[NFL] Week 1 MNF Showdown: 49ers vs. Jets
A look at the season's first Monday Night Showdown featuring the 49ers and Jets
I am going to make sure that “NFL” is in all of the titles here. That will allow you to set up a rule on your e-mail inbox to auto-delete e-mails with that in the title so I don’t bother those of you who are here only for baseball.
Tracker Update
If this is the first showdown preview you’re viewing, I’m running a bit of an experiment. For every showdown, I put the optimal projected lineup into a big $25 double-up and in the big million-dollar ($15 entry) and track the results.
So far, we’ve gone like this:
Thurs Night: Minimum Cashed Both
Friday Night: Failed to Cash in Both
Sunday Night: Cashed Double Up, Lost Tournament
79% ROI after three tries.
Game Environment
Game OU: 43
Moneyline: 49ers -205, Jets +170
Spread: 49ers -4
We are not expecting a ton of points in this one. That is mostly for two reasons:
The 49ers play very slow
The Jets have an elite defense
Given that we did not see Aaron Rodgers at all last year, we don’t know exactly how well the Jets offense will work. But we would expect them to be pretty strong offensively with a good mix of run and pass.
We’ll be able to do a lot more analysis on how these teams are attacking after we have a few games of data, but for now, let’s just move on to the plays.
Quarterbacks
Aaron Rodgers ($9,000) is a Hall of Fame quarterback, but he has not be a great fantasy scorer in quite some time. He was ranked well outside of the top 10 QBs in fantasy this year. That’s mostly because we know he won’t run, and we can’t even be sure he’ll be nearly as good as he was prior to that injury last year. The price tag reflects this a bit, but this might be our first showdown lineup where we’re not playing both QBs.
Brock Purdy ($9,200) is similar. The 49ers prefer to run the ball and take their time, and that limits Purdy’s fantasy scoring quite a bit. It’s not all bad news, though. The 49ers were the most efficient offense in the league last year, and that led to plenty of strong scores from Purdy.
But this is a brutal matchup. The Jets gave up just 4.6 yards per play last year, the best in the league. They were fourth-best in yards given up per pass attempt at just 6.1. Tough spot for Purdy.
Even with that, just the way the game shakes out makes it so we’ll probably have one of these QBs in the lineup. It’s so much easier for QBs to score fantasy points since they have the ball on every play. But we’ll see how it shakes out.
Running Backs
The first two picks of many a fantasy draft this year are contained in this game. We have the great Christian McCaffrey ($11,600) as the slate’s most expensive player. He led the league in touches last year (339), ran for nearly 1,500 yards, and added more than 500 more as a receiver. And then he scored 21 total touchdowns as well. He’s the best fantasy player in the game. This is about the toughest imaginable spot for him. He’s not 100%, that’s clear, so we could see him get spelled more often than usual. He’s also up against this brutal defense.
I don’t think we can ever fade CMC when we’re just trying to build a floor lineup, but this is the one slate where it might be worth a shot to fade him if you’re going for first place.
Breece Hall ($10,200) isn’t a far cry from CMC. He was great in a year where the Jets were mired by brutal QB play, and now they get Rodgers back under center. Last year, Hall caught 76 passes for 591 yards; both of those marks led all running backs. He will almost surely majorly improve on his nine touchdowns from a year ago with this offense ready to roll. The 49ers defense is among the best in the league as well, so this isn’t a great spot for anybody, but Hall might be the best overall play on this slate.
Pass Catchers
Not much has changed on either side of the ball on this front, so let’s take a look at last year.
2023 Jets:
Garrett Wilson ($9,800): 30% Target Share, 45% Air Yard Share
Breece Hall ($10,200): 17% Target Share
Tyler Conklin ($3,600: 16% Target Share, 16% Air Yard Share
It was all Wilson and Hall while the Jets had the ball. They’ve added Mike Williams ($6,600) this year. He had knee surgery early on last year, but enters this game completely off of the injury report. There’s still fair hesitation to use him in DFS since we don’t know how healthy he is or how much he’ll be used in the offense, but it’s not a horrible price tag for someone with this kind of big-play upside.
2023 49ers:
Brandon Aiyuk ($8,400): 22% Target Share, 38% Air Yard Share
George Kittle ($7,400): 19% Target Share, 22% Air Yard Share
Deebo Samuel ($9,600): 19% Target Share, 15% Air Yard Share
Chrisian McCaffrey ($11,600): 18% Target Share, 4% Air Yard Share
They are deep. It’s hard to parse between these pass catchers, especially when we don’t expect them to score a bunch of points (probably one only of these guys has a big game, if any of them do).
The safest play is probably Deebo since he gets used in the running game as well (37 rushes, 225 yards, 5 TDs on the ground last year), but you see that the price tag builds that in.
It’s a murky picture, and I’d rather get both RBs than pick one of these guys.
Paywall time!