Week 3 TNF Showdown Analysis

I break down Giants vs. 49ers, the Week 3 Thursday Night Football matchup - and provide the projection-powered optimal cash lineup.

Sep 21, 2023

∙ Paid

I quite enjoyed writing this post the first two times, so I’m going for it here a third time. The problem, as I’ve stated before, is that these take a good 30-60 minutes to write, and I have so much other stuff to do all the time that I feel like I probably shouldn’t be doing it.

I’m not getting any new subscribers for my fantasy football stuff, that’s just the reality - there are so, so many other websites out there giving out fantasy football stuff for free - and given the nature of football there’s not much I can offer that other people don’t. So I’m doing this basically just for my own fun, but I’ve come up with a pathetic idea that will maybe make these worth the time I’m dedicating to them and keep me writing them throughout the season.

It’s a tip jar! Yes, that’s right! Me asking you to pay me (more) money! If you’re so inclined, you can send a couple of bucks my way through Venmo:

Okay, now let’s go!

Game Overview

It’s an ugly one. The 49ers might just be the best team in the league and the Giants are middle-of-the-road at best, and now they’re on the road without Saquon Barkley (that’s not in stone yet but it’s a pretty safe assumption), so they show up here as a 10.5 point underdog.

The Vegas implied score is 27-16.5, so the 49ers guys are the clear way to go for fantasy, but let’s break it down - and then we’ll get to the full projections & optimal lineup - and since I’m begging for tips we’ll keep the paywall out of it here.

Giants

As we said, it’s a brutal spot against this defense. The 49ers were a top-10 DST last year, and this year so far they’ve allowed just 0.225 DraftKings points per snap, the 7th-best. It helps, of course, that one of those games was against a Steelers offense that doesn’t figure to be very good. The Rams were able to score 23 points against them and Matt Stafford went across 300 yards, so we don’t really know how it will play out this year - but the better bet would seem to be that this is a very good defense.

Daniel Jones

Danny Dimes has had one very bad game and one very good game (for fantasy purposes, at least). He had a huge second half last week to lead a big come back and showed a bit of his fantasy upside there with 321 pass yards, 59 rush yards, and three total touchdowns.

It would seem unlikely that he has a great game here, but he’s one of the two QBs you can play on this showdown slate and he will very likely chuck it 40+ times and add in 5-10 rush attempts. That alone makes him a pretty good Showdown play.

He’s the #12 overall projection at the QB position this week, which shows you how valuable the running QB can be even in really tough matchups.

Running Backs

With Barkley out, it’s looking like Matt Breida will get the bulk of the work. Barkley averaged 15 carries and 5.5 targets in his first two games, last year averaging 18.5 carries and 4.8 targets per game.

We should definitely shave some of that off as a 10.5-point underdog, but the projection for Breida would be something like a dozen carries and probably 5-7 targets (the 49ers last year gave up 94 catches to RBs, the 9th-most in the league).

So he’s a considerable play, HOWEVER the price got to where it should be at $7,000, so he’s pretty far from a priority play.

Pass Catchers

Much more clarity here with no big injury situations, although Giants pass catchers haven’t been a great place for fantasy points for several years now if I remember correctly.

Waller leads the team in targets despite running 20 fewer routes than the main wide receivers.

This *probably* doesn’t matter, but the 49ers gave up the most points per snap in the league to wide receivers last year.

They were in the middle of the pack against tight ends. But that stuff is subject to a bunch of noise, I’m sure, and the defensive units are never the same year-over-year, so it’s not something to really lean into.

More data on the Giants receivers in these first two games:

So it’s a pretty deep group of pass catchers, with four guys having significant target counts so far. Hodgins has run fewer routes and has the fewest targets of the foursome so far, but he was their second-most targeted pass catcher down the stretch last year. That leaves his price higher than the other guys, here are the prices and projections:

Waller: $7,400, 11.32
Hodgins: $6,400, 7.55
Slayton: $5,600, 8.03
Campbell: $4,400, 7.32

Waller is the best play of the bunch, but Slayton seems like a pretty good upside play as well with the downfield looks he gets and with the Giants very likely playing catchup in this one.

Priority Plays

Daniel Jones

Secondary Plays

Matt Breida
Darren Waller
Darius Slayton

49ers

They have the second most yards per play this year at 6.5 (behind the Dolphins in case you were wondering), and they have won two games pretty easily. They like to run the ball (-8% pass rate over expectation), and so far they’ve run at the league’s second-slowest pace (although that’s certainly buoyed by them having big leads). None of this really matters in the context of one game, so let’s get into the players.

Brock Purdy

Two great games for Purdy, although without a big fantasy game yet just because he hasn’t been asked to do allt hat much with how efficient their offense has been. He is not a runner, so that keeps his floor and ceiling really low. The 49ers can have these games where they score 30 points without Purdy doing much of anything just because the running backs and defense do so much of the work.

But the projection is still third on the slate to just CMC and Daniel Jones.