XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Sunday night has the Bengals visiting the Giants for a 47.5 total game with Cincinnati favored by 3.5. The Giants have actually been playing better than their 2-3 record indicates in many ways. Daniel Jones’ quarterback rating since Week 1 is over 100 with a 6:1 TD:INT ratio, but they’ve struggled to convert successful drives into touchdowns. Their defense has held their last four opponents to 21 or fewer points, including the Cowboys and the Seahawks. They’re . . . maybe okay? The Bengals, meanwhile, have scored 25 or more points in four straight games and 30+ in three straight, but are just 1-4 on the season because their defense gives it up to everyone. This could be a really interesting and fun game to go after. Let’s see if we can figure it out.
Cincinnati
On the Bengals side, both Zack Moss and Chase Brown were flagged as questionable at some point this week. The coach said they’re both good to go but Brown still enters the weekend with a questionable tag, which is slightly odd. It seems like he’s probably playing but the tag gives the Bengals an out in case he doesn’t. We’ve seen Zack Moss dominate snap counts so far, playing more than double the snaps of Brown and no fewer than 60% in a game but he’s also running for just 3.7 yards per carry. His passing game role has been decent with 4+ targets in all but one game (something I wasn’t really expecting for him), while Brown has seen his snaps increase slightly but his workload jump dramatically with 15 and 12 carries in his last two games. So far Brown has looked like the much more explosive runner (5.6 yards per carry) and it seems like he’s eating into Moss’s workload though Moss still has a big edge around the goal line with 8 touches inside the 5 to Brown’s 3. It’s weird to me that Moss is cheaper than Brown as Moss’s role is, overall, better. I’ll lean his way but think both are viable here. I don’t really want to play them together a lot but don’t think I’d explicitly block it out. I might do a rule of max 2 of Burrow // Moss // Brown (thinking if both RBs hit it’s unlikely Burrow really smashes because that means a lot of the scoring is coming on the ground), or otherwise, I’ll have a rule that applies a negative boost to one RB if the other is on a roster.
Showdown Ownership Projections!
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In the passing game, the Bengals offense has really started to wake up. Obviously, Burrow had a monster game last week, but he’s sitting on a 12:2 TD:INT ratio on the season as a whole while averaging right around 300 passing yards/game in his last four games. Ja’Marr Chase is the star of the show and like most alpha receivers it’s hard to write much about him that everyone doesn’t already know. The Giants defense has been pretty solid, but Chase is elite and completely matchup proof. He’s an awesome play if you can afford him. WR2 Tee Higgins is a little bit of a trickier one for me. I like Higgins as a player, he’d be the WR1 on many NFL teams, but a $9,400 salary is rough for a guy whose career numbers when playing alongside Chase are rough 4.2 // 60 // 0.4. Higgins is a good player but Chase is so dominant that it’s hard for him to consistently deliver ceiling performances while sharing the field. I don’t want to say I’m off him, as he does still have a ceiling (just look at last week), but I think he’s overpriced and I’ll end up underweight. WR3 Andrei Iosivas (Yoshi) has struggled to earn targets when Chase and Higgins are on the field. He had 6 targets in Week 1 when Chase was coming off a shortened training camp, and then 11 in Weeks 2-3 when Higgins missed, but since Higgins returned, Yoshi has just 3 targets in two games out of 70 Burrow dropbacks, yikes. We’ll see if that swings around, but right now it’s hard to view him as more than a punt option.
At tight end, the Bengals are splitting reps three ways with all of Mike Gesicki, Erick All, and Drew Sample seeing work. All has actually seen the largest share of snaps two weeks in a row and has consistently seen targets. Gesicki has the most targets at the position but that was driven by an early season surge, and he’s dropped off some of late (just 3 targets in the last two games), while Sample has been used almost entirely as a blocker this season. On a per-target basis, Gesicki has much more upside than All, as he’s run deeper routes. I’ll lean his way at similar price points.
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