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 4. Let’s start week 5 with tons of green on this Thursday Night Football showdown slate! Tonight, we will be having the much awaited Super Bowl rematch between Tom Brady and Nick Foles. I know Brady is itching to get a rematch against Foles after he completely showed him up in Super Bowl 52, as the Eagles beat the Patriots 41-33. That game almost broke the record for most total yards accumulated in a game. Make sure 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.
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 it does not. This will lead to more unique lineups and less ties for DraftKings compared to FanDuel. Which 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 Buccaneers are 3 and a half point favorites tonight against the Bears. With a 44.5-point game total. There has been some line movement this morning. The Buccaneers moved from -5.5 to -3.5 and the total has dropped only a half a point since lines opened.
Historical Matchup
Historical Matchups don’t really matter to me tonight because these two teams have brand new Quarterbacks. This will be the first time since the battle of Super Bowl 52 between hero and zero. Nick Foles, then back up for Carson Wentz, tried to make a name for himself in the playoff run that shocked the world.
12/09/18 Philly: 41 NE: 33 NE Spread: -4.5 O/U: 49
Quarterbacks
The QB situation is going to be interesting tonight. Tom Brady will be without key weapons; Chris Godwin is out with a Hamstring injury, OJ Howard is out for the season with an Achilles tear, LeSean McCoy is out with an ankle injury, Justin Watson is out with a chest injury, Mike Evans did not practice all week and is considered Questionable with an ankle injury, Leonard Fournette is doubtful with an ankle injury, Scotty Miller is Questionable with a groin/hip injury yesterday was his first practice of the week for him and he was limited. So, we can see Brady will be without key guys and could be missing more. On a short week after throwing the ball 46 times, this is the first time he has done this since week 12 of last year and only twice in the last three years. At his age that should this should cause some concerns, but as we all know, Brady has an amazing recovery process and if anyone can do it at his age it’s him. Last year when he threw for 47 pass attempts, he ended up throwing 169 yards in a loss against the Chiefs the following week. This is a tough defense, and with limited passing weapons watch out for a potential floor game from him tonight.
Nick Foles on the other hand is coming off an underrated outing against an extremely efficient Colts defense. Foles put up 250 yards one touchdown and one interception against a Colts defense who was only allowing 151 passing yards per game, 4 touchdowns and 6 interceptions over three games. Three of the four touchdowns came in game one for the Colts. Foles will have a much easier matchup and will be forced to throw the ball more. Tampa’s pass defense has been off and on this season. They have allowed two QBS to pass for more than 290 yards, while also allowing less than 220 yards to two QBs. What the Bucs do excel in is sacking the QB. They have 14 sacks over those four games as well. With how good the run defense is for the Bucs and the projected negative game script for Foles he should easily be the better option at Quarterback tonight.
Running Backs
I touched on this earlier but the Bucs will be without two of their three main running backs tonight. McCoy is out with an ankle injury and Fournette is doubtful with and ankle injury also. The Bucs will be left with only two guys, Ronald Jones and Ke’Shawn Vaughn. Last game the snap shares were divided 50 for Jones and 20 for Vaughn. Vaughn was mainly used as a passing catching back. He ran a route on 60% of snaps, while Jones was mainly used as a runner. He ran a route on 50% of his snaps, but still saw 21 rushing attempts. The Bucs rarely use their backs for pass blocking which raises their value immensely. With the Bucs being 3.5-point favorites, the game script should favor Jones more than Vaughn, but if the Bucs go down early expect $1000 Vaughn to have a big role in this offense and easily pay off his salary. If there was more to pay up for tonight, I would consider playing him in CPT, but you can’t do that unless Evans and Miller are both in. You just don’t need to save that much salary. Both running backs are also playable in a line together. We aren’t normally able to do that but tonight is one of those slates. Vaughn is just way too cheap. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see something similar to what the Packers did on Monday if Evans or Miller are out.
David Montgomery is in a very tough matchup tonight. The Bucs have been fantastic shutting down the running game all season. They did the same thing last year as well. The Bucs are tied for league leaders with the Steelers in yards per carry, only allowing 2.7 yards per carry. They are also second in the league only behind the Steelers for rushing yards allowed per game. The Bucs allow 64.5 yards per game, while the Steelers allow only 40. The Bucs held Kamara to 12 rushes for 16 yards, Christian McCaffrey to 59 yards on 18 carries, Melvin Gordon to 26 yards on 8 carries, and Joshua Kelley to 7 yards on 9 rushing attempts. They have been phenomenal, there is no denying that, but Montgomery does provide value in the passing game though. That is a statement I thought I would never say, but here we are in 2020, weird things happen. Montgomery saw a career high routes run with 37, as well as a career high in targets with 6. If Montgomery can fall into the end zone and see four or five catches tonight he can pay off salary. The running matchup is just so bad, that he’s really a scoring dependent play with little floor. Which, hey, is perfect for showdown slates.
Bears Pass Catchers
The Bears have one main pass catcher in Allen Robinson then it starts to get more of a gray area between WRs. The Bears have a number of different weapons out wide. Darnell Mooney is slowly becoming Nick Foles second favorite target. He has 15 targets over the last two games and only six in the first two games. This correlates with the addition of Nick Foles into the starting lineup. Last week Mooney was second on the team in air yards with 120, while barely missing out on being top 10 in the league in air yards. Robinson had 129 which ranked 6th best in the league for week 4. Foles really narrowed his target field, with 229 of his air yards going to Robinson and Mooney. This is 70% of his air yards for the week. With Mitch, he favored Anthony Miller over Mooney. Miller was second in air yards both of the first two weeks of the season. Miller is more salary than Mooney, so I will be leaning Mooney over Miller in a majority of lineups.
Jimmy Graham and Demetrius Harris are the two main TEs in this offense and you can’t sleep on them. Harris has seen two and three targets over the last two games and is only $400. He also saw a red zone target. If he can sneak into the end one with another red zone target than he is a sneaky play tonight. Jimmy Graham is a highly volatile player. We saw him used heavily in the red zone the first couple games but has disappeared lately. He is leading the team in red zone targets, but didn’t see a target in week 2 or 4 in the red zone. It is tough to trust him on a normal slate, but for showdowns he is definitely in play. Tampa was so bad against TEs last year, but this year they have played amazing barely allowing any fantasy points to TEs. Graham has the worst TE matchup on the slate according to PFF. However, the only thing going for him would be his end zone upside, David is giving up 6 inches and 30 pounds to Graham. This will lead to success, depending on how many targets he gets in the end zone.
Buccaneers Pass Catchers
The Bucs pass catchers are full of injuries. They will be without Godwin, Howard, and Watson. They will possibly be without Miller and Evans as well. This could leave us with a lot of value at WR. We won’t know this news until closer to lock so make sure you pay attention to news or hope in our DISCORD to stay up to date on news. If for some reason one or both of those guys are ruled out, we will have two guys at $200 to play; Jaydon Mickens and Tyler Johnson. Mickens is more of the special teams’ guy, so I trust Johnson more if one is ruled out. Johnson played both slot and outside WR, so he can play both spots depending who is out and for only $200 you can really save a ton of salary tonight. With Vaughn and Johnson it opens up a lot of salary to pay up at CPT tonight, which is probably what I will be doing. This slate will be influenced by injury news. If one of Miller or Evans play the other is most likely a lock unless they are just being used as a decoy. I could see them using Evans as a decoy and the Bears still doubling him. Johnson is going to be my favorite play with him running slot and being matched up against Buster Skrine, who is one of the worst Corners in the league.
We also have Rob Gronkowski and Cameron Brate to deal with tonight. These guys are mainly TD or bust for me. Brate always has that touchdown upside and if Evans misses, they will need a big body to help with the red zone work. Six out of seven of the top red zone targets for the Bucs are potentially missing the game today so there could be a lot of red zone work to be spread around.
Coach’s Corner
We have one of the top MME (Mass Multi Entry) tournament players in the world joining 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 as well. Make sure to check him out if you want more content for tonight.
