NASCAR DFS Picks – Talladega Projections, Lineup & Strategy (Oct. 25)

We’re going to spend Sunday at Talladega rooting for cars that qualified poorly. Fortunately, several very good drivers were kind enough to cooperate.

Ryan Blaney starts 27th. Austin Cindric starts 28th. Tyler Reddick starts 33rd. That’s a pretty respectable group hanging out in the part of the grid where the television broadcast usually starts wrapping things up.

For DraftKings DFS purposes, we’re interested. A strong finish gets more valuable when it comes with a pile of positions gained, and this lineup has plenty available.

All six drivers in our Talladega lineup start 25th or worse. We’ve paired expensive contenders with two affordable drivers buried even deeper in the field, spending $49,900 of our $50,000 budget.

Of course, starting near the back doesn’t mean you’re protected from THE wreck. Sometimes it just means you arrive a little later and have more time to say something inappropriate.

But we like the potential here. Let’s meet the six drivers who will determine whether Sunday dinner includes us staring silently at the wall.

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Blaney costs $11,000, so we’d appreciate a little effort.

Starting 27th gives him plenty of room to provide it. My model projects him at 10.52, while Steve has him at 15.92. Either would mean substantial forward movement, and he’s capable of doing considerably better.

He won the second Atlanta race this season, leading 171 laps with a 3.0 average running position. Different track, sure, but a fairly convincing reminder that he knows what to do in the draft.

He also finished 37th at Talladega this spring. These things happen, usually right after we’ve told someone how much we like our lineup.

We’re paying for a driver who can contend for the win. From 27th, he can also produce a useful score without winning anything.

Reddick is starting 33rd, and we have questions. For DFS purposes, though, we’re willing to enjoy the situation.

My model projects him at 9.98. Steve’s projection is more conservative at 17.52, but even that would mean a substantial climb.

He won the Daytona 500 and the first Atlanta race this season. He also finished eighth in the second Atlanta race and third in the summer Daytona event.

That’s plenty of evidence that he can get involved at the front.

His spring Talladega finish was 14th. From 33rd, another 14th would be perfectly welcome. We might even watch the final laps while breathing normally.

Reddick gives us winning upside and enough place-differential potential to matter even if somebody else gets the trophy.

Cindric joins his Penske teammate one spot farther back, which is convenient for our lineup and probably less exciting for the drivers who actually qualified the cars.

He finished eighth at Talladega this spring and sixth in the summer Daytona race. Either result from 28th would work beautifully.

My projection has him at 15.64. Steve has him at 16.16. We spend enough time disagreeing over these numbers that we should probably frame this one.

A finish around 16th would still bring roughly 12 positions gained. There’s room for more, especially if he gets connected with the right drafting partners late.

At $9,200, Cindric gives us another competitive car with a starting position we can use.

Wallace is our next piece and rolls off from 25th…practically a front-row starter by this lineup’s standards.

My model projects him at 13.48, while Steve has him at 15.78. We’d get useful forward movement from either finish.

He finished 10th in the Daytona 500 and eighth in the first Atlanta race. His average running positions in the two Atlanta events were 5.8 and 8.0, although that second race ended with him 29th.

A good afternoon can get ugly quickly in the draft. Wallace has provided plenty of examples.

Still, his weighted comparable-track average running position is 15.83, and he spent a weighted 64.2% of those laps inside the top 15. There’s enough competitive running here to like him at this salary.

We’d appreciate him staying there through the checkered flag. We’ve already spent enough Sundays explaining how good things looked with 20 laps to go.

Nemechek helps pay for Blaney and Reddick. Finally, we get to benefit from his ability to bring funding to a race team.

At $5,500, he also has a reasonable chance to contribute points of his own.

My projection puts him at 21.34. Steve has him at 17.85. Both give him room to move well forward from 32nd.

Nemechek finished 18th in the second Atlanta race and 15th in the summer Daytona race. He also finished 22nd at Talladega this spring.

We’d take any of those again. Nobody needs to clear space in the trophy case. Just bring the car home somewhere around the top 20, and we’ll have gotten something useful out of a modest salary.

There’s one car behind Gragson. At least we won’t spend the opening lap wondering where he is. Just wait until the camera is almost finished.

That starting position is a big part of the appeal at $5,400.

My model projects him at 23.18, while Steve has him at 19.74. He could finish in the low 20s and gain enough positions to make himself useful.

And he’s shown more upside than that. Gragson finished ninth here in the spring, after running 11th at Daytona and 14th at Atlanta earlier this season.

The more recent results have been rougher. We aren’t expecting him to casually drive past everybody because we put his name in an article.

But another respectable finish would go a long way from 39th. Another top 10, and we’ll become extremely annoying about how affordable he was.

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