XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Week 16 closes out with the 49ers visiting the Colts. This game has a 46.5 total with San Francisco favored by 3, and as we saw last week, even without a quarterback, this Colts team is still dangerous…or at least they have a solid defense that was able to contain the Seahawks for most of the game. Except now Sauce Gardner is out. And the 49ers offense is much better than Seattle’s. The Colts started the year as the hottest team in the league, going 8-2 in their first 10 games, but have since dropped four straight and lost their starting quarterback for the year. Then they lost their backup quarterback. Now they’ve signed Philip Rivers, who is a literal grandfather. Oh boy. I think Indy’s in trouble here.
INDIANAPOLIS
The Colts are going to try to ride Jonathan Taylor and their defense as best they can. Taylor played 85% of the snaps last week and handled a massive 25 carries (2nd most of the year) to go along with 4 targets. Game script favored him there, of course, as Indy played from ahead for most of the game, but my gut feeling is that they won’t go pass-happy in this one unless they’re down by a lot and it’s quite late. Despite everything, the Colts still have a small chance at making it into the playoffs, and so they’re going to play for that, and the clearest path for success is on the ground via JT. Expect him to handle a massive workload, with the challenge, of course, being whether the Colts can actually score any offensive points. Taylor is still at a premium price, and people are going to want to play CMC and Purdy over him, I think, which should keep his ownership down – he’s risky, but every Colt is risky right now. JT definitely still has a ceiling, though, and makes for an interesting tournament option. Behind JT, Ameer Abdullah is in the RB2 role. Abdullah saw his highest workload of the season last week with 4 carries and 5 targets (!) against a previous high of just 3 opportunities. It’s unclear if this will be sticky at all, but if the QB switch leads to more passing game involvement for Abdullah (and Rivers has always loved his RBs in the passing game), there’s some tournament juice here.
Showdown Ownership Projections!
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In the passing game, the Colts are running out Michael Pittman and Alec Pierce for just about every snap while Josh Downs plays in 11 personnel sets. Downs played 72% of the snaps last week, the most he’s played all season, and with the 49ers pass rush looking extremely mediocre, we could well see another elevated rate of 11 personnel from Indy. We also need to look at Rivers himself a bit. He’s 44 years old and hasn’t played in the league in literally years. He is, in fact, a grandpa. Old Man Rivers might sound like the name of a Scooby Doo villain, but it fits. He actually played reasonably well last week as a game manager, completing 67% of his passes, but he only averaged 4.4 yards per pass attempt. That’s the lowest in the NFL by a WIDE margin – next lowest is Dillon Gabriel at 5.1, and I’m not sure if you were aware, but Gabriel has not exactly been considered a good NFL QB this year. All of this is to say, I don’t think that Rivers is likely to attack deep. We’re likely to see a lot of short passing, which somewhat nukes Alec Pierce, who has the highest aDOT on the team. I just don’t think Rivers can hit him deep. If we look at the target distribution last week against Seattle, Tyler Warren had 6 targets, Pittman, Downs, and Abdullah each had 5, JT had 4, and Pierce had 1. Pierce is overpriced but is also likely to go very low owned – very risky given Rivers’ limitations, but viable in tournaments. Pittman is the epitome of “fine” – his price is reasonable, he’s a reasonable play. Downs is my favorite wide receiver option, given his discounted $5,600 price, and if he continues to play 70%+ of the snaps, he looks like a bargain.
Then, at tight end, Warren is my favorite overall Colts pass catcher. I think he’s a solid bet to lead the team in targets again, but his salary is only the 3rd highest out of the 4 main pass catchers. He’s my guy. Mo Alie-Cox will play a little bit of TE2 and can be considered as a very thin punt option, but on an extremely limited passing offense, he’s suuuuper thin.
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