NFL - Steelers vs. Titans 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
Good lord is this game about to be an absolute train wreck. Atleast we don’t have to watch the Raiders piss away Davante Adams’ career. There is a ton of value on this slate and given only a few real spend up options, you can jam in just about anything you could want. I always target WRs vs. TEN so of course my first option at CPTN will be Diontae Johnson ($12,600 CPTN). He is far too cheap for the role he is assuming since coming back from injury. He has 12 and 16 DK points in those two games with 20 combined targets. He has such a safe floor with the volume and the matchup is solid. The Titans CBs just play one side so their is no real definitive CB matchup for Diontae, but when he will line up against Kristian Fulton there is a pathway to a ceiling game. Fulton has not been good this season giving up 0.35 FP/RR which is in the top 10% of the league. As bad as the Titans secondary is, the Steelers give up even more pass yards and pass TDs so DeAndre Hopkins ($16,800 CPTN) if you can fit him in and if he plays has to be in the conversation. We finally saw the TD regression in a big way after going 6 weeks without one to the tune of 3 TDs on 4 catches last game. I love that Levis is willing to push the field and let Hopkins go up and do what he does best. He is in an amazing spot against old man Patrick Peterson who is clearly declining. He might have highest ceiling on the slate on the slate outside of the last CPTN pick for me which has to be Derrick Henry ($17,400 CPTN). As bad as both secondaries are at stopping the pass, the Steelers rush defense has allowed the 6th most rush yards/game this season which feeds right into Henry’s strengths. We now know he is going to stay in Tennessee so those trade rumors swirling are gone. He has massive play upside and can break a slate on any given night. The volume and upside are there. I also see a bit of a TD regression coming for him because he only has 3 rush TDs on the season. This seems like a great spot for him to add to that. Other than these three, you can really fit in a lot of options on this slate at CPTN but those are my top three.
Steelers
The Steelers are 2.5 point favorites at home with an appalling 19.5 point implied team total. The fact that you can be favorites with that total is crazy to me. This game is a complete crap shoot. It looks like Kenny Pickett ($9,200) is going to play whether you think that is a good or a bad thing. He has virtually no ceiling failing to eclipse 20 DK points once this season. I just don’t see a path for him tonight even against a porous pass defense, but this would be the spot for him to finally have a good game. I could actually see him being good leverage tonight at lower ownership with the injury status up in the air and him looking outright bad this year. He could pepper his WRs with volume, not throw any TDs and they will guarenteed outscore him and I wouldn’t be surprised in the least that it happened. Diontae Johnson ($8,400) and George Pickens ($8,800) are just about the only two guys that are getting any sort of WR volume. They play on north of 90% of the snaps each and easily see 80% or more of the WR targets every week. I really think those are the only two WRs you should target from Pitt tonight. I heavily lean Diontae because the targets are much more secure, but for GPPs Pickens is a good option. He is a lot more boom or bust but the boom games have GPP winning upside. I am very concerned though at just 1 catch last week and what got him there was it was for a TD. However, they had a QB carousel last game. With Pickett hopefully playing the whole game that should go up. I have always been more of Diontae Johnson fan which is why I am more biased. If you want a strong floor with maybe a lower ceiling, go Diontae. If you want a very low floor but a massive ceiling, go Pickens. After that Allen Robinson ($2,200) is the only one getting more than 30% of the snaps (he is seeing 70% of the snaps) but only 1 target in each of the last two games is not something I want to go to plain and simple. With Diontae back he just doesn’t have much of a volume role. I would rather look to other cheap options. I guess we have to talk about Calvin Austin ($1,800) and Miles Boykin ($200) who will see a couple snaps. I actually like Austin as a player, but he is only playing on around 20% of the snaps. However, in those snaps he is doing a lot more than anything Robinson is doing. Robinson played 70% of the snaps last week and saw 1 target. Austin played on 27% of the snaps (18 total snaps) and saw 2 targets and 2 rush attempts. I think he is a decent shout in GPPs, but he could easily bust if the volume on the limited work is not there. We might as well transition to the TE group that is an absolute dumpster fire. Conner Heyward ($2,800) is leading the group in snaps and finally saw some decent targets last week. I would much prefer him over AR tonight. He had 6 targets and 5 catches last game and has 4 DK points or higher in each of the last 3 games. You don’t often see that from guys that aren’t backup pass catching RBs this cheap. I kind of like him tonight actually, but there will be a decent amount of ownership on him so keep that in mind. You also have Darnell Washington ($200) the rookie TE who has a bright future, but I don’t think it is here or right now. He is barely playing any snaps and hasn’t seen a target in the last two weeks even without Patty Freiermuth out. That is a no for me dog. The same can be said for Rodney Williams ($200) who is playing on about the same number of snaps as Washington but is purely a blocker. Don’t go there. Lastly, the backfield is essentially a 50/50 split between Najee Harris ($7,200) and Jaylen Warren ($6,400) with Najee getting more of the rushing work and Warren a bit more of the passing game work. With DK scoring catering more to pass catchers I am leaning Warren in every way. I don’t think Najee is that good anyways and Warren looks better all around. The Titans rush defense has been very solid this season which even further pushes the needle towards Warren being more effective. There is a path though for not needing either of them, but I would strongly lean Warren in this matchup.
Titans
The Titans are 2.5 point underdogs on the road with a 17 point team implied team total. I actually think the Titans hit this mark pretty easily given the Steelers defense is really bad and Will Levis ($9,600) actually looked like a competent NFL QB last week. He had a solid completion %, over 230 yards and 4 pass TDs with no turnovers in his first career game. He was able to find his #1 target DeAndre Hopkins ($11,200) multiple times for a TD, but didn’t really target him a ton. That is what happens when you score deep TDs all the time. They didn’t even have to throw that much, but I expect that to go up a bit. At Levis’ price and the fact that I don’t like Pickett, I will probably play him a good bit. However, if you play him you have to get a pass catcher and if that is Hopkins you are using a lot of ownership on the Titans so roster construction would lean towards stacking the Titans and I don’t know if I want to do that with this implied total. It would be unique to do that so from an ownership perspective I kind of like it. I just don’t know if spending that much on two Titans is a great idea and Derrick Henry ($11,600) might be in the best spot. He is going to get big volume, has slate breaking upside and there is enough value on this slate to make him fit. I think the optimal move will be pick two of these guys and fade the other for a cheaper option. It really is a crap shoot though. My first thought is this game is a bore fest and you see an optimal with kickers, RBs and DSTs which caters to Henry being my favorite and then Levis and Hopkins close behind. After these three it is an absolute crap shoot as to who will produce. Treylon Burks ($3,800) and Nick Westbrook-Ikhine ($3,400) are next in line with about 50% of the snaps each. It was nice to see Burks back, but they both only got 2 targets last week. NWI got the lucky TD which I hate chasing and they gave up a lot of draft capital to acquire Burks so I am going to almost always side with him and hope he pans out. He is really cheap for the upside and I expect them to give him more snaps this week. He is cheap and probably won’t be too highly owned. He definitely falls into the bucket of guys that I am not rushing to roster but if I get him then I won’t be mad. Then you have Chris Moore ($400) and Kyle Philips ($800) who are the defacto WR4 and WR5, might see 30% of the snaps max and won’t get too many targets. I think Moore is the one that loses snaps with Burks coming back so I won’t go there. However, I do have some interest in Philips. He had 3 targets last week out of the slot and this week he will draw Keanu Neal who has allowed the most FP/RR this season at an astounding 0.51 FP/RR. If he can run the routes I would imagine the efficiency will be there. If the Titans were smart they would try to involve him tonight and at this price and projected ownership you can’t go wrong. The TE group I also have some interest in. Chig Okonkwo ($4,200) got 6 targets last week and a rush attempt which is nice to see. He has underwhelmed this year, but with Levis willing to stretch the field and Chig being more of a downfield threat I actually think he can be a force tonight. Hell put him in the slot and let him eat Neal alive. He is trending in the right direction, but the only concern is the Steelers have not allowed a lot of production to TEs this year and they have faced some solid TEs (Andrews, Kittle, Engram, Njoku and Schultz). He is a boom or bust spot, but the avenue for him to have a boom game is there. I wouldn’t go to Trevon Wesco ($200) or Kevin Rader ($200) who have a combined 2 targets on the season. You could win big even with them scoring a random TD because literally no one will go there. It is Chig or bust if I am playing a Titans TE. The only other guy to really talk about is Tyjae Spears ($5,400) who I think is too expensive for a backup RB even if he catches passes. However, if I am going to like Warren I guess I have to like Spears. The thing with Warren is he gets more volume. Spears does make for good leverage because he will get some touches, but I much prefer Henry who I know will get volume. The argument for Warren is Harris sucks and Warren gets more volume.
DST and K
If you read these articles weekly you should know by now I am not a big fan of playing DST or Ks. I am probably going to go against that tonight. These two offenses are like really bad, especially the Steelers. If Levis can actually repeat his performance from last week or something close then maybe I will change my mind on them. Neither of these teams score well enough being in the bottom 10 in points scored/game this season. I much prefer the Titans DST ($4,400) but they did just trade their best defensive player Kevin Byard to the Eagles. Atleast they are cheap and Pickett is prone to sucking and turning the ball over. I don’t hate them. I think the Steelers DST ($5,600) is just a bit too expensive so they are a bit tougher to get to, but Levis is still a rookie that is prone to regress after his first game heroics. Kickers are the ones I like the most. Chris Boswell ($5,000) and Nick Folk ($4,600) will likely be a focal point of my lineups. If this is a 13-10 game like I expect then the position players will have a tough time getting there. Kickers in low scoring games always hold more value and I just don’t see a path for these team magically finding offensive efficiency/consistency and scoring TDs tonight. There will be FGs made so they hold a decent floor if you ask me. Flip a coin on them, but I prefer Folk because I trust Levis and Henry a bit more to actually move the ball down the field and get in position to score.
My Narratives
I see a path to not playing any QBs
Kickers will be king tonight (I will die on that hill and live with the outcome)
Get weird with double RB builds and high volume WRs
If I am playing a QB it would be Levis
Burks > NWI
Diontae > Pickens
Warren > Najee (and Spears)
Use Philips and Heyward for cheap punts
Literally any roster construction works
Titans win 16-13
