XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Sunday Night Football has the Lions at the Texans for a 49-point total game with Houston favored by 3.5. It’s a matchup of division leaders and it should be a fun one, especially if Nico Collins makes his return from injured reserve to give the Texans passing game a bit of extra oomph (Nico was designated for return but has only had one limited practice so my guess is that he misses).
Houston
On the Texans side, oh boy, has Joe Mixon been impressive this season. Mixon has played five full games and has 100+ rushing yards and at least one touchdown in each of them. Every single one. The Lions defense started the season looking strong against the run but have now given up 100+ rushing yards to four of their last five opponents and have seen their yards per carry allowed creep up to 4.8, which is 27th in the league. My first instinct when looking at this game was to say “hard to run against the Lions, bad matchup for Mixon,” but that doesn’t actually seem to be true. Houston has shown a willingness to lean heavily on Mixon with 24+ touches in 4/6 games and their receiving corps is awfully banged up: Stef Diggs is out for the season, Nico is likely to miss again, and Tank Dell sustained a back injury in practice on Friday. This feels like a spot for Houston to once again make Mixon the focal point of their offense. It’s also a good exercise in revisiting priors, as I think the general perception across the league is “Lions are really good against the run,” but as the season has progressed we’ve seen the data shift. Obviously, things could change again, they could fix some issues and get better, but as of right now they sure aren’t looking good against run games, and hopefully people don’t prioritize Mixon because of the old perception. Behind Mixon is Dare Ogunbowale in an absolutely minuscule role. Dare has a combined 5 carries and 5 targets in four games since Mixon returned from a brief injury. Even with the injuries to their wide receiver corps that hasn’t opened up an opportunity for Dare. J.J. Taylor is more of Mixon’s direct backup, so if you want to bet on injury scenarios, he would be the one more likely to benefit if Mixon missed time for any reason. Both are playable as extreme punt plays but should be viewed as zero-floor, very high risk options.
Showdown Ownership Projections!
Ownership updates automatically
In the passing game, the Texans started the season with what might have been the strongest wide receiver trio in the league. If Nico isn’t activated and Dell misses, they might have the weakest. For now, I’m going to assume Dell plays and will update the article if we get news to the contrary in time (and if we get late news, make sure you’re in the OWS Discord for updates/discussion on how things would change). Dell has been a major disappointment this season, especially to Best Ball drafters who took him at his early round 4 ADP. His target share on the season is just 15.8% (and that’s with Nico only having played 4 of 9 games, plus Diggs missing a game and a half). The question is, who is the real Tank Dell – the rookie we saw absolutely smash expectations last year, or the guy we’ve seen struggle this year? Compared to last year his aDOT is down significantly, from 14.3 yards to 10.2, but his personal metrics haven’t really changed much – his catch rate, and contested catch rate are similar, he’s not dropping targets, and he’s still achieving about the same separation against defenders. But, all of those numbers are more “solid” than “elite,” leading me to think that while Dell is a capable NFL receiver, he significantly exceeded expectations last year and this year is more of a return to earth than a failure. That said, he was also dealing with more competition with Diggs in town. Since Nico got hurt, Dell has put up games of 13.5, 18.7, and 21.6 DK points – the latter two games would be highly likely to put him in winning lineups and the 13.5 game is a possibility if the game is low-scoring (he’s also had two total dud games, but a 40% hit rate ain’t shabby). He also had his best game of the year against the Jets last week, turning 9 targets into a 6/126/0 line against a tough secondary. I see room for optimism with Dell but he’s not the smash play that we should have seen him as in a similar situation last season. At $8,800, he’s reasonably priced, though, making him a solid piece. In a vacuum, I’d prefer Mixon straight up even though he’s $2k more. I do think Dell might go underowned with Jahmyr Gibbs priced right next to him, so keep an eye on ownership projections. Phew. That was a lot about one player.
Behind Dell, the Texans have been running out Xavier Hutchinson, John Metchie, and Robert Woods (in that order of snaps last week). Hutchinson was the direct backup to Nico and has been playing a ton but has turned 10 targets into just 4 catches for 61 yards since Nico was injured. Metchie was a sub-50% snap rate player for most of the year before playing 63% last week and seeing . . . 2 targets. Whee. Woods has been more consistent with a couple of targets per week and little per-target upside. These guys are all thin. They’re also all cheap. It somewhat reminds me of the situation with the Buccaneers last week and their cheap wide receivers when we said “everyone’s going to be trying to figure out which one to play and maybe the right answer is none of them.” Any of them could find the end zone, or a spike in volume, but given that we’ve seen them operate with them for a few weeks now there’s little to point to positive outcomes other than “football is weird, sometimes funny things happen.” If you want to dip into this pool, I’d take Hutchinson first as the guy who’s on the field most, then Metchie, then Woods last.
At tight end, I keep waiting for Dalton Schultz to do something with the opportunities that injuries are opening up for him but he has yet to score a touchdown or exceed 10 DK points on the year. Unlike most tight ends, Schultz hasn’t been used much near the red zone with just 2 targets all year (even Metchie has more, and C.J. Stroud has attempted 30 red zone passes on the season). Schultz’s role is just really small right now – he’s only really being used between the 20s, but not enough to rack up a lot of yardage or PPR points. Backup TEs Cade Stover and Teagan Quitoriano can be used as thin punt options. Stover is the pass catcher of the duo while Quitoriano is more of a blocker and has yet to see a target on the season.
You must be logged in to view collective notes about a game.
You must be logged in to add notes about a game.