XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Week 6 begins with the 49ers traveling to Seattle to take on the Seahawks in a 47.5 total game in which San Francisco is favored by 3.5. The 49ers have had a frustrating start to the season. They’re 2-3, though all three losses were by less than a touchdown and they have a positive point differential. Seattle, meanwhile, jumped out to a 3-0 start before losing to the Lions on the road (nothing to be ashamed of) and the Giants at home (okay, definitely something to be ashamed of). The 49ers have, of course, absorbed quite a few injuries on offense, while Seattle has thus far been healthy, which could explain some of San Francisco’s struggles. The 49ers are basically back to full health now except for Christian McCaffrey, who won’t be back this week but hopefully will return soon.
Seattle
On the Seahawks side, the backfield clearly belongs to Kenneth Walker. Walker has generally been viewed as a 2-down back but the Seahawks talked about getting him more involved in the passing game this preseason and this is one of the rare preseason storylines that has come true. Through three games, Walker has 16 targets after seeing 37 in 15 games last year. Last week, Seattle fell behind early, leading to Walker only getting five carries, but he did get a career-high 8 targets and played a season-high 67% of the snaps. He’s not quite a bell cow in that his snap share is still hovering in the 60s, but the passing game role gives him some significant insulation from the game script risk he carried in his first two seasons. The matchup here is not great, but it’s important to remember that running backs can always find their way to multi-touchdown games (witness Walker scoring three times against the Lions elite run defense in Week 4 on just 12 carries). There’s nothing to point to him as an exceptional play, but he’s solid in all formats and (obviously) becomes stronger in builds predicated on the Seahawks upsetting the 49ers. Behind Walker is Zack Charbonnet, who played well in two games when Walker missed time. Charbs is now priced like an RB2 again and he’s had 5 targets in each of the last two games with Walker active, so he does carry some upside, especially if you think the 49ers win. Walker and Charbonnet are best in opposing game scripts, so while I wouldn’t completely rule out playing them together, I’d try to use rules to avoid having too much of the pairing, and I don’t think I’d play Charbonnet in Walker-captained lineups.
Showdown Ownership Projections!
Ownership updates automatically
In the passing game, Seattle trots out DK Metcalf, Jaxon Smith-Njigba (JSN), and Tyler Lockett at wide receiver. I just wrote this up two weeks ago, talk about Déjà vu. Let’s review: Metcalf is an awesome player but his target share is a modest 21.6% – not great for a WR1. That leaves him reliant on big plays and/or touchdowns, and while $9k is a nice price for Metcalf, that has to be taken in the context of the slate in which there are many strong options at the higher end of the price range. He’s fine but overpriced for his volume. JSN is seeing a similar target share with less upside per target, and he’s now $7k (he was $6.6k against the Lions while Metcalf was over $10k). JSN brings a high floor due to running high catch rate routes, but that also leaves him dependent on a lot of volume in order to find upside, and he’s also right around a 20% target share. Eesh. Lockett is no longer as explosive as he used to be but I think he still has upside. At $5,400, he’s my favorite Seattle pass catcher when price is considered. Metcalf’s clearly the most talented guy in the Seattle WR trio but I think it’s closer than the prices indicate, and while I’ll have exposure to all of them, I’ll likely have the most of Lockett due to the value of his price. Jake Bobo will play a few rotational WR snaps and can be ignored outside of MME punt plays.
At tight end, I was half right, and half wrong last time on the Noah Fant/Pharaoh Brown roles. Fant has played fewer snaps in the games since Brown returned from injury, but we’ve also been seeing Fant’s role trend up while Brown’s trends down. In the past three games, Fant has snap shares of 44%, 57%, and most recently 69%, while Brown has gone 47% // 31% // 14%. I thought Brown might eat more into Fant’s workload but we haven’t really seen that, and that revives my interest in Fant as a cheap value option at just $3k. Seattle hasn’t really passed a lot to their tight ends this year (just 18 targets to Fant on the season on 199 Geno Smith dropbacks), but we’re going to need some sub-kicker value options on this slate and Fant looks like one of the strongest.
You must be logged in to view collective notes about a game.
You must be logged in to add notes about a game.