Welcome back DFS grinders to another edition of my Monday Night Football Showdown Throwdown article. Tonight’s game features two divisional rivals in the AFC West. We could see a shootout tonight in Mexico City where the altitude is higher than in Denver. Deep balls and Deep kicks. Which should lead to a nice high scoring Monday Night Football Showdown. The 6-4 Chiefs are looking to take even more control of the division as they get their star QB back. While the 4-6 Chargers hope to pull out a much needed divisional win.
Vegas Odds
The Chiefs are 5 and a half point favorites on the “road” (neutral site) against the Chargers with a 53.5 game total. A majority of the money is coming in on the Chiefs to cover and to win, as well as the over.
Captain’s Corner
This is the main section that Draftkings and Fanduel differ. Draftkings has a cpt spot where the player’s salary is scaled 1.5x as well to go along with their 1.5x bonus. Compare that to Fanduel where the “MVP” receives a 1.5x bonus but does not receive the 1.5x salary increase. So there are two different ways to go about this. Fanduel you are looking for the highest scoring player to put in the MVP spot, while draftkings you are normally looking for the best value play. Whether that is Mahomes paying off his salary to drop 35 or a WR who decides to go for 150 yards and 1 TD. The WR may not be the highest scoring player on the slate but may give you the best value on the slate. You can even have a cheap 3k cpt that gets you 15, which allows you to fit in the studs. This strategy works best when you have no one breaking the slate with 30-35+ and when you have the studs all dropping 18-25 points. As you can see their are definitely a lot more ways to differentiate yourself on Draftkings compared to Fanduel.
Melvin Gordon: Is he finally back or are the last two games outliers in what has been a rough season for him? He is looking good and is coming off back to back 23 touch games. This volume is huge especially considering he is playing one of the worst run defenses in the league. The only issue with this play is he is a running back as an underdog, but that doesn’t worry me too much. He is still used in the passing game. He’s seen a touchdown in 4 straight weeks which is a projected shootout the touchdown upside and redzone touches are huge. If the touchdowns go our way he might end up as the highest scoring player on the slate.
Mecole Hardman: This is my 2% CPT Play. He is boom or bust and might end up with zero but his ceiling is two 50 yard TDs. Mahomes should be able to use Hardman’s speed to his advantage and run a couple bomb plays that we see every game to Hardman. He’s a big play waiting to happen and with the Chargers still waiting to get their starting safeties back Hardman could easily get behind this defense for a potential 50+ yard TD.
Both QBs: Running a QB in the CPT spot is the optimal route especially in high scoring games like this one. We have to choose between these two guys. I suggest playing both today so I love running both in flex spots but also running one in cpt. I prefer Rivers in CPT and Mahomes in flex. Yes, Mahomes has the higher ceiling but you have to weigh that against price. You get a $5000 savings running Rivers in cpt compared to Mahomes. Rivers also has the better matchup against the Chiefs poor secondary and the potential negative game script garbage time which has made Rivers fantasy relevant his whole career. If you do run Mahomes in cpt the only way I see him paying off that huge price tag is stacking him with Hill Kelce and Hardman. This way you maximize Mahomes production. If not you are better off running Hill, Kelce or Hardman in the cpt spot to capitalize on Mahomes output.
Favorite Flex Plays
Obviously I love all the plays I suggested in the CPT’s corner so you can play them in the flex spots as well. I will suggest a few more plays I love tonight.
Both Kickers: The altitude these guys are playing in is a kicker’s paradise. We all know how the altitude affects the distance players are able to kick in Denver but Mexico City is location 7,382 feet above sea level which is 2,000 feet more than mile high. Can we see a record breaking kick tonight? Only time will tell. I don’t mind playing both kickers in a line for cheap double digit upside and safe floors. CPT kicker? If you are crazy enough.
LeSean McCoy: At first I thought we were going to get a Williamsless backfield and a workhorse KC running back for extremely cheap. Unfortunately Williams joined the team late, although missing practice this week. McCoy has had fumble issues as we have seen which he then finds himself straight to the bench. McCoy was inactive last game for rest due to his age. Getting a week off to recover for a running back his age is huge which could lead him to a huge game tonight, especially as favorites.
