Week 2 TNF Showdown Analysis
I break down Vikings vs. Eagles, Week 2 Thursday Night Football and provide the projection-powered optimal cash lineup.
This is my first foray into writing about fantasy football here. If you were around last year, I had my boy Johnny C writing some Showdown articles, but I decided not to go that route this year just because I don’t really think the demand is there - but I have some time today and want to give this a shot myself.
The main reason for this is that I think I might be on to something with these Showdown double-ups. What I have been doing is taking the projections and running them through an optimizer and then playing the resulting lineup in a big double-up, and so far that lineup has cashed all three times:
I tweeted the lineup out before the game in all three circumstances, so you can validate that if you want! Maybe we just got lucky three times in a row, that’s not ridiculous to think that we could just hit three straight coin flips - but it’s worth moving forward with and formalizing it a little bit. So let’s talk about it!
I’m not a football analyst, but I do understand the stats and have a very useful dashboard and projections we can use, so that’s what we’ll stick to.
Let’s look quickly at what each team did last week.
Vikings
Plays/Pace
63 Plays
75% Pass%, +7% over expectation
13th fastest pace
Rush Attempts
Mattison 11
Chandler 3
Cousins 3
Targets / ADoT
Jefferson 12 / 9.6
Hockenson 9 / 3.6
Osborn 6 / 9.8
Addison 6 / 12.2
Mattison 4 / 2.3
Oliver 3 / 4.3
Ham 3 / 0.3
Chandler 1 / -4
This all meshes with what we saw last year, so we can feel pretty good about knowing who the Vikings are. Mattison will be pretty much as close to a bellcow as we can find these days, and through the air it’s going to JJ down the field and Hockenson and the RBs in shorter field.
Justin Jefferson is the top fantasy player in the game, as you probably noticed when you did your drafts this year, so he is certainly going to end up in the optimal lineup.
Last year:
Hockenson was an extremely good TE option after joining Minnesota last year:
But his short-field role makes him a bit touchdown dependent, and his salary stays high with the nice floor he has - so he’s a much less appealing DFS play as compared to Jefferson.
Eagles
Plays/Pace
60 Plays
66% Pass%, 6% over expectation
25th fastest pace
Rush Attempts
Gainwell 14
Hurts 9
Swift 1
Scott 1
Targets / ADoT
Brown 10 / 17.1
Smith 10 / 10.0
Gainwell 4 / -0.3
Watkins 2 / 1.5
Swift 2 / 0.0
Goedert 1 / 15
Scott 1 / 3
The Eagles will be without Gainwell this time, which puts Swift and Rashaad Penny in at RB. Because of that, we really can’t say how the RBs will be used - but it would seem pretty wise to project Swift under a dozen touches.
The passing game is clear cut. It’s the same crew as last year and it broke down like this:
Brown and Smith have been dead even in target stuff ever since they got together, and Goedert is the third option but significantly behind those two - and then there’s very little else to go around. Brown has the higher ADoT, which gives him the bigger upside - but Smith’s 1,315 air yards last year was nothing to sneeze at. Brown would be the upside play, Smith a bit safer - and yes, both of them can hit for big games at the same time.
Matchups
This is harder for me to talk about, because I don’t follow the news or the game that closely.
Last year, the Eagles defense allowed the fourth-fewest fantasy points per snap - but they apparently lost three defensive starters last week so it might not be the same kind of dominant unit this year.
As for the Vikings, they were one of the top defenses in the league to target last year, and I haven’t heard any reason to think that’ll be different this year. They have enough offense to get into shootouts, and because of that and other things they gave up the second-most total fantasy points last year (behind the Lions). Great spot for the Eagles offense, it would seem.
The Projections
I’ll give it away for free this time, but if I keep writing this bad boy these are eventually going behind the paywall!
We can’t really look at the values there because those are full-slate price tags and not showdown tags.
The must-have plays, as far as this DraftKings double-up goes:
Jalen Hurts $11,400
Justin Jefferson $12,400
That’s probably it. The projections are always going to like the double QB play in showdown, but I think you can be fine without Cousins because there is a very real chance he just gets sacked a million times and throws a couple of picks and doesn’t end up doing much. But we certainly don’t want to fade Jefferson or Hurts.
The salary savers:
D’Andre Swift $4000
Rashaad Penny $1600
Ty Chandler $1200
Clear value there with the Eagles backfield - those prices were clearly set with Gainwell in play. You could probably play both of them together - you would think it would be a pretty good overall score for the $5600 total - but if you’re trying to win a tournament you definitely just want to pick one of them and hope that’s the guy who gets the most usage and hogs up all the RB touchdowns (if they exist at all, which they often don’t in the Eagles offense).
The Lineup
Here it is, going for a 4-for-4 start in Primetime Showdown Double-Ups with this lineup:
It could change if there is more news about the Swift/Penny stuff, but I imagine that’s how it will stay.
Keep in mind that this lineup will be duplicated dozens and dozens of time in the double-up you play, because there just aren’t that many options in showdowns since a ton of people will just wisely start with both QBs and Justin Jefferson. I would encourage getting into large double-ups instead of small ones, because a lot of times in the small ones the duplicates will just ruin everything and you’ll basically be assured a push or a small loss.
There’s absolutely no reason to throw a lineup like this into a big tournament, because even if it does happen to be the optimal (it won’t), you’d be splitting the prize with a ton of people.
So that’s it, hope you enjoyed this - and maybe we’ll be back Monday!