Welcome back DFS grinders to another edition of my Thursday Night Football Showdown Throwdown article. Tonight’s game features two divisional rivals in the AFC South. It should be an amazing game tonight as both teams are battling for the top spot in the AFC South. The Colts are ahead in the division series 1-0 so the Texans need to win this to stay alive in the South or risk losing home field for round one of the playoffs. Their first matchup featured 53 total points scored so hopefully we get another shootout tonight.
Vegas Lines
The Texans are 4 point favorites at home against the Colts with a 46 point game total. It looks like it’s pretty even between over and under and spread, in terms of money coming in. So the community is split tonight.
MVP TIER
DeShaun Watson: He is the “optimal” play but I’m not extremely convinced on him tonight as the MVP tonight. He does have the highest floor and ceiling on the slate but that doesn’t always mean he is the correct play at MVP for a majority of your lineups. His 5 rushing touchdowns this year ranks 3rd among QBs. Watson can get in done in the air and on the ground. His rushing touchdown upside makes him a threat to put up the most fantasy points while not correlating with any of his pass-catchers. So you can play him as a lone MVP or a lower priced WR/TE and then run it back with all colts.
Jacoby Brissett: This is my favorite MVP. He has already shown that he can light up this bad Texans pass defense. Dropping over 300 yards and 4 touchdowns and was the 5th QB to pass for 300 against them this year. (Which if Hilton plays lock his over 235.5 passing yards on MKF) Brissett plays much better with Hilton in and it looks like he is on pace to play which is great news. With the projected negative game script, the loss of Mack, and the use of RBs in the passing game; Brissett will be in store for over 30 pass attempts easily. I love stacking him with Hilton and Pascal tonight to maximize his passing correlation.
DeAndre Hopkins: Nukkkkk!! Outside of the QBs Nuk is the only other player I like at MVP. Both run defenses are tough so I’m not looking at the running backs at MVP so it just leaves me with Hopkins. QBs are always the way to go for the safe/cash route, but if you want to get a little different in GPPs Hopkins provides amazing value and ownership leverage. Hopkins is a target monster this year seeing 5 straight games of 10+ targets.
Captains 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 Watson 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 there are definitely a lot more ways to differentiate yourself on Draftkings compared to Fanduel.
Jacoby Brisset: I touched on him earlier in the MVP tier but he is my favorite high priced CPT. You get him $1-2k cheaper than Watson and Nuk, with a similar if not higher ceiling. Followed by a WR stack with him.
TY Hilton: Hilton loves going off against the Texans and it makes it even better when their defense is beyond awful. He has already put up 19.4 fantasy points in this spot earlier in the season. I hate using career splits to forecast future results but over 15 games he is averaging 100 yards and 0.66 touchdowns per game against the Texans. With the lack of WR depth on this team, Hilton will be relied on heavily tonight to produce with a high target share. Plus don’t forget about the lown mask narrative.
Favorite Flex
Obviously I love all the plays I suggested in the CPT’s corner and MVP Tier so you can play them in the flex spots as well. I will suggest a few more plays I love tonight.
Carlos Hyde: I don’t like him in MVP or CPT because he is too expensive but if you can afford him then he’s a great game script play. The Texans are favorited in this game. Hyde’s splits for wins and losses are huge. In losses, Hyde has yet to have more than 12 carries and in wins, he has only gone under 19 carries once this season. Clearly when the Texans have the lead then they are going to run and when they are losing Hyde gets game scripted right out of the game. When leading by one or more scores the Texans run the ball at the 5th highest rate in the league (Per Sharp Football stats). Not every team runs the ball when leading in the game at high rates so you need to know tendencies to take advantage of this. I like stacking the Colts passing attack with Hyde.
Props
Props are what I’m known for at Karma and I’ve made my most money in the Fantasy industry playing props. It’s a safer use of your money playing “cash” type props than playing 50/50s on FD/DK for single game especially. Normally I like to play some safe props than play some GPPs on FD/DK.
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This is a simple correlation play. The Colts are projected underdogs which means they will be throwing the ball more. They lost Mack indefinitely so they need to rely on their passing game even more. Hilton love going off against the Texans so if you give him negative game script and more opportunities to perform he’ll take advantage of that.
