NFL - Jaguars vs. Bengals Showdown Preview
Wow does it feel good to be back providing content to the amazing community that I tirelessly worked to serve over the last few years. I took some time off to focus on some personal things and am finally feeling ready to return. This time there is no money grab or attempt to “buy your services”. I just want to do this for me because at the end of the day I started this to provide free content that I think can help others. It is as simple as that. I think I got lost in trying to make Heating Up a business like some of the other big Daily Fantasy websites when I should have just done what brought me success from the beginning.
I need to revive the community and rebuild from the bottom up. The old Heating Up server had nearly 800 users and only 40-50 were ever active. I want to rebuild that with those that truly just want to have a place to go to talk sports and win some money through having each other’s backs and helping everyone out. This is more than just me… it is about US so come join us today!
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Showdown Theory is truly one of the last things that I think still has a massive edge in the Daily Fantasy community. Most main slates have pretty much become “whoever pays the most for their picks/optimizers/simulations” wins all the top prizes with only the top 1% reaping the rewards every week. While there might not be as many combinations for SD, there is still an edge to be had and I want to take advantage of that. For the NFL Showdown Slates, pricing on all of the players puts almost everyone into a certain “bucket” or tier where you essentially have to play the top scoring guy from each tier to have a chance. I think breaking each Showdown slate into those tiers and targeting the correct guys from each can result in some serious leverage.
You can gain leverage in Showdown a few different ways, but the main three are as follows
Play the ownership game: Find the lower owned pieces and play them.
Modified Roster Construction: Play the “chalk” but in ways the field might not be playing them.
Burn Salary: Don’t use all $50,000 of the salary allotted to you and waste a good amount to get different.
In Showdown the vast majority of the industry does pretty much the same thing. Watch videos from the sharps of the industry (Stokastic, Run Pure, ETR, ShipIt Nation, Pat Mayo, etc.) and form biases based on who they like. Usually the entire industry likes certain players so their ownership skyrockets. This forms pockets players with hyper inflated ownership (called Chalk) where others go under owned and become great leverage. Finding just one pivot from a chalky ownership player to an under owned player can be the difference in splitting the pot with 100+ and just 10-15 people in Showdown. That is what we want to capitalize on with these articles. Identify the chalk and find pivots in each pricing tier to help solidify leverage.
At the end of the day, the one thing you certainly will want to do is always construct your Showdown lineup in a way that fits some sort of narrative. Don’t play all the WRs and no QB. Don’t play 3-4 RBs and then both QBs. Neither of those things will ever correlate enough to make its way to the top and win a GPP. If you CPTN a QB, unless it is Lamar, Hurts or Fields, run it back with 1-2 receiving options because for a QB to be optimal they need to score likely 20+ DK points and for them to do that they have to throw to someone. There are tons of other scenarios, but make your lineup make sense!
Disclaimer: These articles are not intended to be picks. Please don’t take all my leverage plays and throw them in a lineup. That is almost a guaranteed to end in losing money. The field creates chalk for a reason. They are usually great plays and should be played, but not played all together unless you are playing cash games (50/50s and double ups) only. This is specifically written for tournaments, but can still be applied to cash games by focusing more on the chalk plays. At the end of the day, you are the one clicking submit on your lineups so please no hate if the analysis doesn’t end in winning you money every night.
With that being said, let’s take a look at my favorite Captain Picks, a breakdown of all relevant players that might get touches in this game and how we can leverage the chalk in ways to still have a optimal chance at coming in 1st place!
Captain Picks
This slate has the oddest pricing with some key players questionable, a massive spread which introduces blowout risk, a very low implied game total and a lot uncertainty from one team. Genuinely this might be the toughest SD slate to project for in a while. At first glance, there is enough value at the bottom (specifically from the Bengals which is scary) to pay up at CPTN. With the Bengals allowing so many rush and pass yards, the preferred route would be a Jaguar CPTN. I lean towards Evan Engram ($9,300 CPTN) as a good leverage piece up top for a few reasons. Again, the Bengals have allowed the 6th most pass yards/game this season. On top of that they have allowed the 2nd most TE DK points on the year. Everything aligns for him to have a bit of a resurgence after a bit of a dip the last few weeks. It is baffling that he hasn’t scored a TD all season. This could be the spot for that to finally happen for him. He has also had 7+ targets in all but 2 games this season. For this price you really can’t go wrong. Next up would be Calvin Ridley ($13,800 CPTN) who has really crushed it the last few weeks. He plays like a completely different play when Zay Jones is active which he is tonight. His ability to stretch the field opens up a lot for Ridley over the middle. It is really hard to get away from him when he has averaged 26 DK points/game over the last two weeks. The targets are there, the Bengals allow a lot of receiving yards and he is trending. What more could you ask for? Lastly, if you want to leverage the talent that JaMarr Chase ($14,100 CPTN) has and play him at CPTN I actually really like the idea. The concern comes from can Browning get him the ball and I don’t see why not. They can draw up plays to put Chase in favorable spots and let him do the work. They did that Week 3 against the Rams when he had a fairly low ADOT and still turned it into 141 yards on 15 targets. The return of Tee Higgins isn’t a big concern either. He hasn’t looked the same this year and doesn’t really fit the bill for a guy that will thrive with a backup QB. Even unstacked without Browning, I think Chase is a solid option at CPTN at the depressed price tag. You can certainly run any of the spend ups at CPTN, but those 3 stand out the most for me.
Jaguars
The Jaguars are 10 point favorites at home with a 25 point implied team total. There is some concern for how big of a workload Travis Etienne ($10,200) will get given his questionable tag and quite frankly poor run of play lately. From a game theory perspective, I actually think he could be massive leverage if you think the field will come off of him as the 2nd highest priced option. He has only averaged 9.5 DK points/game over the last three weeks which is far from ideal when you are spending this much on him. However, the Bengals have allowed the 2nd most rush yards/game this season with over 1 rush TD/game as well. There is no better spot to get right than this one so I will still be running him out in my lineups. Trevor Lawrence ($10,800) is also in a great spot with the Bengals having an awful pass defense as well. The weapons he has are really condensed down to just 4 guys with everyone else barely getting more than a few snaps or a very low target share. Right now, Calvin Ridley ($9,200) is looking to be that reliable WR1 again with back to back great weeks. He is set up for success tonight and can’t be ignored. Someone I also touched on in the CPTN section is Evan Engram ($6,200) who also in an impeccable spot as well. No need to rewrite the exact same thing I did above. He grades out incredibly well across all the metrics. After these two, you get Christian Kirk ($8,200) who still has a great target share and is producing well even with Ridley playing well right now. I think a big part of the receivers playing so well lately is Etienne has regressed a bit. If we expect Etienne to have a great game the points have to come from someone. It very well could be Kirk or any of the other guys, but with Kirk playing almost completely out of the slot and the Bengal having a very strict slot CB in Mike Hilton it is easy to see how the matchup would be tough for him. Hilton is allowing under 0.2 FP/RR this season which is very solid. This isn’t the easiest spot for Kirk even if you look at the poor Bengals defense numbers as a whole. I don’t hate him because the volume is definitely not going to disappear, but from a price perspective and a matchup perspective he isn’t at the top for me. The last guy really getting any volume is Zay Jones ($5,200) who returned from injury recently. The targets are kind of there with 4 and 3 in the last two games. I wish he was a bit cheaper, but from a leverage perspective I do like him a lot. He is a down field threat that can make big plays on a whim and is always live for a TD in big moments. After these guys, everyone is really a crap shoot so I will go down the list based on price. D’Ernest Johnson ($4,200) has pretty much taken over the backup RB role from Tank Bigsby ($2,200). Tank is only in play if Etienne is out. Johnson on the other hand is appealing. They want to make sure everyone is healthy for the playoffs and I think they start to limit Etienne a bit with the workload to ensure they have him as healthy as possible. I see no reason they don’t give him 6-8 touches to spell Etienne which could be valuable. I think he is a fine cheap option that I would tend to use if I was fading Etienne. I can smell an outlier game from a mile away and that is what Luke Farrell ($2,600) had exactly that last week. He hasn’t had more than 2 targets in a game all season until last week and got priced up pretty significantly. I see no reason to chase that at all. If he beats us oh well I will take that one and move on. Brenton Strange ($200) literally played on 10% less of the snaps and is 13x cheaper. He is questionable towards not playing so keep that news in mind. That could lead to more snaps for Farrell/Engram or more 4 WR sets but that is unlikely with Engram basically being a WR himself. The last two guys to talk about who only get like a couple of snaps max are Tim Jones ($200) and Parker Washington ($200). I doubt they do much of anything, but with the implied total being so big there is a chance it blows out and they get some extra work. All they need is 1 catch at this price to be viable and a few to potentially be optimal. Tim Jones is definitely the one I would go to first.
Bengals
The Bengals are 10 point underdogs on the road with a measly 15 point implied team total. I am going to be completely honest I have zero clue what to do with this team. The offense last week inspired zero confidence BUT there were some positives. Jake Browning ($8,800) did have a pretty solid COMP% at just over 70%. Other than that there wasn’t much that stood out. I think they will need to throw a bit more in this matchup. The Steelers weren’t really able to pull away and force the Bengals to throw the whole game. For that reason alone I do have some intrigue in leveraging to some of the Bengals receivers, specifically JaMarr Chase ($9,400). I don’t care who the QB is you don’t often get Chase under $10,000 on a SD slate so the price is extremely cheap. You don’t need to target him downfield now with Tee Higgins ($7,600) coming back to fill that role. It should open up things for him to get short targets and allow him to play the plays. He was really being used as everything last week to open up the run game that was clearly not working. The role should be different and his target share when they try to get him the ball is incredibly high. I love him in this spot. With the Jaguars allowing the 5th most pass yards/game, I do think atleast one of these receivers gets there. If Higgins really is healthy I see no reason he can’t play well. I think the real concern is Higgin’s role is more of a down field, jump ball type that I don’t know if Browning is going to want to target or if the offense is even going to want to test that. They might use him as more of a decoy to open things up for everyone else. The last time he played he put up 8/110 so there is always a path. I think he is okay leverage, but at the end of the day I am probably not going to get much of him and that is more due to Browning and the role not his talent. The Bengals would be absolutely trolling if Higgins came back and gave Tyler Boyd ($5,600) the big game. He has been incredibly underwhelming with Higgins out and Browning in with no more than 25 yards or 3 catches in that duration. He will run out of the slot and the Jags have been most susceptible to slot WRs so he does have that going for him. I just can’t get there but he won’t garner too much ownership and is still getting the snaps. The most likely thing to happen with all 3 guys playing is Trenton Irwin ($1,800) and Andrei Iosivas ($600) will go back to just getting around 10-20% of the snaps max. I won’t be getting to any of them and I don’t think you should either. The only positive is this could blowout which could get them a few extra snaps. Now for the largest TE group in the league… The Bengals literally run 4 TEs anywhere from 10-20 snaps each. Tanner Hudson ($4,000) is the most expensive, gets the most targets and plays at the 3rd highest rate of the group. Drew Sample ($1,200) gets the 2nd/3rd most targets, plays the most and is vastly cheaper. Irv Smith Jr. ($1,000) is in a similar boat but usually gets the 2nd most snaps. Lastly, Mitchell Wilcox ($800) plays the least and gets the fewest snaps but is still playing. You can pretty much flip a coin on Sample and Irv, but my favorite is still going to be Hudson despite the price tag. When he is getting 4-5 targets/game and Smith/Sample are getting 1/2, the opportunities for a TD are just much higher. It is almost a guarantee that one of these guys has a decent game, but good luck figuring out which based on the numbers. The best bet would be Hudson based on the target share. Lastly, the RB room has been underwhelming most of the season led by Joe Mixon ($7,000). This price is exceptionally low for his upside which is why I have some appeal. Unlike receivers, he is almost guarenteed to get touches. Will they be high value touches is the real question. Nonetheless, he is one of the safer bets for the Bengals. He has had over 8 DK points in literally every game this season with a decent ceiling if he scores. I think what is really going against him is that the Jaguars have only allowed 87 rush yards/game which is 3rd lowest in the league. That stat shouldn’t sway you off of him at all though since he gets 80% of the volume. 80% of 87 is just under 70 yards. That is 7 DK points right there and the catches added on should pump him over 10 DK points. That is if he hits just the average the Jags give up. There is also Trayveon Williams ($400) who might get a couple touches but nothing to write home about. There just isn’t a ceiling unless Mixon were to get hurt which is not predictable and the floor is zero.
DST and K
With the game boasting a very low implied total, there is a good bit of appeal for defenses and kickers here. I would definitely side with the Jaguars DST ($4,800) even though they haven’t scored well lately. The big thing going against them is I think the Bengals do a good job of coaching Browning to not force anything and just get rid of it if there is pressure or not force the passes. I also think the Bengals offense has enough talent to still score even with a backup QB. Their unit as a whole is very solid and can apply pressure to this bad offensive line. I still think they score fine but at an optimal rate that is tough to tell. The Bengals DST ($3,200) is incredibly cheap, but man do I envision them getting scored on with ease tonight. The Jags are playing like a much better team this season and have plenty of avenues to score and move the ball. I wouldn’t go there but if your thing is play the defenses go for and hope the outcome you need happens. As for the kickers given the low scoring environment I like both Evan McPherson ($4,600) and Brandon McManus ($5,000). The Bengals have the weapons to still move the ball but probably not the QB to convert red zone opportunities. The Jags will 100% be scoring and McManus can and will be apart of that.
My Narratives
Evan Engram is a lock for me
Mixon and Chase lead the way for Bengals by a good distance
Ridley > Kirk
TLaw > Etienne
I would play atleast 1 kicker
Punts would be Hudson, Johnson or Zay
I don’t really like anyone below $4,000 at all
Jags 4/2 or 3/3 stacks
Jags win 27-20
