I think it's a mistake to say "oh this game is an obvious blowout and he can't do well". If it's a blowout they scored points, and how did they accumulate those points? Through their best offensive weapon.
The Browns have one of the better run defenses in the league and below average pass defense. Also sharp bettors actually had the Browns, that didn't work out, but the line came back towards them at close. I believe the Texans also had the highest total on the slate, but that may have changed when the Browns were getting bet at the end -- either way they were projected for 27-30 points, and Hopkins likely makes up about 1/3 of that TD equity.
Think Hopkins was a great play, even in hindsight, and it's just bad luck that he got 13.8% of the targets yesterday when he garnered roughly 37% the previous 4 games.
Thats probably 1 of the many reasons you are far more successful at DFS than I am. I guess I need to learn how to balance ignoring hindsight and using past information to try to find advantageous spots.. Because like Poker, you typically need a decent sample size to go off of, just because you lose BI's - doesn't necessarily mean you are playing wrong, just a by-product of variance. Regardless, I'm really happy to see you posting for DFS again. Last year was really fun watching you crush Dan Bilzeran, and raking in all that cash.
It's easy to second guess every move. Sure, Deshaun+Jarvis+Crabtree > Brees+Hopkins+Crowder was a fine lineup and they were projected within .3 of each other. Trying to decide which side was better was basically splitting hairs, just sucks that one side wins by ~35 points. But in general, when faced with a very close decision, it's safer to go with the higher owned players.
I'm sad the glory days of DFS are behind us. Condia blocked me on DK, he won't play FantasyDraft anymore, and he refuses to sit big on Yahoo. No more Blitz fantasy, they went out of business. Hopefully we get a second wind sometime in the next few years, but I'm not counting on it.