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 9. Let’s start off week 10 with tons of green on this Thursday 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 here: Monkeyknifefight and Prizepicks, and use 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 Titans are 1-point favorites tonight against the Colts. The game has a 48.5-point total.
Historical Matchup
The Titans and the Colts faced off two a year, being from the same division. The Colts have owned this matchup over the last five years, but the Titans are looking for their second straight win against the Colts. The Colts are 7-3 in the last ten meetings, 6-4 against the spread, and the game has gone over six times.
12/01/19: Colts: 17 Titans: 31 Colts Spread: +1.0 O/U: 41.5
09/15/19: Colts: 19 Titans: 17 Colts Spread: +3.0 O/U: 43.5
12/30/18: Colts: 33 Titans: 17 Colts Spread: -5.5 O/U: 42.5
11/18/18: Colts: 38 Titans: 10 Colts Spread: -1.5 O/U: 50.0
11/26/17: Colts: 16 Titans: 20 Colts Spread: +3.0 O/U: 46.5
10/16/17: Colts: 22 Titans: 36 Colts Spread: +7.0 O/U: 46.0
11/20/16: Colts: 24 Titans: 17 Colts Spread: -3.0 O/U: 54.0
10/23/16: Colts: 34 Titans: 26 Colts Spread: +3.5 O/U: 48.0
01/03/16: Colts: 30 Titans: 24 Colts Spread: -4.5 O/U: 39.5
09/27/15: Colts: 35 Titans: 33 Colts Spread: -3.0 O/U: 46.5
Quarterbacks
Big Phil
Philip Rivers has been extremely volatile this season, but he gets possibly his best matchup of the season. The one downside of Rivers’ game that I have noticed this season, is his arm strength is falling off quickly. We all make jokes about Brees’ arm strength, but I don’t see enough noise about Rivers. Just from the eye test you see him struggling to throw dep and underthrowing if he does attempt anything. I saw that last year starting on the Chargers. He is throwing 8 targets per game to TEs, while also throwing 8 targets per game to RBs. To add on, he is 25th in the league in aDOT, throwing on average 7.7 yards down the field per attempt.
Rivers has seen flashes of being a top fantasy QB, finishing in the top 10 twice this season. On the flip side, he has finished outside the top 20 in every other week besides his top 10 finishes. It’s not even because of slow paced games, he is extremely inefficient as a passer, averaging 0.41 fantasy points per DB, which ranks 30th in the league. Rivers has an adjusted completion % of 75.9% (21st), 260.9 yards per game (17th), 10 touchdowns (23rd), and 7 interceptions (5th). He hasn’t wow’d us much this season. He has 116.3 fantasy points this season, with 48.0 of those points coming in two games. The remaining six games he has 68.3 fantasy points 11.3 fantasy points per game. If he sustained that pace all season, he would be the worst fantasy QB on the season.
The Titans have struggled this season on defense. Honestly, it is pretty crazy how bad defenses have been this season. The Titans are one of three teams that are one pace to break the record for third down % allowed. They are allowing a successful third down conversion at a rate over 60%. Tennessee is allowing 1.06 more fantasy points than the average matchup to Quarterbacks this season. They just added Desmond King to their secondary and he immediately made his presence known last week, where he returned a fumble for a touchdown against the Bears.
Ryan Tannehill
Tannehill has seemed to start a regression period after starting the season so well. With Derrick Henry most likely emerging as the main guy in the offense the rest of the season, I am expecting Tannehill to have issues the remainder of the season. He is coming off playing two of the top defenses in the league over the past three weeks. This streak of tough defenses continues tonight against the Colts, he also have the Ravens and Colts again coming up. The Titans are probably either going to need to rely on Henry or have huge games from Tannehill.
Tannehill is QB11 on the season, he is averaging 247 passing yards per game, has thrown 19 touchdowns, with only 2 interceptions on the season. Tannehill hasn’t shown off his rushing upside like we saw last year. At the halfway point of the season, he only has 105 rushing yards and one rushing touchdown. Last year 185 rushing yards and four touchdowns in only 12 games. We can see how random touchdowns are to predict.
Running backs
Tractorcito
We have officially made it to week 10 and cold weather games. Henry is ready to flip his switch like he did last year. Henry averaged 71.6 rushing yards per game and 8 total touchdowns the first nine weeks of the season last year. In his final six games of the season starting at week 10, 149 rushing yards per game and 10 total touchdowns. Henry is coming off a rough game against the Bears which I hope keeps his ownership down. Henry is one of those guys it’s hard to go too in depth into. The main thing that stops him hitting value is game script. Henry is not used in the passing game, especially in late games or on third downs. This leaves the potential for Jeremy McNichols to hit value.
Dealing With An Annoying Running back Rotation
Once we heard that Marlon Mack was going to miss the remainder of the 2020 season with a torn Achilles, Jonathan Taylor owners rejoiced. Taylor would have been a consensus late first round early second round pick if we knew Mack was out the whole season. Unfortunately, that has not been true over the last couple weeks. The Colts have been tough to predict on the ground this year. Taylor peaked week 2 with 46 snaps, since then, he has yet to top 36 snaps. We have had several different guys for them go off without warning. After we saw Hines and Wilkins explode against the Lions, it came out that Taylor was dealing with an ankle injury.
Even though we saw Taylor on the injury report last week he was able to get in two full practices before playing last week. Although, we saw a pretty even snap share between the three headed monster. Each of the three got around 24 snaps. Wilkins again led the team in carries. This week Taylor did not pop up on the injury report so we have to believe that he will slowly get his lead role back tonight. I could see Taylor having a huge game tonight
Colts Pass Catchers
What has been worse than the Colts running back situation this season? Well, it’s their pass catching situation. Coming into the season, we all assumed that TY Hilton would be involved in the offense at least a little bit. That has been far from the case. Hilton has played nine seasons for the Colts, he has only been targeted under 100 times, twice. His rookie year he was targeted 90 times, he only played 15 games that season and had a 16 game pace of 98. Last year he was targeted 68 times, but that was due to playing only 10 games. He was on pace for 109 targets that season. This season he is on pace for only 88 targets, 50 receptions and 573 yards. Each of those numbers would be season low for 16 game pace numbers. Frustrated Hilton owners have all dropped him in season long with it looking like there is no hope for a turnaround. He has two tough matchups tonight against Butler and Borders, but I have no issues starting him in this showdown. Especially on SuperDraft where his multiplier is 1.75x.
The TEs for Colts where the magic is. TEs have led all pass catchers in fantasy points, five of the weeks this year. They have led the team in fantasy points every week there was only two TEs in the lineup to record a fantasy point. Tonight, the Colts will be without Jack Doyle, and have Mo Allie-Cox questionable. Cox practice in full the previous two days so he will most likely play. FP is a great indicator if a player will play or not. If Cox were to miss, lock in Trey Burton to a majority of your lineups. Cox should be the main guy if he were to play, but I have no problem running Burton still as ownership leverage or even going both TEs in a line.
Titans Pass Catchers
AJ Brown has taken back the number one role since he has been back. Corey Davis was also shining in this offense. Since Brown has came back form injury week 5, he is averaging 8 targets, 5 receptions. 83 yards and 1.2 touchdowns per game. This has equated to the second most fantasy points over this stretch, only behind Davante Adams. Brown is also 6th in the league during this time, with 3.98 fantasy points per touch.
Brown will continue to shine tonight. He has a pretty easy matchup tonight against Xavier Rhodes. Rhodes used to be a great CB, but has taken a huge drop in production over the last two years. He is allowing 1.19 yards per route covered and 0.24 fantasy points per route covered. Rhodes has exceled in denying receptions. He has allowed a league low 45% catch rate. Rhodes has been able to hide behind an amazing defense like we have seen with other corners in the league. He is the worst corner on the Colts and the Titans will be able to take advantage of this matchup tonight.
Corey Davis has been fantastic even with AJ Brown on the other side, outside of last week. Davis saw two straight games of 10 targets, until halting last week with only 3 targets and zero receptions. Davis will be playing with a heavy heart tonight, as his brother died of cancer yesterday. If he does play tonight, I’m not sure how well be will play. We have seen players completely disappear after something like this, or they go out and play for the one who died and completely ball out.
I hope we see people overlook Jonnu Smith tonight. If Corey Davis were to miss, I doubt we see that though. Jonnu has disappeared since Brown and Davis have been back in the lineup together. In three games with a healthy team, Smith has only seen 8 targets, 5 receptions, but he has turned that into 70 yards, and a touchdown. He gets to match up against Bobby Okereke for a majority of the game. Okerekehas given up the second most yards per route covered among TE matchups this week.
Top SuperDraft 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 SuperDraft Player Pool according to multipliers:
Derrick Henry (1x)
AJ Brown (1.3x)
Phillip Rivers (1.4x)
Jonathan Taylor (1.55x)
Jonnu Smith (1.7x)
TY Hilton (1.75x)
Nyheim Hines (1.95x)
Corey Davis (2x)
Mo Allie Cox (2.25x)
Trey Burton (2.3x)
Michael Pittman (2.4x)
Stephon Gostkowski (2.45x)
Rodrigo Blankenship (2.45x)
Jeremey McNichols (3x)
