Week 2 MNF Showdown Analysis
I break down Browns vs. Steelers, the Week 2 Monday Night Football (main) matchup - and provide the projection-powered optimal cash lineup.
Monday Night Football! And it’s my [former] home town Pittsburgh Steelers, so I’m a little bit extra excited for this one.
I got a good response to the first showdown writeup on Thursday, so that was nice to see - however, I’m not sure if I can really promise to run these every Thursday and Monday. I have a lot on my plate, and I don’t see any extra cash for writing these, so it’s more of a “for fun” thing right now, and those “for fun” things usually dry up.
But keep sending your feedback and if the reception is really, really good on these maybe I’ll continue writing them when I can.
Injuries
Big time impacts on the WR injury report on both sides
Diontae Johnson OUT
Amari Cooper QUESTIONABLE (in reality - doubtful)
Last year, Johnson earned 27% of the Steelers targets and 33% of their air yards. As for Cooper, he had a 26% target share and a 39% air yard share - so these were the two main pass catchers for their teams.
They both played last week, so we don’t even really have a look at what each team is likely to do without them.
Browns
Overall
Cleveland is likely to be one of the most run-heavy teams in the league this year, and that was true in week one with a 47% pass rate, the lowest of the week. That may have been boosted by a bad performance from the Bengals - the Browns were in control of the game for most all of it. But regardless, their preference is to run the ball with Nick Chubb, and the Steelers don’t seem like an offense that will be able to force the Browns out of that preference.
Running Backs
Despite that, Nick Chubb ran it just 18 times last week and added four catches on four targets. He was efficient as always with 106 yards on the ground and 21 through the air. He did not score a touchdown, but I imagine he’ll do that in a game more often than not this year - so he’s certainly a priority play on this Showdown with the Browns being a slight favorite even on the road against a pretty good defense.
Chubb is a must-play in a cash lineup, but given his game-script dependence and lack of a pass-game role, he’s not a must in all tournaments. There have been plenty of games where he has had pretty mediocre scores.
Jerome Ford is the Browns backup RB now and he ran it 15 times last week, but he did not score and was not targeted in the pass game so he scored just 3.6 points. That said, he’s just $400 - making for a pretty enticing punt option if you’re paying up for a big boy at captain (although I don’t really know what the big boy would be, in theory you wouldn’t want to play Ford in a Chubb captain lineup… but it’s something to consider).
Quarterback
Deshaun Watson ran it six times himself for 45 yards and a score last week, but came up with just 154 pass yards and a pretty meager 18.7 DraftKings points. In a showdown, though, the running QB is hard to fade since the floor is so high. In his six games last year he did this on the ground:
7 attempts, 21 yards, 0 TD
6 attempts, 33 yards, 0 TD
6 attempts, 22 yards, 0 TD
3 attempts, 24 yards, 1 TD
8 attempts, 31 yards, 0 TD
6 attempts, 44 yards, 0 TD
So that’s a 3-5 point floor just from his rushing. He didn’t show much of a ceiling last year in that offense with just 5, 16, 17, 12, 22, and 18 DraftKings points scored total. Watson is a guy you can fade in a tourney, but he’s going to be in the recommended cash lineup.
Pass Catchers
Here is how it looked last week:
So Amari Cooper being out would seem to set up Elijah Moore as the alpha, with Peoples-Jones being the other beneficiary. This does open up plenty of opportunity a guy like $200 Marquise Goodwin, who should at least run plenty more routes than last week (eight).
Maybe the real boost will go to $7,000 David Njoku, who ran 22 routes last week and was targeted three times. Last year, with Watson at QB, Njoku earned a strong 24% Target/Route run, but had just a 6.1 ADoT and a pretty weak 17-164-2 line in five games (that averages out to 3.4 catches and 32.8 yards per game).
I don’t think Njoku is a priority play even with Cooper out, but a Watson+Moore+Njoku “onslaught” or whatever lineup makes sense.
Plays from the Browns
Priorities:
Watson $10,600
Chubb $12,200
Moore $6,600
Secondaries:
Njoku $7,000
Peoples-Jones $5,000
Punts:
Goodwin $200
Ford $400
Steelers
Overall
It’s a little hard to judge the Steelers tonight since they’re coming off a brutal game where they played one of the league’s toughest defenses and were down multiple scores almost the entire game.
They threw the ball a ton (86% pass rate to lead the league) and played super fast last week (the fastest pace), but that is almost surely not what they really want to do. Add that on to the fact that they’re without Diontae Johnson tonight, and it’s hard to say how they’ll attack tonight.
Running Game
In Kenny Pickett’s rookie year, they went for a 60% pass rate, which was right in the middle of the pack. They were about average between the run and the pass, but they may have been a bit forced into the pass because their yards per rush attempt was fifth-worst in the league.
It was figured by the experts that the Steelers would split the work pretty evenly between Najee Harris ($9,400) and Jaylen Warren ($3,000). Last week:
Harris: 32 snaps, 6 carries, 24 routes, 2 targets
Warren: 24 snaps, 3 carries, 19 routes, 6 targets
That usage is a lot more even than the $6,400 price difference would suggest. Harris is not an exciting player, he’s average at best in the pass game, but he will likely get the goalline work, and getting a single touchdown is a pretty big deal in Showdown, so while Warren would seem to clearly be the better per-dollar play, I don’t think it’s wise to just scratch Harris off overall (but he’s not a cash play IMO).
Warren probably is a cash play since that price seems really too low.
The full projections are below the pay wall, but I’ll give a sample here, I have Harris for 13.26 points and Warren for 8.72.
Quarterback
Pickett didn’t do much for DFS purposes last year:
If my numbers are right, he didn’t clear 20 points a single time. He went over 300 passing yards just once and averaged less than 25 rush yards per game. Now he’s without a main target in Johnson, so it doesn’t seem like a good setup for Pickett. He’s a QB, so he’s likely to make the projection-powered optimal lineup, but he is definitely one of the weaker QB plays in the league, at least for now!
I’m not even really going to crush him for his horrible game last week against the 49ers, that’s a brutal defense and they were playing with their backs against the wall the entire time.
We absolutely don’t need to play Pickett, but it’s still tough not to in this spot without any real smash fantasy players in this game and him being a QB seemingly with a floor of 10 points or so.
Pass Catchers
Here is what it looked like with Pickett under center last year:
It was Diontae and Pat Freiermuth $5,800 in the short field, and they stretched it with George Pickens $8,000 a few times a game. Pickens is super boom-or-bust, and in my limited knowledge, I don’t even really think anything changes for him with Johnson out.
The new guy this year is the veteran Allen Robinson $6,200, and he had a team-high eight targets last week for a 5-64-0 line and an ADoT of 7.1.
The routes breakdown:
Pickens 46
Robinson 46
Austin 28
Freiermuth 24
Harris 24
Johnson 21
Warren 19
Heyward 12
McFarland 3
By the projections, Robinson is only slightly above Calvin Austin $3,300, and there’s a $3,000 price difference there - so Austin would be the projection-powered play there. There’s no guarantee that a good, veteran coaching staff would immediately throw a rookie into the fire like that - but Austin did see six targets on just 28 routes last week (21.4% Tgt/Route - a pretty high mark).
I think Robinson is the safe play, but Austin is definitely someone to play in tournaments. You’d think he’d see another handful of targets and he has some big-play upside (at least I assume so since he’s a rookie who returns kicks - those guys are usually pretty speedy!).
One last thing here - Pat Freiermuth is probably too cheap at $5,800. He had 13 red zone targets last season, second on the team behind Johnson - so the touchdown upside is there, although he’s unlikely to rack up a big yardage day (he maxed out last year at 85 and averaged only 49 yards, so if he doesn’t score he’s not going to have a great game in all likelihood).
Plays from the Steelers
Priorities:
None
Secondaries:
Warren $3,000
Harris $9,400
Pickens $8,000
Freiermuth $5,800
Robinson $6,200
Punts:
Austin $4,800
Now let’s hit the pay wall and we’ll give out the full projections and the model recommended cash lineup.