3 Daily Fantasy Football Players to Avoid in Week 14

We have a lot of pieces on numberFire geared toward helping you figure out which players you should roster in your DFS contests on FanDuel, but an important aspect of the DFS process is figuring out who you shouldn't play.

Narrowing down your list of potential plays by avoiding those who are destined to underwhelm can go a long way toward helping you create winning lineups.

Inevitably, some of the players I feature in this article will blow up and pop for a big game, but that comes with the territory of doing a piece like this one -- unless I'm going to tell you to avoid playing dudes who aren't on anyone's radar. I'm trying to avoid that. I want this piece to be useful.

Here are some players I'm fading this week.

Patrick Mahomes, QB, Chiefs ($8,800)

Patrick Mahomes has a really difficult matchup this week at the Denver Broncos.

Denver has the third-best pass defense and the sixth-best overall D, according to our schedule-adjusted metrics. They've surrendered the second-fewest FanDuel points per game to signal-callers (12.7). It's about as tough of a matchup as there is, and it doesn't help that it's in Denver.

On top of that, Mahomes has been in a little bit of a funk of late -- by his standards. He's scored 19.40 and 19.82 FanDuel points in the past two games. And with guys like Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, Joe Burrow and Dak Prescott at lower salaries, Mahomes is a tough sell at his slate-high tag of $8,800.

While you can make a case for Mahomes -- who can break any slate in any matchup if he goes nuts -- being a sweet GPP play, I'll be off him this week.

Dameon Pierce, RB, Texans ($6,500)

Dameon Pierce should get good volume, and when you couple that with his low salary, he's a fine value option. But I worry the Houston Texans could get absolutely steamrolled on Sunday, leading to a more pass-heavy script for their offense.

Houston is a 16.5-point road 'dog at the Dallas Cowboys, and the Texans offer a slate-worst 13.5-point implied total. Yuck.

The Texans will surely feed Pierce for as long as the game is competitive. I'm not sure how long that'll be. We saw a similar situation play out two weeks ago as the Miami Dolphins jumped out to a massive first-half lead against Houston. Pierce ended up with five carries and six targets in that game -- which he turned into 16 total yards.

And even if Houston manages to keep things close, Dallas is tough against the run, holding running backs to the fifth-fewest FanDuel points per game (17.3). Pierce has been dragged down by his offensive surroundings of late. He hasn't scored more than 13.9 FanDuel points in seven straight games, going without a touchdown in that span.

If you're stacking Dallas, Pierce is a viable bring-back piece. But that's the only type of lineup build where I can justify using him.

Christian McCaffrey, RB, 49ers ($8,500)

I could look foolish here. Christian McCaffrey is similar to Mahomes in that he can put forth a slate-winning output in any given week. But I'm not that into him on this slate.

The matchup is a rough one. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers' defense has been tough on running backs for a few years, and this season is no different. Tampa Bay is holding running backs to 16.0 FanDuel points per game, the third-fewest. They just limited Alvin Kamara -- a CMC-like back -- to 37 scoreless total yards on 13 touches.

McCaffrey got vintage CMC volume last week, logging 17 carries and 10 targets (8 catches) en route to 24.6 FanDuel points. That's volume worth spending up for. But at the same time, that was his first game in a little while with 20-plus touches. He'd seen just 15, 14 and 18 total touches in the previous three games, amassing meh snap rates between 63% and 66% in each.

Last week was the San Francisco 49ers' first full game since Elijah Mitchell got hurt again, so maybe McCaffrey's role from that game -- including his 82% snap rate -- is what we should expect from him moving forward. However, between potential volume concerns, the matchup and San Fran's lowly 20.5-point implied total in their first full game sans Jimmy Garoppolo, I have a hard time getting excited about CMC at this salary.

I'd rather find a little extra coin for Derrick Henry ($9,000) or Dalvin Cook ($8,700).