XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Sunday Night Football should be exciting as the Ravens take on the Bills as 1.5-point road favorites in a 50.5 total game. We’ll see if we get the shootout that Vegas is predicting, but if we do, it should be fun. Both teams have some changes in the offseason that we’ll have to pick through as well, and if we can do that successfully, we should set ourselves up with some nice edge in this first game.
BUFFALO
We’ll start with the Bills. James Cook had a fantastic season last year. He ran for 1,000 yards and scored 16 touchdowns. But he also only carried the ball 207 times – fewer than the year before, even – and also saw decreased passing game involvement with just 38 targets. His production was built on elite efficiency (4.9 yards per carry and, of course, averaging a touchdown per game). He only reached a modest 61% snap share once and was below 50% in 10 of the Bills games last year (including the playoffs), and that includes 9 of their last 10 games as Ty Johnson seized more work. He’s going to have an extremely tough time getting anywhere near last year’s level of production while averaging just 15 touches per game, especially against a defense as good as Baltimore’s, and that makes him a pretty clear fade for me at his elevated $9,200 price tag.
They also have Ray Davis on the roster in addition to Johnson. Davis is basically a bowling ball (as Hilow described him last season) and could easily steal some goal line work, while Johnson saw his snap share climb during the second half of the season (he somewhat quietly played 401 total snaps last season – more than Davis and not that far behind Cook’s 584). The challenge is that he’s a third down back but with only modest passing game involvement – just 25 targets on the season to go along with 41 carries – and so while he was on the field a lot, he wasn’t getting a ton of touches when he was out there. At their respective prices, I’d probably still rather play Johnson than Cook. Just one note here: we’ll have to see how projection services rate Cook. If he’s only being projected for a part-time role, it’s possible that we may see his ownership come in below what I’m initially expecting. I think around 20-25% Cook is reasonable, higher than that would be bad.
Showdown Ownership Projections!
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In the passing game, the Bills infuriate us every year by giving 6 or 7 pass catchers meaningful snaps. Mack Hollins is gone and replaced by Josh Palmer, and Amari Cooper has been replaced by Elijah Moore. But, they’re still going to roster and play 5 WRs, I expect. Shakir was their WR1 last season but that came with an extremely low 100 targets. Will he remain the WR1? He’s priced like it, and so far projection services have him projected that way. It’s worth noting that Hilow expects Palmer to lead the team in snaps, and if that is indeed the case, he’s underpriced at just $5,400 and a pretty clear overweight position. Keon Coleman gets caught in the middle price-wise, and then Samuel and Moore are more of dart throws. Samuel did have a couple of games of 60%+ snaps last year (four of them to be precise), though they all came when someone else was hurt (3 without Coleman, 1 without Shakir). It does seem odd the team would sign him and then not use him, and maybe I’m just biased a bit that way, but…maybe he’s on the field a bit more this season? This is a mess of a situation to try and unpack, as it always is with Buffalo – my only strong take here is to be overweight Palmer, and otherwise I’ll just play along the field on the other guys.
At tight end, Dalton Kincaid followed up a successful rookie campaign with a massive sophomore slump, going from 73/673/2 to 44/448/2. Yikes. The Bills are just very, very spread out, and Dawson Knox is still around to eat into his snaps. In the games in which they were on the field together, Kincaid played 564 total snaps while Knox played 605. Knox saw under half the targets, so it’s tough to feel highly confident in him as a DFS play, but he’s viable in Showdown (as are all the Bills pass catchers), even though most of what he does is just sap Kincaid’s upside. If you want to take a strong stand here on any Bills pass catcher, I’m not going to say you shouldn’t – it is at least possible they change things up in how they use their players this season – but like I said above, my only real strong take is to be overweight the field on Palmer and then I’ll probably just follow ownership on the other guys. It’s important to remember in Showdown that you don’t have to take stands on every possible player. You only need to find one real edge in any given Showdown, you don’t have to have strong takes everywhere.
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