What’s up Karma Nation! Welcome back to another edition of my Thursday Night Football Showdown Throwdown article. I hope you had an amazing week 3. We just got spoiled with one of the best matchups of the season. Now, we go from Chiefs and Ravens to Jets and Broncos. Make sure if you haven’t, 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.
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 does not. This will lead to more unique lineups and less ties for DraftKings as compared to FanDuel. 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 Jets are a 1-point favorite tonight against the Broncos. This game has a 41-point game total. We saw the line open at Jets +3 and now they are favored.
All lines are based on Draftkings Sportsbook. Lines may vary based on time you are reading this or if you are using a different bookie.
Historical Matchup
Sam Darnold has only played the Broncos once in his career. No point going back any further than that. It was surprisingly a shoot out and the Jets almost beat the over by themselves.
10/07/2018: Jets (Home) 34 Broncos (Away) 16. Jets: +1 Game Total: 42.5
Quarterbacks
We have an interesting Quarterback battle tonight. I am not sure if interesting is the correct word though. This Thursday Night will be featuring two subpar Quarterbacks: Sam Darnold and Brett Rypien. Darnold has yet to throw more than one touchdown in a game. That won’t really cut it on a showdown slate. He needs to find a way to payoff his salary and 10 points just isn’t enough. The Jets really need to win tonight or they are in jeopardy of putting up a goose egg on the season. Maybe they will put their “Offense into Hyper Drive” tonight. Maybe Gase was just a game off. There isn’t much to say about these guys. Rypien has a much better offense to work with. Even though there is a 3 next to the opponent rank, this doesn’t mean the Jets are that good on defense. I write this in my BetKarma Primetime Props article and I preach this in our discord all the time. GAME SCRIPT MATTERS! Teams just get up way too much on them and run the ball the rest of the game. The Jets have allowed at least 30 rushing attempts in every game this season. Volume is king in fantasy sports. Rypien should have a pretty easy time connecting with his pass catchers. We will most likely have more Broncos than Jets in our lineups. So, it’s better for stacking purposes to run Rypien over Darnold. I have made a lot of lineups fading both. I rarely have any Darnold in my lineups. Having both QBs in my lineups is even more rare.
Running Backs
The running back situation on the Jets is an interesting one. Gore is of course the main running back on this team. As we have seen with every team he has been, Gore has served as a pass catching back. This situation is simple for showdown slates. You need to optimize your ceiling. If you build a lineup expecting positive game script for the Jets, play Frank Gore. If you are expecting the Jets to be playing from behind most of the fourth quarter, play Kalen Ballage. I don’t want to dig too deep into this Jets running situation because it is awful.
The running back situation for Denver is much easier to predict. With Phillip Lindsay likely out again for the Broncos, Melvin Gordon will see another huge usage game. With him being the most expensive player on the slate, he is expected to have a huge role. Gordon out-snapped Royce Freeman 61 to 19 in week 2 and 39 to 24 last week against the Bucs. This seems to make you believe the snaps are trending towards more of a 50/50 role but that isn’t true. Freeman pass blocked 14 out of those 24 snaps. He was mainly on the field pass blocking, while having a similar role in the running game and passing game as he did week 2. Gordon is game script proof. If the Jets are somehow able to control this game, Gordon will see an increase in his usage in the passing game while running less. If the Broncos are able to get a lead early on the Jets, which even though Vegas claims won’t happen, they will just pound the running game. Even though the Jets are favored, it is still the Jets.
Jets Pass Catchers
Jamison Crower is supposed to play but “won’t be 100%” but will still “give it a go” tonight.
If Crowder plays a majority of snaps tonight then he will force Berrios back to the bench. Both guys are slot WRs, so Crowder will slide back into his role. Chris Hogan will still see high snap counts from the left side of the field. Josh Malone and Lawrence Cager will split time on the right side of the field. According to PFF.com, Malone has the toughest matchup, followed by Hogan. Denver struggles the most from the slot so either Crowder, or Berrios will have the best matchup of the three.
Even though Cager was out-snapped and ran less routes than Malone, Cager was able to see 4 targets, while Malone saw 0. We could end up getting amazing ownership leverage here as people will overlook and not even think about playing Malone. Malone is only $200 on DraftKings. On a slate like this where I am expecting condensed ownership, he can separate you from the field pretty easily.
Even though the Jets have been in negative game script all season, Darnold still hasn’t gotten much going through the air to make any of these guys really fantasy viable during a normal week. So, we are going to have to deal with the bottom of the barrel tonight.
Broncos Pass Catchers
The pass catchers for the Broncos are a lot more enticing than their counterparts tonight. In turn, we should see a majority of the ownership coming from this side as well.
The Broncos have four viable pass catchers that I am considering tonight. Tim Patrick, who is lined up on the right side of the field. KJ Hamler, the second-round rookie from Penn State, who is lined up on the right side of the field. Jerry Jeudy, their big-name rookie from Alabama, who lines up in the slot. And, Noah Fant, the year two break-out candidate, who is lined up mainly at Tight End but also plays some slot. This is something we love to see from Tight ends. It creates a very exploitable mismatch.
Fant and Jeudy have the most consistent and highest target shares on the team. This is part of the reason why they are the more expensive players on the slate. Both of them are excellent plays tonight. If you can only play one of them, I would lean Fant for the higher touchdown upside. He is leading the team with five Red Zone targets this season. He ranks 4th in the league in TE Red Zone targets. Last week they had no Red Zone rushes, while throwing 4 attempts in the Red Zone.
There are some cheaper guys to consider tonight too. Both Hamler and Patrick are the same price on DraftKings. According to PFF.com, Hamler has the slightly better matchup. I assume he has more ownership. So, if you want the ownership leverage play, look for Patrick, but the better play is Hamler. Both are receiving similar target share, but Hamler has seen more each game. Hamler is also just the better WR, but as we know with DFS that doesn’t always matter.
SuperDraft Top Plays
Also don’t forget about our new partnership with SuperDraft (Use Promo Code: KARMA at sign up), They also have a single game mode. If you haven’t heard about them, here’s a quick rundown. They are a fairly new site that instead of salary to differentiate yourself, you use multipliers. For the “Champion” spot you get 50% extra multipliers. My Top plays according to multipliers:
Noah Fant
Melvin Gordon
KJ Hamler
Jamison Crowder/Braxton Berrios
Chris Hogan
Kalen Ballage
Coach’s Corner
We’ve hadone of the top MME (Mass Multi Entry) tournament players in the world join Team Karma. Coach has been playing DFS showdown slates for years and has the 5 figure screenshots to show for it. He puts out a showdown video every Thursday and Monday Night. Make sure to check him out if you want more content for tonight!
