Week 16 MNF Showdown

General Rule for Creating Showdown/MVP Lineups

1. Correlate with your Captain/MVP - Make sure you are creating a roster that makes sense with your 1.5x player.
2. On DraftKings, lean RB/WR in the captain. Though QB can finish as the optimal captain, it’s often overused by the field relative to its success rate. When you are using a QB in the captain, I like to use a lot of his pass-catchers. Because the likely scenario if a QB ends up as the captain on DK is he spread his touchdowns around to multiple receivers and not one skill player had a ceiling game.
3. On FanDuel the MVP spot doesn’t cost you 1.5x salary which means you’re just trying to get the highest scoring player in that spot. Contrary to DK, it’s often the QB because of the scoring system. I would lean QB/RB on FD, but there are always exceptions to the rule.
4. Leave salary on the table - I’m not just talking about a few hundred. Don’t be afraid to leave a few thousand on the table. In a slate that has an extremely limited number of viable options, there is a much greater chance for lineup duplication. It may not seem like much of an issue, but it can decimate your expected value to put in lineups that are going to split with 500 other people.
5. Multi-enter if you can. Single-game slates have so much variance that the first play of the game can take you completely out of contention if you only have one lineup. It’s best to build a bunch of lineups (you don’t have to max enter) that concentrates on different game scripts and a handful of different correlated captains.
6. DST and Kickers, while not very exciting usually offer a solid floor for cheap. Especially in game scripts that go under expected point totals. I would only use at most two per lineup.
7. When creating single-game lineups, the most important part is creating correlated lineups according to a projected game script, and not pinpointing the exact five or six players who will score the most fantasy points on the slate.

Captain/MVP

The final Monday Night Football Showdown slate of the season brings with it a condensed captain slate. These are always the ones that I like to play the most because narrowing the captain focus allows us to cycle through some of the more flier flex plays and get exposure to as many outs as possible if our captain pick hits. No matter how owned you think Josh Allen or Stefon Diggs should be it probably won’t get to that point in the captain spot on Monday Night. I think many people will pull up the last box score of the Bills and Patriots game in the middle of the season. The Patriots were playing a bit better then and Diggs wasn’t receiving the target share he had been. If you haven’t guessed by now, Allen and Diggs will be far and away my heaviest to captain choices this week. Allen’s rushing upside allows him to hit the optimal captain spot more so than the statue quarterbacks who have to bring receivers with them when they have huge games. The offense runs through Allen who has 30 passing and 8 rushing touchdowns on the season. The running backs are somewhat of an afterthought for the Bills which is why I like going super heavy on Allen in the captain spot. Diggs’ target share has exploded over the last few weeks. He has a 32% target share and a 38% air yards share which has resulted in double-digit targets over the last three weeks. It seems as though Allen is gravitating to Diggs later in the season.

It’s going to be hard for me to pull the trigger on a Patriot at Captain to be honest, but the game theorist in me knows that they will be extremely low-owned and offer incredible leverage. Jakobi Meyers is actually outperforming Diggs in air yards share over the last three weeks at a 40% share; he also sports a 30% target share in that same time span. He often operates out of the slot and should avoid Tre White, which is huge. He would be my favorite Patriot captain if I had to pick one. This game is going to be a slugfest if I had to pick a game script. That means pass-catchers hold a ton of value because if touchdowns aren’t being scored often, points per reception is the next best way to accumulate points.

Flex

Both the Bills and Patriots have a running back rotation that can make your head spin. The status of Damien Harris is important because he could actually see a decent amount of carries against the Bills’ 22nd ranked RB defense. If he were to sit, I think Cam Newton, Sony Michel, and James White would be a fairly even split of touches around 8-10 each. I personally think Cam is too expensive for what he can potentially return in this game. Because I think the game isn’t going to be a shootout, he will be a lesser owned commodity for me. James White is cheap enough that he is a decent Patriot piece even if Harris is active because he’ll play on passing downs and hopefully see 4-5 targets.

Zack Moss has taken control of the backfield from Devin Singletary and I think we can get some boxscore leverage in this situation because Singletary had a garbage time touchdown run last week that makes it look like he had a solid performance. Moss has wrestled about 65% of the carries over the last two weeks away from Singletary. They are the same price on DraftKings and I would roster Moss in lineups that you don’t have Allen in the captain spot as he’ll need rushing touchdowns to smash value and Moss will probably steal one if he makes it into the optimal lineup. Singeltary can be included in Allen captain lineups in hopes he punches it in on one of his 3-4 targets.

The Patriots’ pass-catchers are a mixed bag, but the main targets are Meyers, Damiere Byrd and N’Keal Harry. Byrd checks in second with a 23% target share and Harry rounds out the bulk of the targets with 11%. Those three are the only ones who see meaningful targets. You can cycle the three of them through your Bills heavy lineups. The rest of the Pats pass-catchers will get a stray target here or there. With Ryan Izzo on IR, you can potentially hope for a one-yard touchdown catch from Dalton Keane or Devin Asiasi.

The Bills tertiary pass-catcher will be more involved. Dawson Knox at tight end has looked solid down the stretch scoring three touchdowns in the last four games. The issue is he is priced up to a point where falling into the end zone once isn’t going to allow him to hit value. He has been seeing an uptick in targets with a seven target game in the last month, but I think he’s reached a point where his price is prohibitive. Tyler Kroft plays less often but is so inexpensive a touchdown would be all he needs to get into the optimal lineup provided he unlocks the right combination of studs. Cole Beasley and Gabriel Davis have been reliable. Davis seems to score touchdowns at an above-average clip, while Beasley has become a boom or bust fantasy receiver that has scored 30 DraftKings points twice in the last five weeks, and has also added a 22 spot. John Brown could return and that will have a drastic impact on ownership. Depending on how the beats report he will be used, I think taking a shot on him makes sense at his price relative to Beasley who is extremely expensive on DraftKings. Isaiah McKenzie always intrigues me as a last man in because of his goal-line usage with jet sweeps.

Because this game profiles to be a low-scoring affair, I think both defenses and kickers should be in your lineups a bit more than usual along with heavy reliance on pass-catchers.

Lineup Starters

Captain/MVP: Josh Allen

Flex: Stefon Diggs, Damiere Byrd, Bills DST

Captain/MVP: Josh Allen

Flex: Stefon Diggs, Tyler Kroft, Jakobi Meyers

Captain/MVP: Stefon Diggs

Flex: Josh Allen, James White, Bills DST

Captain/MVP: Stefon Diggs

Flex: Josh Allen, John Brown, Damiere Byrd