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Playoff Showdown Smackdown: Rams at Saints- Draftkings/Fanduel Single Game Advice

Conference Championship Sunday!  The first game of the day has the Los Angeles Rams heading to the Superdome to take on the New Orleans Saints!

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.

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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:

It’s Conference Championship Sunday in the NFL!

The Rams are road dogs here as they head into the Superdome to take on the high flying Saints. The Saints are only a field goal favorite though and at a neutral site, this would be essentially a pick em. Last week’s game against the Eagles showed the blueprint for how to beat the Saints and it essentially comes down to getting up early and forcing them into a situation they aren’t necessarily comfortable in, playing from behind by 2 or more touchdowns.

You better believe Sean McVay has watched that tape multiple times (though every head coach does and McVay gets way too much credit for his preparation but that’s another article for another day). and is going to want to get off to a fast start here. The game total of 57 indicates that Vegas expects this to be similar to the last time these two teams squared off, which the Saints won 45-35. It does take into account though the improved defense of the Rams and the struggles that the Saints have had moving the ball recently.

The Rams offense had C.J. Anderson heavily involved last week and the bowling ball racked up the fantasy points, rushing for 123 yards and two tds, outscoring stud RB Todd Gurley by 5 points on both sites. He’s been priced up accordingly but given what we know about McVay I would be surprised if we saw a similar workload for Anderson this week. That sort of rushing style hasn’t been successful against this Saints front 7 and I think it’s likely they try to establish Gurley in the passing game early if he’s healthy (he is), something that they unsuccessfully tried to do last time these two teams played. He had 6 catches on 7 targets but for only 11 yards. A solid 6 PPR points on DK but not beneficial on FD. Either way as dogs here, I can’t imagine they go heavy CJ again when you have Gurley sitting there. Gurley getting out-touched last week was more of him coming back from injury than Anderson being a featured back. I think you let others chase those performances from CJ and load up on Gurley when possible.

While early in the year, both of these offenses were absolutely clicking, recently they have struggled a bit. In fact, last week Jared Goff and Drew Brees combined for just over 30 DK points. When these teams met in November, they combined for 77 DK points. Scoring was obviously going to revert back to the norm at some point after being extremely high in the early portion of this season, but it seems to have hit these two teams the hardest as the year has gone on. That being said, we can take advantage of the game log watchers here as myself and Vegas both expect this game to be a shoot out on the turf. Goff is underpriced considering what he did last time against this same defense. All he did in week 9 was throw for 391 yards and 3 TDs…not too bad. On DK I’ll have about 2x as many shares of Goff as I do of Brees but that is mostly a price thing, Brees is difficult to afford and feel solid about your lineups. In a vacuum where they are the same price I go Brees every time stack him up with Thomas and Kamara (Great two-game slate cash build) and move on, but that’s tough to do unless you think the kickers have massive games. Brees is in a great spot too, and should smash but who do you pair him with? The likely candidate is Michael Thomas who torched this Rams defense in their last encounter but pairing them together, with Thomas in the Captain spot on DK leaves you with only 5.7k per position making you fill out your roster with kickers and low floor players like Josh Reynolds and Ted Ginn Jr. 

On the wide receiver front, we have two absolutely slam dunk plays in Michael Thomas and Robert Woods and I’m going to try to pair them in as many lineups as possible on DK (FD it doesn’t quite work to do that and RB/QB is king there). Thomas went for 211 receiving yards and a touchdown the last time these two played on 12 receptions and is coming off a 12 reception 171 yard 1 TD performance against the Eagles. Woods meanwhile didn’t quite have that sort of stat line in that game but was pushed outside for the majority of his snaps as Cooper Kupp played in the slot. Well since Kupp has been out, Woods has played over 75% of his snaps in the slot and is in line to have a huge game. Kupp had a stat line of 5 catches 89 yards and a TD last time these two played. Slot is an area of weakness for the Saints and Woods should absolutely smash here. Vegas has set his receiving yards line at 75.5 and his receptions at 5.5 and its actually plus money to take the under there. It’s fair to expect a 6-8 receptions 80-yard day with a touchdown from Woods.

Other value receivers (though they are studs in their own right and it feels weird calling them values) are Brandin Cooks and Ted Ginn Jr. It’s possible that they continue to play Ginn in the slot here but I can’t imagine they leaving Thomas on the outside so that’s a bit of a downgrade for Ginn, but what I do love is his Average Depth of Target (ADOT) of 16 yards. He’s due a big game here at some point if he continues to get those deep balls with the sort of target share he’s seen since his return (7 and 8 in his two games back). Cooks has the revenge narrative going for him, but other than that, I think I would rather play Woods at essentially the same price.

At RB on the Rams side, I’m playing Gurley and full fading Anderson. That’s just the stand I’m making here. Alvin Kamara is still clearly the top option on the Saints and in a shoot out will likely out touch Ingram 2-1. Kamara and Gurley are both expensive but do not have to be stack options. Both are fine standalone and great Captain candidates.

In an expected shoot out I don’t want too much exposure to the defenses but having to choose I like the Saints. Goff has turned the ball over a bit more recently, and he occasionally takes too long to get the ball out which is a great set up for the Saints pass rush. Again, don’t really want exposure to either in an expected shootout.

Greg ‘the Leg’ Zuerlein has had double-digit fantasy points in 8 of his last 11 games…at $3,200 on DK…he’s a lock button in all my lineups. That’s 3-4x value which is fantastic at this price point. He should get 2-3 FG attempts and 3-4 XP attempts. He’s in a dome as well which is another boost for him. Lock him in on both DK and FD.

His counterpart Will Lutz isn’t quite in the same sort of class in terms of consistency and double-digit fantasy point production but is a fine play in his own right and playable on both sites.

Overall, while I think the Rams put up a fight here, the Saints at home are going to be too much to handle. As I stated earlier, I’m going to differentiate my lineups with Goff over Brees, but going heavy Brees is a fine, just a more chalky build. The Brees exposure I do have, may end up being heavier in the Captain slot on DK as I think he can end up the highest scorer for the Saints no problem.

Final Prediction: Saints 35 – Rams 31 

Showdown/Single Game Roster Construction:

We are now 18 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.

This year, I’ve broken 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 week 17. 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

Let’s 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 through 14 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 we have another week of data that shows that QB or Running Back is clearly the play on Fanduel. All of the GPP winning running backs in that spot have been ELITE RB’s (Alvin Kamara, Todd Gurley, Saquon Barkley) so it’s worth noting that unless you have a situation like that, you might want to just stick with QB. Typically the QB will have the safest floor and even in situations like the Titans/Cowboys game where you have an ELITE player in Ezekiel Elliott in a smash spot against a weak defense and he underperforms and actually scores less than both QB’s.

We continue to expand our so we continue to expand the pool of players that are viable to be captains, at least on DK. During week 9 we had a WR 4 (Adam Humphries) be the optimal player in the captain spot. We have still not seen a Kicker in the captain spot yet this season.

There is a large spread on DK while its a little more tightly concentrated on FD. Typically you just want a RB/QB on FD while anything and everything besides Kicker is in play on DK.

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.

The average salary on Draftkings for the captain spot was $11,113 which is typically right around the 7th or 8th highest priced player. 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 it’s a strategy that should be utilized on Draftkings when possible.

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 as MVP 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, it’s 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 captain’s spot containing the winner of the game was about equal on both sites at 70ish % of the time. 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 break down my Captain/MVP exposure on both sites.

Draftkings: UPDATED 11/14/18 

WR: 30%

RB: 30% 

QB: 25% 

TE: 15%

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

Fanduel: UPDATED 11/14/18 

QB: 45% 

RB: 45% 

WR: 10% 

I’m not typically even going to mess with TE on Fanduel. You don’t need to save salary and its VERY rare that a TE is the highest scoring player in the game and I can only foresee one or two situations where this could even happen, though one is this week with Travis Kelce and the Chiefs.

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 are 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 70% of the time. The 4-1 rosters were games that were blowouts (For example, last week we had one 4-1 roster with the Saints/Eagles game a blowout.) and one game that had an insane comeback  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 tend to roster Kickers which allows 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 that’s 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 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, it’s a solid strategy to correlate your QB with a pass catcher just like in regular lineups.

RB1’s continue to be 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 Elliott and they give you some roster flexibility. Of the running backs used in flex position on Draftkings they had some interesting splits. While one would think that majority of your RB’s taken are bell cows, but we see over 25% of the rosters containing an RB2 who is typically only a third down or change of pace back.

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. That’s 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 to target those higher priced players for the remaining spots. What we’ve really seen in the last two weeks is that these ‘non-bellcow’ backs are starting become featured either because of injury or game flow and are becoming viable captain plays based on the game script.

I was surprised to see that Defenses were used in these GPP winning lineups on Draftkings MUCH more than Kickers originally but now Kickers are starting to make a comeback and actually pulled ahead in Week 8. 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. Twice now a defense has been 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 four times already this season (Most recently in Week 8 with the Saints against the Vikings). Defensive scoring is all about sacks and picks or defensive touchdown so a WR/TE scoring high doesn’t necessarily mean that 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 a few times.  This is mostly because it is cost prohibitive to do with often the two QB’s being the most expensive players on the board, but also because we don’t often see two Qb’s go off unless its a shootout.

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 and in fact they are now the highest played position in the flex spot. We haven’t had a double kicker GPP winner this past week. 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 MUCH less than DK, and it happened in shootouts. If the Vegas total is over 50 then I’m going to be more apt to try to get double QB lineups in. Obviously, it’s an extreme case but the Chiefs/Rams game is a perfect example of a double QB game.

With the DS now set up for 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:

Michael Thomas – WR Saints: 25% 

Todd Gurley – RB Rams: 20% 

Alvin Kamara – RB Saints: 20% 

Drew Brees – QB Saints 15% 

Robert Woods – WR Rams: 15% 

Brandin Cooks – WR Rams 5% 

I actually don’t have Goff here as a captain option because I think at his price point he doesn’t have the ceiling to pay off his salary if he has his best game of the year. I just think the roster construction with these 6 works much better and have a clear path to a GPP win

Flex – Draftkings:

Jared Goff – QB Rams 

Josh Reynolds – WR Rams: Touchdown dependent, but still gets a decent amount of targets.

Mark Ingram – RB Saints: Don’t love the game flow or the recent usage for Ingram here.

Ted Ginn Jr – WR Saints: Love his ADOT and if he plays in the slot more should smash. Great pair with Brees on both sites.

Tre’Quan Smith – WR Saints: Was barely used against the Eagles (one target) not really interested in playing him for anything but salary savings.

Rams D

Saints D – Don’t really want either of these defenses but have to choose I’m going Saints.

Greg Zuerlein – K Rams: Love him here and I think in the playoffs we see a bit more conservative Sean McVay who takes the points when he gets down in the Saints territory which is good news for Greg the Leg. He is likely to be my highest owned player on the slate. His floor combined with the salary make him a slam dunk.

Will Lutz – K Saints 

Gerald Everett – TE Rams: Back to Back Zeros are concerning for Everett bu the continues to out snap counterpart Tyler Higbee.

Tyler Higbee – TE Rams: Hauled in two receptions last week and one the week before. Able to turn those into some big chunk gains. I think a TD is coming at some point, but it’s essentially a lottery ticket.

Taysom Hill – Flex Saints: I don’t buy into this but he might accidentally fall into the end zone at some point. Another lottery ticket GPP play.

MVP – Fanduel 

I like to keep my MVP core really tight over here and typically we look at about 45% of QB’s and 45% RB’s in this spot for the optimal lineup.

Todd Gurley – RB Rams: 35% 

Drew Brees – QB Saints: 35%

Jared Goff – QB Rams: 10%

Alvin Kamara – RB Saints: 10% 

Michael Thomas – WR Saints: 10%

Heavy on Gurley/Brees here, sprinkles of the rest. Make sure you are getting exposure to these guys in your flex as well.

Flex – Fanduel

Robert Woods – WR Rams: One of my favorite plays on the slate and on FD at his price.

Brandin Cooks – WR Rams

Josh Reynolds – WR Rams: Touchdown dependent, but still gets a decent amount of targets.

Greg Zuerlein – K Rams: Love him here and I think in the playoffs we see a bit more conservative Sean McVay who takes the points when he gets down in the Cowboys territory which is good news for Greg the Leg.

Gerald Everett – TE Rams:

Tyler Higbee – TE Rams: Hauled in two receptions last week and one the week before. Able to turn those into some big chunk gains. I think a TD is coming at some point, but it’s essentially a lottery ticket.

Taysom Hill – Flex Saints: I don’t buy into this but he might accidentally fall into the end zone at some point. Another lottery ticket GPP play.

Will Lutz – K Saints 

Mark Ingram – RB Saints: Don’t love the game flow or the recent usage for Ingram here.

Ted Ginn Jr – WR Saints: Love his ADOT and if he plays in the slot more should smash. Great pair with Brees on both sites.

Tre’Quan Smith – WR Saints: Was barely used against the Eagles (one target) not really interested in playing him for anything but salary savings.

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 it’s going to be low scoring. On DK I think that we don’t get cute and just play Gurley/Thomas in Captain, and make sure you roster the other in flex. Kickers, Brees, and whoever else you can fit as the core pieces give you a nice floor. On Fanduel, I’m going Brees in MVP and then Greg the Leg and filling out with floor pieces.

Final Thoughts:

This was a lot to take in with all the info I provided. Take some time, let it digest and then build some lineups based on the strategy we have found to be successful in GPPs so far this year for each site. If you have questions make sure you message me in my channel #dfsupnorth-nfl-pga and tag me with any thoughts or questions as that’s the easiest way to get ahold of me!

Let’s have a great Championship Sunday! I can’t wait to see those helmets crushing at the top of the leaderboard!

Also, give me a follow on twitter @dfsupnorth as I’ll be posting updates there as well as useful retweets leading up to the games tonight!

 

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