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 10. Let’s cap off week 10 with tons of green on this Monday Night Football slate! Make sure if you haven’t, to 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, then GPPs for showdowns. If you haven’t signed up for the prop sites that we are partnered with, check them out! Monkeyknifefight and Prizepicks, Promo code: KARMA, these sites have been around for a couple years and are continuously growing in size and being available in more and more states. If you have further questions about the sites hop in our DISCORD and message me. Our NFL Core plays package includes access to all of the expert’s NFL Prop plays! What are you waiting for? Join KARMA NATION today!
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, but the difference is the salary for the CPT scales 1.5x but the MVP spot on FanDuel does not. This will lead to more unique lineups and less ties for DraftKings as compared to FanDuel. This 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 Vikings are 3.5-point favorites tonight against the Bears. With a 43.5-point game total.
Historical Matchup
The Bears and the Vikings face off two a year, being from the same division. This series is tied 5-5 in the last ten meetings, while the Bears are 6-4 against the spread, and the game has gone over only 4 times.
12/29/19: Bears: 21 Vikings: 19 Bears Spread: -5.0 O/U: 36.0
09/29/19: Bears: 16 Vikings: 06 Bears Spread: -1.0 O/U: 38.0
12/30/18: Bears: 24 Vikings: 10 Bears Spread: +6.0 O/U: 40.0
11/18/18: Bears: 25 Vikings: 20 Bears Spread: -2.5 O/U: 44.0
12/31/17: Bears: 10 Vikings: 23 Bears Spread: +13.5 O/U: 38.0
10/09/17: Bears: 17 Vikings: 20 Bears Spread: +3.5 O/U: 41.0
01/01/17: Bears: 10 Vikings: 38 Bears Spread: +6.0 O/U: 44.0
10/31/16: Bears: 20 Vikings: 10 Bears Spread: +5.0 O/U: 39.5
12/20/15: Bears: 17 Vikings: 38 Bears Spread: +4.0 O/U: 44.0
11/01/15: Bears: 20 Vikings: 23 Bears Spread: +1.5 O/U: 44.0
Quarterbacks
Who else is excited to watch another Monday Night Football game with Kirk Cousins? He is 0-9 in his career, 12 touchdowns, and 8 interceptions in those games. Cousins has never really enjoyed the spotlight of primetime games. He is 7-16 in primetime games, while 38-24 in 1pm games. Although, there is some bias playing with a bad Washington team for all those years.
One good thing about this is, either the Vikings are going to be losing because Cousins can’t win in primetime or Cook is just going to pop off for 150 yards and two touchdowns. This bias may cause people to avoid Kirk, even though the less people play him the more leverage we get and the better the play is.
Nick Foles and the Bears will be going up against one of the worst pass defenses in the league, but is that enough to make Foles valuable tonight? I love stacking Cook and Foles in my lines, the correlation is perfect. Foles will be forced to throw in garbage time, while Cook enjoys the positive game script. At least this is how Vegas is projecting things, and as we know, Vegas is always right.
The Bears have enjoyed the riches of garbage time. 92 points come in the 4th quarter, while only 88 come in the first 3 quarters. This will lead to panic in your fantasy lineups as Foles has 5 points coming into the 4th and then he finishes with 16+.
In low scoring games, I usually run only one quarterback and sometimes I’ll run none. In this case, Foles will be without David Montgomery and Tarik Cohen. This will lead to more passing attempts than normal for Foles. They didn’t have much of a running game to begin with and now it gets even worse.
Running backs
The Vikings have a very concentrated usage in the running game. Dalvin Cook has dominated in every game he has been in, as long as the game is close. While, the Vikings could pull away in this one, it is because Cook had a monster game, most likely.
Cook is trying to sneak his way into the MVP conversations, he has recorded a touchdown in every game, while scoring multiple touchdowns in four out of his seven games played. He also has at least 199 scrimmage yards in three games. Since he has come back from injury, the Vikings have not been shy about feeding Cook touches. He has at least 24 touches in both games, and over 200 scrimmage yards as well. I am more chasing the volume rather than the production. Cook seems to be the only offense that the Vikings muster, even in a tough matchup I am taking the shot on him.
The Bears backfield is a little more, scratch that, a lot more spread out tonight. David Montgomery was ruled out the other day. This leaves Cordarrelle Patterson, Ryan Nall, and Lamar Miller to take the usage in the backfield. The million-dollar question is, who should I play of three? You don’t have to force any of them, but they do provide much needed value if you want to play Cook at CPT.
The Bears elevated Miller from the practice squad, after they ruled Montgomery out. The Bears haven’t really been vocal with the media about their players this season so it’s really unknown what to expect from these three guys tonight. Plus, the offensive play calling has switched to Lazor, it is tough to know tendencies with a new offensive play caller.
Vikings Pass Catchers
The Vikings have had two guys dominate the passing usage this season, Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen. These guys have been Kirk’s favorite targets, and there hasn’t been much room for anyone else to do well. Part of the reason is they have been the only two WRs on the field. The Vikings have been running a lot of 2WR sets with Irv Smith and Kyle Rudolph. Now that Irv Smith is out, expect the Vikings to migrate towards more 3WR sets tonight. This will open up some value.
Cousins seems to get a bad rep, about deep passes, but he has been one of the top deep ball throwers in the league this year. Not by skill, but just by volume. He is leading the league with 19.1% of his yards coming from pass of 20+ air yards. This in turn leads to Thielen and Jefferson being at the top of the leaderboards in deep balls as well. Jefferson is tied for second for catchable passes and Thielen is tied for 6th.
With the loss of Irv Smith, this should lead to Olabisi Johnson and Chad Beebe to see the field more. When Irv Smith went down last week, Beebe saw increased routes, and Tyler Conklin got some run.
Bears Pass Catchers
The Bears pass catchers have annoyed me all season, and it all stems from Foles not being able to hit the dep ball.
Darnell Mooney is third in the league in air yards since Foles took over in week 3. If you watch Bears games, you know how frustrating it is watching Foles continually miss Mooney on the deep ball. One day Foles will connect with him. He is creating separation, so that matchup tonight doesn’t matter. It’s not like Foles is trying to hit him in tight coverage, he is always open, but Foles just misses him every time. That being said, we still need to consider him as a boom bust candidate. He is due for a big game, and I will continue to play him in Showdowns until he hits that boom mark. Mooney is tied for fourth in the league for targets of 20 air yards or more. Only three of those targets have been catchable and he turned that into 105 yards. On top of him being a deep threat, Mooney is leading the team in red zone targets and end zone targets since week 6.
Anthony Miller was slowly being left behind in the offense, as Robinson and Mooney soaked up the targets. Over the last four games, Miller tied with Mooney in targets with 26, only trailing Robinson’s 29. The difference between Mooney and Miller, aDOT. Miller has an aDOT of 6.88 and Mooney with 17.00. This has led to a similar yards per target because Foles can’t hit his deep ball.
Allen Robinson has been limited in practice all week, but is expected to play tonight. If he were to miss that would change a lot of things for me. Robinson is really the only WR that has produced week in and week out. There is some worry about Robinson’s injury, but he is so reliable that we have to continue to ride out his safe floor. I am probably fading him and looking for ceilings from Mooney and the Vikings players. Robinson is just a PPR dream, so fade on FD and play on DK if you have the salary.
For TE we have two options, Cole Kmet and Jimmy Graham. Kmet has been used in the normal passing game, but once they get into the red zone it is Jimmy’s time to shine. Graham is tied with Robinson with 15 red zone targets, while leading the team with 7 end zone targets and four touchdowns when targeted in the end zone.
