We’re doing something a little different this week. While I will still include the team-level numbers for the Wild Card round, I want to start elsewhere. One of my favorite fantasy contests is the FFPC Playoff Challenge. Much of the strategy for that contest revolves around the game theory aspect — how do you fill your lineup with players who will score points and help you gain leverage over the field?

It is possible to overdo the leverage part, of course. In most cases, you don’t need to go too far down the depth chart to find players who are on fewer lineups than they should be. One way to ensure you’re not taking too many risks and low-value bets is by being aware of how many points each player is projected to score. With that in mind, here are some projections for the NFL playoffs.

Projections

I used the RotoViz Screener along with team playoff projections from Neil Paine to estimate how many points each player should be expected to score per game, and how many games each player should be expected to play. In order to account for the fact that points scored in the Super Bowl count double, I am doubling each team’s chances to make the Super Bowl. This effectively counts the Super Bowl as two games, and is reflected in the “Adjusted Games” metric below. The per-game PPR numbers are based on TE-premium scoring. Although they use the full season to build the projections, they give slightly more weight to the second half of the season.

We can use the projections to build an optimal lineup for the FFPC Playoff Challenge. They don’t include kicker or defense, but that’s not a problem, as your kicker and defense options should be largely randomized across your portfolio. I’ve added a kicker and defense option that makes sense for the lineups below, but these are easy ways to differentiate your lineup without going too far off the board.

The top-scoring lineup according to the projections above is this:

Yet these numbers are based on the expected number of games played for each team. When we’re actually putting together lineups, it’s more fruitful to take a stand and build the lineup with specific outcomes in mind. We can adjust the games played and in turn the projections to account for these scenarios.

Cleveland Browns at Houston Texans

Cleveland and Houston faced off in Week 16. Amari Cooper torched the Texans’ defense for 265 yards and two touchdowns. That was also the last game he played in 2023, as he’s been dealing with a heel injury. He enters Wild Card weekend without an injury designation.

Of course, there’s almost no chance Houston will let Cooper repeat his performance. With the Texans playing at home and looking for revenge, it’s not hard to see them coming up with a win against a Cleveland team that is weak against the run and that still has question marks on offense.

Houston meanwhile defends the run about as well as any team, ranking No. 1 in rushing success rate allowed. And although the EPA-based metrics don’t reflect the peripherals just yet, Houston is No. 7 in pressure rate and No. 3 in average WR separation.

While Nico Collins is the favorite based on the Screener projections, it’s more difficult to see him succeeding in this matchup. This appears to be a game in which we’re more likely to see fireworks from Devin Singletary instead. Yet the GLSP still prefers Collins’ upside.

If we assume Houston wins the game, it’s likely because things didn’t go the way Cleveland expected — they weren’t able to stop Collins, and they still got beat on the ground by Singletary. Houston’s expected games played then increases across the board, while Cleveland’s drops to one game. This changes the optimal lineup slightly.

Miami Dolphins at Kansas City Chiefs

No team is reeling quite like the Dolphins are. A few weeks ago they were the easy favorites to win the AFC East and were even competing for a No. 1 seed and a Wild Card bye. But after multiple injuries on both sides of the ball, they are the sixth seed and travel to face a difficult Kansas City team. The Chiefs have about a 55% chance to win the game, but if you’re building with the expectation that the Dolphins will lose and only play one game, the projections like a Miami fade.

If you assume Miami gets as healthy as can be expected and pulls off the upset, the numbers point toward a Chiefs fade. You could sub in Tyreek Hill for Isiah Pacheco, and remove Miami’s defense in favor of Kansas City’s.

Of course, the problem with these lineups is that they make no assumptions about the other games, meaning in the projection above Kansas City is the only team expected to play only one game, which obviously can’t happen. In actuality there’s a good chance we’ll want players on both sides of this matchup. We’ll make adjustments for this problem as we get into the Sunday games.

Pittsburgh Steelers at Buffalo Bills