MNF Showdown Smackdown – Saints vs Redskins

High powered offense vs a Good defense? Efficient Offense vs. a Horrible defense? Monday Night Football kicks off tonight with the Washington Redskins at the New Orleans Saints and there are a ton of ways to go about building a GPP winning roster tonight!

My name is Josh Thomas, and I write the Chalk Donkey article for NFL VIPs as well as focusing on the showdown/single game and the Monday-Thursday on both sites. In this article I’ll break down how those showdown/single game slates are scored, differences between the sites in terms of scoring and roster construction, and strategy for how to attack these games for GPP and Cash. I’ll also provide my anticipated exposure percentages for players that are mass multi entering.

Check out my Mon-Thur Slate Breakdown here —–> Short Slate Debate

How Does Showdown/Single Game work?

Each site runs their contests a bit different but for the most part they are very similar. You pick 6 players from the game (5 on Fanduel), and choose one to be your Captain (MVP on Fanduel) and that person scores 1.5x points than everyone else.

On Draftkings you can play QB, RB, WR, TE, K, and DEF while on Fanduel you can play QB, RB, WR, TE, K but no Defense.

Scoring is the same as normal NFL DFS contests. On DraftKings there is a full point for PPR and that makes pass catchers more valuable while you only get a half point on FanDuel.

You need at least one player from each team on your roster. So you can’t just load on say the Bengals tonight even though you might think they dominate, you need to run it back with at least one Ravens play. Optimally I like to build with 4 of one team and 2 of the other on DraftKings and 3 of one team and 2 of the other on Fanduel, though 4-1 seems to be pretty solid there as well.

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Slate Breakdown:

Tonight we get the New Orleans Saints vs. the Washington Redskins in what should be a shoot out between a high powered offense and an extremely efficient one.

The Saints, outside of last week, have been lighting the NFL on fire offensively and are the 3rd ranked offense in terms of DVOA and while we don’t hear as much about them, the Redskins are also in the top 10 in terms of offensive DVOA (8th) and have a better matchup than the Saints do.

The Saints D is ranked 29th in the NFL in DVOA and actually dead last when it comes to passing D. Their rushing D is first but thats only because they are so easy to pass against (and teams are having to throw the ball to keep up with them). The one area they really struggle with is pass catching RBs and I think this is an absolute smash spot for Chris Thompson. Thompson is priced up on both sites for this showdown slate and most of my exposure will come on DraftKings where he gets the full PPR.

With the Saints the big question you need to answer is, will Mark Ingram cut into Alvin Kamara’s workload. I’m personally not concerned about it and think that Kamara is still a must play every week in normal formats but in showdown tonight, Kamara is priced through the roof, especially for someone who has to now share a backfield. The game theory side of me says fade Kamara at this price and hammer Ingram at the much more affordable price of 7K,  but I think if you employ a studs and duds approach tonight you can fit him in and I will be doing that in a few lineups.

Michael Thomas is the best receiver in the NFL. There I said it. And Drew Brees is 3 TD’s away from 500. You can bet against Brees getting there Monday if you want, but odds are he gets it, and if he does I would assume that we see Thomas take down two of them. Thomas should see some of Quinton Dunbar and some of Josh Norman. My hope is that he gets more of Norman will the big height advantage he has. Either way, I expect Thomas to have a huge game, but again, this Saints offense is priced through the roof and as we get further into this article and see the charts, while playing a number one receiver is important, you hamstring your lineup by doing so in the MVP slot.

The other WR that I’ll have a ton of shares of tonight, especially in the Captain slot on DK is Cameron Meredith, with Ted Ginn Jr. out its likely that Meredith starts and sees those reps. Its possible that Tre’quan Smith starts but I still think that Meredith gets the bulk of the reps and at only 3k on DK he can smash value tonight.

As far as QB goes, I think we can go double QB on DK tonight, but its much more difficult to do on Fanduel and while it seems counterintuitive to not going 2 qb’s on FD, only one optimal over the last week had two qbs and in fact two had no QB’s. I’ll have double QB in about 50% of my lineups on DK and only 10-15% on FD, I’ll then build the rest of my roster pairing players with the qb I have.

Alex Smith is going to have a boring game tonight. My assumption is that he will throw for 250, 2 TDs and a pick. Thats a super boring stat line, but that floor, especially if you are playing cash games is huge. The Saints D sucks and while I don’t think he will go off, I do expect him to be efficient. I will actually have about equal shares of him and Drew Brees tonight.

The rest of the offense for the Redskins is priced pretty reasonably. I don’t believe the ‘revenge’ narrative with Adrian Peterson tonight but if you want to go that route, go right ahead, just know that he is coming up against the number 1 run defense in the NFL (yes, thats partially because everyone throws against the Saints, but they are still pretty good).

Jamison Crowder should get a juicy matchup in the slot where the Saints have been getting crushed and his price is right to allow you to fit lots of other studs in, especially if you play him in the MVP spot on DK. Josh Doctson is likely to not play tonight and that opens up a spot in the starting lineup for Maurice Harris. Harris will play in three wide sets and at only 200 Dollars he basically only needs to catch one ball to pay off his salary tonight. The other thing this does though is likely move Marshon Lattimore over onto Paul Richardson who is ridiculously cheap on this slate. I’ll still have some shares just because P-rich is so inexpensive but it does temper my expectations a bit.

I don’t love Jordan Reed in this matchup because the Saints for however bad their pass D has been are actually somewhat competent against TE’s, but he’s rosterable and should have a decent day (I really need him to in season long so I can win in our staff league so fingers crossed).

Both kickers are reliable and viable here, I don’t think we see double kicker in the optimal lineup again tonight like we did last night, but you should have exposure to at least one, particularly on Fanduel where you’ll see they have been in well over half of the optimal lineups.

Showdown/Single Game Roster Construction:

We are now 4 weeks into the 2018 NFL Season and have enough showdown/single game slates that we can take a look at the GPP winning rosters and see how those rosters were built and whether there is any sort of trend that we can see to help us build GPP winning rosters ourselves.

Last week, I broke down all the GPP winning lineups to that point on both FanDuel and Draftkings and I’ve updated that data for this week with all the games from the past week. As always we have to answer four questions when building our Single Game/Showdown rosters and this data can give us a huge edge when answering them. Those questions are:

1. Who is going to be your captain?
2. How many players from each team to do you want?
3. What positions should you play from each team?
4. Are you playing both, one, or no quarterback

Lets take a look at each of these questions

Who is going to be your captain?

Previously, the thought was that you need to have the following positions your captain.

1. WR1 for the Favorite
2. WR1 for the Underdog
3. TE1 for the Favorite
4. TE2 for the Underdog

But after looking at the GPP winning rosters for the first five weeks on both sites what we found was this:

As you can see here that is not the case. On Fanduel its actually the opposite and another week have data has shown that QB is clearly the play on Fanduel followed by Running Back. All of the GPP winning running backs in that spot have been ELITE RB’s (Alvin Kamara, Todd Gurley) so its worth noting that unless you have a situation like that, you might want to just stick with QB.

On Draftkings its more spread out with a variety of the players in the captain spot being in the optimal lineup, but its lead by WR2’s and RB1’s. If you combine the two WR slots, its clear that WR’s in the Captain spot are the key to taking down a GPP, followed by running backs and then further back, Quarterback and Tight End, though they are starting to make a comeback over the last few weeks.

The reason that Draftkings is more spread out is due to the 1.5x salary increase for the Captain position. There have been times when the highest scoring player on the slate wasn’t in the optimal captain slot because having another high scoring player there at a cheaper salary allowed the user to build a better lineup. One piece that I took from breaking down these rosters was that the highest priced player was only in the captain spot in two GPP winning lineup (Julio Jones against Philadelphia, and Todd Gurley, against Oakland).

The average salary on Draftkings for the captain spot was $11,113 which is typically right around the 7th or 8th highest priced player. It was actually under 10K six times out of sixteen. That lower priced player in the captain spot allowed those users to build better overall rosters. You obviously need to find the right lower priced player here, but its a strategy that should be utilized on Draftkings.

Salary typically isn’t as big of a deal on Fanduel where you really just need the highest scoring player, regardless of salary. The only player that wasn’t in the top 4-5 of pricing that was in the optimal lineup was Carlos Hyde, against the Jets.

Another interesting piece I found when looking at the rosters was how often the captain or MVP was on the winning team. Early on in the season, we saw that this chart was almost 50% of each, but lately its been trending in the direction of about 2/3 of the MVP/Captain slot players were on the winning team. While we shouldn’t be afraid to roster someone who is a dog in the game in this spot, particularly QB’s who have to air it out in a comeback, it is important to note that as we get more data, its becoming clearer that playing a player who is likely to win in this spot is optimal.

Surprisingly, the captains spot contained the winner more often on DK and I think that has to do with the salary structure there. As we saw above you want to pay down at the captain spot on DK, and for those cheaper WR’s to pay off they likely need to score a TD and be heavily involved. This number actually increased over the weekend, so when making decisions on the Captain spot on DK you may want to target a player from the team that is the favorite.

While the sample size is small, I think its very telling and should help us to build more optimal lineups, especially when doing MME. Given this information here is how I would breakdown my Captain/MVP exposure on both sites.

Draftkings: 

WR: 35%

RB: 25% 

QB: 20% 

TE: 20%

DEF:  Rarely and only if the game total is very low or we have a QB prone to turnovers

Fanduel: 

QB: 60% 

RB: 20% 

WR: 10% 

I’m not typically even going to mess with TE on Fanduel.. You don’t need to to save salary and its VERY rare that a TE is the highest scoring player in the game (except for this week when Zach Ertz went off) and I can only foresee one or two situations where this could even happen.

How many players from each team do you want?

This was something that was really interesting to look at among the optimal lineups, at least on Draftkings where there is three options, but still good to know for Fanduel as well.

With only two options on Fanduel for how you want to construct your roster, a more balanced 3-2 roster was the optimal 69% of the time. The 4-1 rosters were games that were blowouts (Detroit over New England, and Rams over Oakland and Ravens over Steelers) and one game that had an insane comeback (Green Bay over Chicago). So unless we have a game that looks to be a massive blowout, it appears that best way to approach roster construction on Fanduel would be a 3-2 split.

On Draftkings though, its a bit of a different story.  A 3-3 split or balanced lineup was dead even with 4-2. Both are viable in GPP and what I would tend to target the most. The 5-1 lineups were reserved for blowouts and interestingly enough they both rostered Kickers which allowed them to load up on studs elsewhere in their lineup. If you are expecting a blow out this looks to be a good strategy.

In the majority of game situations you are going to want to target a balanced lineup unless we see a blow out happening, and if thats the case then looking at a kicker is an important piece to consider.

What positions/players should you play from each team?

What I found in my breakdown of all the winning gpp lineups was that no winner had the exact same roster construction in terms of position players. Obviously we have a smaller sample size and at some point this year we may see a duplicate, but right now we haven’t had the exact same roster construction on either site.

Draftkings: 

Let’s look at the roster construction on Draftkings. Check out that QB number first…close to 100%. There was only one instance where a QB wasn’t used in the winning GPP lineup and that was in the very first game Thursday game of the year with the Falcons vs. Eagles. Other than that there has been at least one QB in a lineup if not two (four times so far) in every single game. QB’s are the easiest way to get points, but as we looked at earlier for the most part we want to roster them in the flex position as opposed the Captain spot. Its cost prohibitive to roster them there, but if you instill the strategy of using a lower priced player in that spot you can often roster two QB’s, or a QB and a high priced skill player.

Also, in every roster that had a QB there was a correlation play, with a WR, TE, or pass catching RB. Even when there were two QBs in a lineup there was at least one correlation play for each QB. No Naked QB strategy has worked to this point and while I don’t think we can say it never will, its a solid strategy to correlate your QB with a pass catcher just like in regular lineups.

RB1’s were also used at a high clip on Draftkings in the flex spot. They are typically priced below the WR’s unless you have a Todd Gurley or Ezekiel Elliot and they give you some roster flexibility. Of the running backs used in flex position on Draftkings they had some interesting splits. There were 8 that I would consider ‘Pass Catching’ (4 or more targets a game) and 8 that I would consider ‘Non-Pass Catching’ (3 or less targets a game). There were also 8 that I would consider ‘Bellcow Backs’ meaning that they play all three downs for the most part and 8 that would consider ‘Non-Bellcow Backs’.

So what does that mean? The way I interpret it is that you shouldn’t be afraid to play a running back just because he isn’t necessarily a bell cow back, especially if he can catch passes. PPR is king on DraftKings and often those Non-Bellcow backs are ones that do catch passes and they are MUCH cheaper than their counterparts. Thats a prime situation to take advantage of. A non-bellcow back who catches 3-4 passes and is at a huge discount can make the rest of your lineup work by allowing you target those higher priced players for the remaining spots.

I was surprised to see that Defenses were used in these GPP winning lineups on Draftkings MUCH more than Kickers. They are priced the same usually and while we consider the Kickers to have a bit safer floor, the defenses do have that GPP winning upside if they can get over 15ish points. Only once was a Defense used in the Captain slot in a GPP winner. Don’t be afraid to play your defense against your captain though as that has been the GPP winner three times already this season. Defensive scoring is all about sacks and picks so a WR/TE scoring high doesn’t necessarily mean that a defense will score low. What I wouldn’t do is play a defense in a lineup with a QB as the Captain.

Fanduel:

As we move over to Fanduel we now have an entirely different strategy. What I found over there was that contrary to what we think might be the best play, double QB has only been in the winning lineup 5 times (Three times this weekend in Week 4). This is mostly because it is cost prohibitive to do with often the two QB’s being the most expensive players on the board.

QB’s when in winning lineups have had at least one correlation play as well on Fanduel similar to DK, and naked QB has not been in the winner yet.

Without the ability to play defenses on Fanduel we have seen kickers take a more prominent role in the roster construction, though we have not had a double kicker GPP winner yet. TE’s are priced down as well over here and we see them in the winning lineups at over 60% of the time.

The graph above shows how many points players scored relative to their salary for week 2 on Fanduel. What we find here is that paying down at the MVP spot rarely makes sense when there is no salary increase that comes with it like on DK.

A higher salary doesn’t always indicate that a player will score more points, but as you can see above it typically does mean that a player with a higher salary will outscore those lower than them, at least those significantly lower.

Another interesting thing from this graph was that while Andy Dalton had a heck of a night in that game against Baltimore, he wasn’t in the optimal lineup at the Captain Slot because of AJ Green just barely squeaked by him. It should be noted though that AJ Green caught three touchdown passes to barely squeak by and had he not, Dalton would have been the clear MVP. Further solidifying my take that QB should be your main MVP play on Fanduel.

Are you going to play one, both, or no Qb’s?

As we saw above I think you should have a QB in every single lineup. On Draftkings a lineup without a QB has been the optimal only one time in 16 slates. On Fanduel its happened twice, but I still think there you are better off with one than without one. If you are making 150 lineups I think I would allocate about 5% of my lineups to having no QB but the odds are that the nuts will have a QB in it.

As far as both QB’s go, I think its site dependent. On Draftkings I’m ok with going double QB, as long as they are both in the flex spots and not in the MVP as we have shown that that is not optimal construction.

On Fanduel, because of the way the QB’s are priced, double QB has only been in the optimal lineup 38% of the time, and it happened in shoot outs. If the Vegas total is over 50 then I’m going to be more apt to try to get double QB lineups in.

With the DS now set up for Fanduel Single Game slates, what I would do is say I was making 100 lineups, I would make 60 lineups with a rule saying that the QB’s couldn’t be in the same lineup. I would then run 40 with both QB’s locked in. This gives you a good mix of lineups.

Summary:

Here are a couple key points that you should remember:

1. For the Captain Slot of Draftkings don’t be afraid to pay down. WR on the favorite is my first play to look at, followed by RB and then a much lower percentage of QB.
2. The exact opposite is true on Fanduel. I want the majority of my lineups to have QB in the MVP slot, followed by RB and then WR last.
3. Always Correlate your QB with a pass catcher. Never Naked QB.
4. Defense is a better punt on DK, Kickers on Fanduel
5. TEs are great salary savings on FD and have been in the optimal lineup over 60% of the time.
6. Pass catching RB’s even if they aren’t the bell cow back are great plays on DK when you can get them at a salary savings.
7. The captain salary on Draftkings for GPP winners has been $11,113

Showdown Player Pool

In this section I’ll show you my player pool and my anticipated exposure to each player. In some cases I’ll provide short notes about why I like a player. I’ll break down who my captains are for DK and who my MVP’s are for Fanduel as they are different, and then the rest of the player pool I’ll be using.

Captain – Draftkings:

The captain slot on Draftkings increases the salary of a player by 1.5x as well as gives them 1.5 points. 

Cam Meredith -WR Saints: 20% I don’t love this play…at all, but the salary savings for a guy who should see a huge increase in role in this offense with Ted Ginn Jr. out I think we need some exposure to him here. He allows you to basically play whoever else you want from either team.

Alvin Kamara – RB Saints: 15%  I don’t like paying up for the highest priced player on the slate, but he is in a good spot, provides a decent floor with his PPR and I think that we see his ownership down slightly with the combination of the return of Ingram/his crazy salary. There’s enough punts to make this work.

Jamison Crowder – WR Redskins: 15% Has pretty much sucked all year but with Doctson out he should see an increase in volume and gets a great matchup against a crappy Saints secondary. The hope is he luck boxes his way into a TD

Chris Thompson – RB Redskins: 15% Like him way more on DK than FD. Should get 8-10 points from PPR alone. If he gets a TD it wouldn’t surprise me to see him in the optimal.

Drew Brees – QB Saints: 15% We’ve been seeing QB show up more often in the Captain spot on DK in the optimal lineup. Brees will likely spread it around a bit today. I think that we might see the Saints run the ball a ton against this defense otherwise I would be more in on him in this spot.

Michael Thomas – WR Saints: 10% Could have a massive game. Most of my exposure to him will be on DK.

Mark Ingram – RB Saints: 5% Just a hedge here against my Kamara ownership. I think he sees massive ownership this game at the price though and I would bet that he isn’t quite the workhorse coming back that everyone thinks he will be.

Jordan Reed – TE Redskins: 5% Don’t love the matchup but its Jordan Reed and he really doesn’t have huge games, so I can see fading him entirely here, but having a small percentage is OK.

Flex – Draftkings 

All of the captain picks are great picks in addition to the following: 

Alex Smith – QB Redskins 

Maurice Harris – WR Redskins:  Mega-value if he starts over Doctson. Only $200 could be cash viable if the role is big.

Paul Richardson – WR Redskins: Bad matchup against Lattimore but way too cheap.

Tre’Quan Smith – WR Saints: Should get some snaps, but could easily zero.

Vernon Davis – TE Redskins: Still a part of this offense even though he’s the back up TE. Led the team in yards against the Packers. Ultra cheap GPP play that could smash.

Will Lutz – K Saints/Dustin Hopkins – K Redskins

Adrian Peterson – RB Redskins: I might actually full fade him but he’s viable.

I’m not really interested in rostering either defense tonight in what looks to be a shootout, but they are viable. I also don’t want to mess with the Saints TE situation. If anyone I’ll probably punt Hill. 

MVP – Fanduel 

I like to keep my MVP core really tight over here and I will only have three players in this spot tonight.

Drew Brees – QB Saints: 50% 

Alex Smith – QB Redskins: 30% 

Alvin Kamara – RB Saints: 20% 

QB just continues to be the way to go in the MVP spot on Fanduel. You could get really contrarian and have some shares of Ingram but I don’t see him blowing up like Kamara could. I don’t play WR here as they have to have an insane game to outscore their QB.

Flex – Fanduel 

Chris Thompson – RB Redskins: 

Michael Thomas – WR Saints:

Mark Ingram – RB Saints: 

Jordan Reed – TE Redskins:

Maurice Harris – WR Redskins:  

Paul Richardson – WR Redskins:

Tre’Quan Smith – WR Saints: If it comes out that he’s starting and looking at an increased role, at $4,500 on FD he could smash.

Vernon Davis – TE Redskins: Super cheap option.

Cam Meredith – WR Saints

Jamison Crowder – WR Redskins 

Will Lutz – K Saints/Dustin Hopkins – K Redskins

On Fanduel for this game, I think you need to have one Kicker and one QB in your roster at minimum. If you can find a way to fit both QB’s you should do it.

Showdown Cash Game Strategy: 

In cash games you want the safest floor possible. I think its really easy to build cash game lineups on DK for this game and not so much on FD. You don’t need to crush, you just need to cross that cash line. For me that means sometimes rostering both qb’s and both defenses if its going to be low scoring. For this game on DK I want to have a cheaper option in the captain spot that is still going to be involved and actually possibly a QB, regardless both QB’s and some pass catchers. You will need at least one kicker for this to work though. On FD I don’t think you need Kamara in cash so I’m playing a QB inn the captain spot and and another as well and filling out with Kickers or value punts.