunday and want to get him going after the catch. 

So the optimism on Toney is clearly budding, and they desperately need playmakers. You know what that means…sigh:

Toney’s receiving yards prop is currently hovering around 27.5 yards, including on Underdog Fantasy.

Fwiw, our current projection for Toney in the Player Props tool still leans towards the under:

But if you are buying these reports and want to drink the Kool-Aid with me, Toney overs are a pretty fun bet.

One time, Kadarius. One time. 

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• Competition: 2/13-2/17

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👎 Who does CMC want to win the Super Bowl? It's certainly an answer.

🤓 Is Joe Burrow a closet analytics nerd? It would make for a healthy relationship.

🤢 Is Russell Wilson's charity sketchy? This isn't great.

📚 Where will DeAndre Hopkins land? The script was leaked.

🧐 What does Mahomes need to do? Feels like a lot...

🕶️ The story behind Deebo Samuel's dark visor. That's pretty funny.

🤷 Is Derek Carr an upgrade over Andy Dalton? It's up for debate.

There’s only one game left in the season, but drafting never stops on Underdog Fantasy where they are offering multiple Super Bowl contests at three different price points ($5, $25, and $100). Today, Pete breaks down how to attack these contests...

The $5 contest, efficiently titled The Big Game, has a $500,000 total prize pool with $50,000 up top and therefore deserves our attention.

Here is everything you need to know about drafting a winning team…

🐶 Underdog Super Bowl Contests 101: The Basics

These four-person, four-round drafts are incredibly simple (and addictive). The player pool features every QB, RB, WR, TE, and Kicker on both the Eagles and Chiefs (no defenses, though). 

The catch, however, is understanding that 113,304 total teams will be drafted in this specific contest, and that means many drafters will share similar, if not fully duplicated, lineups with each other.

When you look at the current ADP (average draft position), you can quickly see how drafters will get funneled toward the same start:

• The Jalen Hurts drafter usually takes either Miles Sanders or Dallas Goedert with their second pick.
• The Patrick Mahomes drafter takes either Isiah Pacheco or Marquez Valdes-Scantling with their second pick.
• The Travis Kelce drafter takes whichever top Eagles player falls (generally Sanders or Goedert).
• And the 1.04 drafter on the turn normally double taps A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith.

These aren’t bad starts, per se. They make logical sense from a projected-point perspective, but they will not be unique.

Winning $50,000 is great, but it’s not as enjoyable when you have to split that top prize with hundreds of other drafters. Thus, similar to Showdown DFS, we need to think thoughtfully about drafting teams that will be unique.

New to Underdog? Use promo code LIFE when you sign up and they’ll match your first deposit up to $100.

🐶 How To Get Unique: 5 Tips and Tricks

1. Throw ADP out the window: We have a natural anchoring bias to drafting directly off ADP. We feel “dumb” if we deviate from the consensus. Fight that instinct and get weird. Take Kelce 1.01 instead of the QBs. Draft Justin Watson instead of MVS. Sure, you are sacrificing some median projection, but these ADP detours will naturally differentiate your roster from the majority of the field.

2. Seek out unique combos. Speaking of which, don’t hesitate to get weird with your combos. Most people like to stack a QB with a couple of pass catchers. That’s perfectly logical, but it won’t get you on unique pairings. Instead, try for some unconventional pairing. Take multiple RBs from the same team. Pair Hurts or Mahomes with multiple pass catchers on the opposing team. Anything to make your lineup unique.

3. Mostly fade the kickers. If you don’t read the fine print, you might not notice that kickers lose two points for every missed extra point and one point for every missed field goal (thank God the Cowboys and Brett Maher didn’t make the Super Bowl): 

Both Harrison Butker and Jake Elliott are drafted in the fourth round of most drafts, but I’d much prefer to take a skill position player going after them with a chance at a TD:

4. Keep scrolling. This dovetails with throwing ADP out the window, but don’t be afraid to scroll way down to find some potential diamonds in the rough. With only 16 players drafted in each contest, it means a handful of guys with a path to scoring a TD will go undrafted in most contests.

Here’s a simple example to illustrate why this is a powerful strategy:

• MVS will be drafted in 100% of drafts. He projects for 5.8 points.
• Quez Watkins will be drafted in roughly 25% of drafts based on his current ADP. He projects for 3.4 points.

The projection gap is not big enough to justify a nearly 75% spread in how often they are drafted, so you’d much prefer to have the player on fewer teams (especially when it involves two players who are reliant on a single big play for their fantasy production).

My favorite sleepers to scroll down for: Justin Watson, Quez Watkins, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, and Zach Pascal.

5. Go in with a plan. If you are doing more than a couple of drafts, it’s smart to plan out some of the combos you want ahead of time. Review your current portfolio and find various gaps in your exposures. You might notice accidental trends, like having Kadarius Toney always paired with Goedert. By reviewing your squads, you’ll push yourself to pair Goedert with different last-round fliers and give yourself more avenues to first place. 

🐶 Putting It All Together

Here’s a team I recently drafted that executes many of the tips discussed:

• “Reached” for Kelce at 1.01 (throw ADP out the window)
• Paired him both Chiefs RBs at the (seek our weird combos)
• Scrolled down past the kickers for a sleeper who could have a spiked play (Watkins)

Our resident betting sharps at Fantasy Life have a group chat. Lucky for you, they are leaking the alpha. Here's what Geoff came up with for Sunday...All odds via BetMGM

💰 MVP Market

💰 Miles Sanders (+2500)

As quarterback centric as this award tends to be, the Eagles have the kind of rushing attack that could propel their lead RB to a monster game. They're first in offensive rush DVOA and will be facing a Chiefs' defense that had one of the easiest schedules in terms of opposing rush offenses this season.

Sanders has produced four games this season with multiple TDs, and three of those performances came with him also gaining over 130 yards on the ground. The last two RBs to win this award (Terrell Davis ‘99, Emmitt Smith ‘96) both posted 130+ rushing yards and multiple TDs. 

The Eagles may be one of the best rushing offenses we’ve seen over the last decade, so backing their lead RB – to break the Super Bowl RB/MVP drought – looks like a solid longshot bet for Super Bowl LVII.

💰 Travis Kelce (+1100)

When we’re just looking at props for this game, it’s jarring to consider that Kelce is the only Chiefs receiver with a yardage prop over 40.0 yards – even despite Patrick Mahomes having a 294.5 passing prop. 

Kelce posted six games with 100+ receiving yards this season and had three games with multiple TDs. His 31.2% team target share this post-season is also right in line with what last year’s Super Bowl MVP Cooper Kupp posted in 2022. With the Chiefs also facing a defense with top-rated edge corners, Kelce’s also in a spot to potentially outperform that usage in the big game. 

A big day for Mahomes through the air will almost certainly mean a big game from Kelce, whose odds of grabbing MVP are 9x that of his quarterback. With two of the last four Super Bowl MVP awards in this game having gone to receivers, grabbing Kelce over his quarterback has lots of appeal and makes for a good bet from a probability standpoint based on Kelce’s seasonal output and usage this season.

💰 Chiefs WRs

The Chiefs JuJu Smith-Schuster and Kadarius Toney look like they’ll be active for the Super Bowl. Smith-Schuster participated in a full practice to start the week, and there have been reports of Toney looking spry at practice as well. 

“He was spirited and running around like crazy.” — Andy Reid on Kadarius Toney in practice yesterday.

— Harold R. Kuntz (@HaroldRKuntz3)
Feb 9, 2023

Now that we’ve got a little more clarity on the Chiefs' WR situation, it’s time to attack some of their props for betting.

💰 JuJu Smith-Schuster over 3.5 receptions (-105)

Smith-Schuster practiced in full to start the week and looks probable for this game. While he’s not performed like an elite WR in Kansas City – as noted in the Fantasy Life Super Bowl rankings & tiers by Dwain Mcfarland this week – Smith-Schuster has maintained an 82% route participation mark in his last seven games and averaged 5.1 targets, and 4.4 receptions over that span. 

The Eagles are a tough match-up, but with Patrick Mahomes’ passing prop sitting at 294.5, there’s every likelihood that one or two of these Chiefs WR props will go over (and potentially by a solid amount). With his Fantasy Life projection for the week sitting at 7.3 targets and 4.9 receptions, taking Smith-Schuster to the over on this small reception number looks promising.

💰 Justin Watson under 14.5 yards (-110)

Watson’s a boom or bust type option whose potential to hit the over in this market will likely depend on him hauling in one big pass. He’s gone under this mark in five of his last seven games, so he hasn’t been very successful in that department of late. 

The former Buccaneer's run-blocking ability earns him a lot of snaps for the Chiefs, but he's posted an abysmal 11% TPRR (Targets Per Route Run) mark in this offense. With the Chiefs WR core looking far healthier this week, Watson’s receiving totals look well worth fading.

💰 Underdog Fantasy Pick 'em

Matt LaMarca is tagging in to give you his favorite Pick'em plays on Underdog Fantasy. 

💰 Jalen Hurts Over 0.5 total yards (boost)

For the Super Bowl, Underdog has put out a fantastic pick’em promo giving us what is essentially a free square to work with in the form of a Jalen Hurts prop. Hurts’ total on Underdog for the big game is set at 0.5 total yards for the game, meaning that if he finishes the game over 1.0 yards gained (ground or air), the over hits. 

💰 Jerick McKinnon Over 21.5 Rushing Yards

How the Chiefs choose to delegate the running back responsibilities is one of the biggest questions heading into the Super Bowl. McKinnon and Isiah Pacheco have split the responsibilities ever since Clyde Edwards-Helaire went down with an injury. CEH has been activated for the Super Bowl, but his role is uncertain.

Traditionally, Pacheco has handled most of the between-the-tackles work in the Chiefs’ backfield, while McKinnon has done everything else. However, those roles shifted a bit last week. McKinnon played on 65% of the team’s offensive snaps vs. the Jaguars, but that figure dipped to just 39% vs. the Bengals. Unsurprisingly, Pacheco saw an uptick in snaps over the same timeframe.

💰 Travis Kelce Over 0.5 Receiving Touchdowns

Death, taxes, and Kelce in the playoffs. Those are three of life’s great certainties.

Kelce had a mortal performance in the AFC Championship, finishing with just seven catches for 78 yards. It snapped a string of seven straight playoff games with at least 95 receiving yards, but it was still enough to propel him to the second-most receiving yards in playoff history. Only the great Jerry Rice has amassed more receiving yards during the playoffs, and Rob Gronkowski is the only other tight end even in the same stratosphere.

Regardless of how you build out your ticket, make sure you check out the pick’em offering on Underdog this week and take advantage of that Hurts offer.

Aaron Rodgers        Gollum
                               🤝
Wandering around in the dark with their one ring

— Erik Peterson (@thatTKEguy693)
Feb 9, 2023