Bengals (

27.5) at
Cowboys (

23)

XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT

Week 14 wraps up with the Bengals visiting the Cowboys for a huge 49.5 total game with Cincinnati favored by 5.5. That gives the Cowboys a pretty healthy implied team total of 22 points, which might seem high with Cooper Rush at quarterback until you realize the Bengals have given up a whopping 28.3 points per game this season. They’ve played some pretty solid teams, but they also gave up 24 to the Panthers and the Raiders (as well as 38 to the Steelers last week), so even mediocre offenses have been putting up points. I think there’s certainly a path where Dallas offense falls flat on its face (they scored 6 against the Eagles and 10 against the Texans with Rush, but they also scored 21 against the Falcons, 34 against the Commanders, and 27 against the Giants), and I think that’s a viable way to play it, but Vegas expects this to be high scoring and that’s the likeliest path. 

Dallas

On the Cowboys side, they’ve finally taken the training wheels off of Rico Dowdle, giving him 22 and 25 opportunities the past two weeks, and he’s rewarded them by rushing for 4.8 yards per carry, catching all 6 of his targets, and leading the offense to two wins in a row. I see no reason for them to lighten up here. Dowdle is also a capable pass catcher and while he isn’t completely game script agnostic, I do think he can still succeed in trailing scripts. There are a lot of expensive plays in this Showdown, but $9,000 is a very reasonable price for a 20+ touch running back in a good matchup. Ezekiel Elliott seems to be getting phased out with just 4 total touches in the past two weeks. You can still play him as a dart throw, but good luck. Fullback Hunter Luepke doesn’t get a lot of offensive touches but I think I’d still prefer him straight up to Zeke as an MME option. 

Showdown Ownership Projections!

Ownership updates automatically

The pass catching corps finally got Brandin Cooks back after a lengthy absence, which completely iced Ryan Flournoy, and I also expect it will continue to reduce Jalen Brooks’ role. Cooks played 39% of the snaps last week and that should increase to at least 55-60% if not all the way to a full-time role as we saw before the injury, and if he gets up to that, Brooks is the likeliest guy to lose snaps. That would leave Dallas with a primary WR trio of CeeDee Lamb, Jalen Tolbert, and Cooks, with midseason acquisition Jonathan Mingo playing a small WR4 and KaVontae Turpin in his normal gadget role. I could be wrong on Brooks vs. Mingo, but my guess is that only one of them will be active anyway, so we’ll know who the WR4 role belongs to. This is a really tough spot to get excited about Lamb. He’s obviously an elite receiver, and he’s seen 10+ targets in 4 of 5 Rush starts, but even with the volume, Rush doesn’t attack downfield so Lamb’s aDOT and yards per reception have plummeted. It’s not impossible for Lamb to hit here – he has 16.2 or more DK points in three Rush starts and that’s without scoring a touchdown, but with the top-tier Bengals priced near him they’re just going to look like much stronger on-paper plays. At the end of the day, I think Lamb’s ownership is probably going to be about “right.” It’ll be lower than the high-tier Bengals, but it should be. So while we’ll get a “discount” from where he would be with Dak Prescott at QB, I don’t think it’s a discount we should jump all over. If he projects under 35% or so, I’d jump on that and go overweight, but that’s about the level that I think is reasonable for him in this offense. Cooks is a guy who has generally hit more on deep stuff in his career and he’s now with a QB who won’t throw deep. At $7k and with an uncertain role, he’s an easy avoid for me. Tolbert, though, at $2,800 looks very attractive as a value play. We’d been expecting him to eventually pass Cooks for the WR2 role earlier in the season before Cooks was injured, and if we still believe that to be the case, he’s clearly underpriced. Turpin’s a low floor but high ceiling (for his salary, at least) gadget guy who can score from anywhere but will have to do so on low volume. 

At tight end, Jake Ferguson will make his return from a two game absence, and since he was out with a concussion I’d expect him to step back into a full role immediately. His backup Luke Schoonmaker saw 20 targets in three games so it’s reasonable to think the volume will be there for him and makes him look like a strong value option at $5,400. Schoonmaker himself will retain some kind of TE2 role and can be included in tourney player pools. This is sort of a stoppable force meets movable object situation as the Bengals defense is truly bad, but so is the Dallas passing offense. I think the odds are pretty good that at least 1 Dallas pass catcher ends up in winning tournament lineups and I will be investing here. 

Cincinnati