What’s up Karma Nation! Welcome back to another edition of my Monday Night Football Showdown Throwdown Article. I hope you had an amazing week 6. Let’s cap off week 6 with tons of green on this Monday Night Football slate! Make sure if you haven’t already, subscribe to our NFL Core Plays. Showdowns are fun but make sure you get in on all our prop plays for these showdown slates. I usually run a prop cash play, and then GPPs for showdowns.
Showdown slates are different from normal slates and vary from site to site.
On DraftKings you have a CPT spot with a 1.5x multiplier, this is similar to FanDuel, the difference is the salary for the CPT scales 1.5x as well. On FanDuel, the MVP spot it does not. This will lead to more unique lineups and less ties for DraftKings compared to FanDuel. Which is one of the reasons why I prefer DraftKings showdown slates to FanDuel. On DraftKings you select five flex spots and one CPT, while on FanDuel you select four flex and one MVP.
Vegas totals
The Cowboys are 1-point favorites tonight against the Cardinals. With a 55-point game total. There has been some line movement this morning. The Cowboys opened at 2.5-point underdogs, which has now moved to 1-point favorites. The over/under opened at 54 and has moved to 55 points.
Historical Matchup
Andy Dalton has faced the Cardinals three times in his career. He is 1-2 in those matchups, throwing for 243 yards per game, with six touchdowns and zero interceptions during this stretch.
10/06/19: Cardinals: 26 Bengals: 23 Bengals Spread: -3.0 O/U: 46.5
11/22/15: Cardinals: 34 Bengals: 31 Bengals Spread: +4.0 O/U: 47.5
12/24/11: Cardinals: 16 Bengals: 23 Bengals Spread: -4.0 O/U: 41
Quarterbacks
As I am sure everyone knows already, Dak Prescott is out for the rest of the season, with one of the most gruesome injuries I have seen since Alex Smith broke his leg two years ago. Luckily, Dak went through successfully surgery to repair his compound fracture and dislocated ankle with, thankfully, no initial infections. Hopefully, he has an easier time in recovery than Alex Smith, who, almost lost his leg. Andy Dalton comes in and takes the reigns in the Cowboys offense. They signed him to one of the largest backup QB deal I have seen in a while, but it was full of incentives for him. So, you know Dalton will come in and actually try to get that money. While Dak Prescott has proven himself as one of the best QBs in the league, the drop off to Andy Dalton is not that large and should affect the offense too much. Dalton has proven in the past that he can perform and made himself an amazing career in Cincy behind an awful line. Dalton finally gets to prove himself in probably the best offense he has ever played in. The matchup for Dalton is great as he records his first start of the year. The Cowboys have the best OL/DL matchup of the week per PFF.com, which is probably the first time in Dalton’s long career where that has ever happened. I am expecting a huge game from him today. He won’t put up Dak type numbers, but I do expect him to close in on that 300-yard bonus if the Cowboys find themselves down, like they have a majority of the season.
Last year’s number one overall pick, Kyler Murray, looks to make a name for himself in his second primetime game of his career. Murray finished his first one with 241 yards, two touchdowns and zero interceptions against the 49ers on Halloween. He was almost able to upset them, 88 of those yards came on a long touchdown with 5 minutes left in the game. For a majority of the game he was getting shut down by one of the best defenses in the league last year. Murray has made a huge leap this year, he is currently ranked third best QB for fantasy this season, only behind Russell Wilson and Josh Allen. One of the reasons for his success is his legs, he is leading all QBs in rushing with 296 yards and five rushing touchdowns. Murray is also fifth in points per drop back with 0.67. The Cowboys rank first in the league in pace, running a play every 20.79 seconds, which is almost four seconds faster than second place. We could see a game plan change now that Andy Dalton is taking the snaps under center for the Cowboys. I assume their number is so much lower than everyone else, because they are always trying to comeback at the end of games, boasting this number much higher than it should be. The Cardinals rank fifth in pace running a play every 25.65 seconds. Both these teams will look to move the ball up and down the field quickly and try to put up as many points as possible.
Running Backs
The Cowboys will be featuring one of the best running backs in the game in Ezekiel Elliot. Elliot currently ranks second in the league in fantasy points for running backs, averaging 22.74 fantasy points per game in full PPR formats. This number is helped by the fact that he is third among running backs in targets with 6 per game. Only trailing, as I am sure you can guess, Mike Davis (32) and Alvin Kamara (44). Where Zeke has really excelled this season is generating touches inside the 5-yard line. He is leading the league with 14 rushing attempts inside the 5, which has led to 4 touchdowns. With Dalton at QB, I am sure they will rely on Zeke just as heavily near the end zone so they don’t end up throwing an unneeded interception. Dallas has struggled this year giving Zeke a hole to work with. They are the 6th worst team in yards before contact with only 1.22 yards before contact. The bright spot for Zeke is that he is going up against the worst team in the league in giving up yards before first contact; 2.58 yards before contact. Zeke is also game script proof; if the Cowboys are winning, they will feed Zeke for 20+ carries most likely giving him the 100-yard bonus and at least one touchdown. If the Cowboys are losing like they have for a majority of games this season, Zeke will be involved in the passing game and generate points from receptions making up for most likely missing that 100-yard bonus. All in all, Zeke is my favorite play on the board and let’s hope Tony Pollard doesn’t steal another touchdown from him. Pollard only has one touch instead the five but has already led to a touchdown.
On the other side the field the Cardinals are working in a committee of three main rushers. We have Kenyan Drake and Chase Edmonds, but there is always the threat that Kyler Murray steals a majority of the teams rushing yards. Both running backs have been involved in different ways in the offense, making them both fantasy relevant depending on game script. On the season Drake has out-sapped Edmonds 239 to 131. There is a clear distinction to the roles of these two players; Drake has 85 rushing attempts, while Edmonds only has 19, but Edmonds has dominated the usage in the passing game, out-targeting Drake 23 to 6, leading to 18 catches for 129, compared to 6 catches for 22 yards. Drake has not been the fantasy star that we saw last year, and has led people to label him as one of the biggest busts in fantasy drafts this year. Kyler Murray is involved in the rushing attack for the Cardinals as well, soaking up 27% of the rushing attempts and 42% of the rushing yards on the season. Drake really has a tough time reaching ceiling games, so I will continue to avoid him in a majority of games this season, but in a showdown format it is worth the risk if he is going to be low enough owned. I am just not going there tonight.
Cowboys Pass Catchers
The Cowboys pass catcher situation gets interesting now that we have a new QB. Just because Dak preferred a guy doesn’t mean Dalton will too, so be careful tonight. The Cowboys have three key weapons on the outside; Amari Cooper, CeeDee Lamb, and Michael Gallup. They have incorporated Dalton Schultz pretty heavily in the offense too. With a new QB running this offense, who gets the bigger bump? Let’s take a dive into Daltons 11 attempts against the Giants to see where he was looking. Dalton had 3 targets go to each of his three top WRs. Cooper had two receptions for 23 yards, Lamb had two receptions for 21 yards and Gallup had three receptions for 65 yards. 57 of those yards came from the last two throws of the game. Pollard got into the scorers’ sheet with 2 receptions for 2 yards. One play went for nine yards and the other went for negative 7 yards. Dalton looked to spread the ball out as much as he could and wasn’t afraid to take a shot deep to Gallup a few times. I don’t expect Dalton to be timid with the ball again tonight especially against a defense like this.
Cardinals Pass Catchers
Cardinals really only have one main guy in this offense. DeAndre Hopkins, who they traded for in the offseason for David Johnson, has not missed a beat changing offenses. He has a 31% target share and is on pace for 170 targets on the season, which would be third most in his career. The craziest part is he is on pace for 144 receptions which would smash his career season high by 33 receptions and break the Marvin Harrison’s record by one reception. A record Michael Thomas just broke last year, when he had 149 receptions. Hopkins has some work to do if he wants to pass Thomas, but this will put him on pace for second all time. Hopkins has one of the easiest matchups of the game, going against Daryl Worley. He is giving up an 82% catch%, surprisingly Worley hasn’t giving up many targets, but when he does, he gives up one of the highest catch % in the league. He is only giving up a target on 8% of the routes run for an amazing 0.82 yards per route covered. Really none of these CBs have been good for the Cowboys, but teams have targeted Travon Diggs most games, leading to decreased targets to the other guys. I am expecting them to force feed Hopkins no matter what so I am not scared of Worley’s targets per route run being slow low.
Cristian Kirk will be lined up against Diggs a majority of the game, he has the highest aDOT on the team with 16.85, which ranks 10th in the league among WRs with 10 or more targets this season. Kirk has a low floor tonight, but provides takedown upside if he is able to break one deep.
Watch out for Dan Arnold and Darrell Daniels tonight for cheap, Cowboys, like all positions, have been bad against TEs, giving up the 8th most fantasy points to TEs, also giving up the 6th most receptions to them. Arnold has not been very involved in this offense this year, only having a 6% target share. He is 7th in the league for catch% for TEs with 10 or more targets. So, when he does get a target you can expect him to come down with it. He is only averaging 3.74 fantasy points per game, but if you want a cheap option in this passing attack, he is worth a flier for only $1200. Another option is Daniel, we saw last week Arnold’s routes trending down, while Daniels routes are trending up. Two weeks ago, we saw Arnold run a route on 51% snaps, while Daniels only ran one on 21% of snaps. Last week we saw Daniels ran a route on 44% of snaps, while Arnold only ran one on 32% of snaps. This trend makes me believe Arnold is slowly losing his starting job and they are leaning more on Daniels who is $1800. We could see name bias lead to more ownership on Arnold compared to Daniels.
