XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Week 1 is in the books and we’re off to Week 2, starting with the Bills visiting the Dolphins on Thursday night. This game has a juicy 49-point total with Miami favored by a point and a half, so Vegas is expecting a close, high-scoring game. Let’s see if we can figure this one out.
Buffalo
We’ll start with the visiting Bills. In Week 1, James Cook played 61% of the snaps and handled 19 carries while also catching 3 of 3 targets. Worth noting here is that the Bills ran just 56 offensive plays (and 33 of them were run plays even though they were behind throughout the entire first half), making Cook’s 22 opportunities look even more impressive. Just a 61% snap share implies some risk to the profile, and I’d take the under on him maintaining an average of 22 opportunities per game unless the snap count comes up. At $9k, you kind of need him to keep that 20+ opportunity workload to justify his salary, especially with Allen stealing so many touchdowns (Allen had nine carries and two scores and out-carried Cook 5-3 in the red zone). Cook’s usage and his team’s offense give him ceiling but he’s overpriced for his median outcome here. I’m (almost) never going to X out a team’s RB1 in tournaments but I’m not especially excited to play Cook here and will likely end up underweight. Behind Cook, Ty Johnson played 23% of the snaps with three opportunities, while rookie Ray Davis played 10% of the snaps with four opportunities. Over the course of the season, I expect Davis’ role to grow at Johnson’s expense, but right now both are only MME dart throws as long as they’re sharing the RB2 role.
Showdown Ownership Projections!
Ownership updates automatically
In the passing game, the Bills surprised me last week with rookie Keon Coleman leading the wide receivers in snaps (73%) and targets (5). Keep in mind, the Bills only attempted 23 passes, but I was expecting Khalil Shakir to have the biggest role, and instead, Shakir was only a 53% snap rate player (and 3 targets, including a score). We also saw Mack Hollins play a significant role with 58% of the snaps, while Curtis Samuel surprisingly barely played (27%) and Marquez Valdes-Scantling rounded out the wide receiver corps with a small 21% snap share role. Tight end was dominated by Dalcon Kincaid at 84% of the snaps with Dawson Knox at 58% and Quintin Morris at 10% – thus the Bills had 2 TEs on the field roughly half the time.
Week 2 Reminder
Now is the point where I note that this is only Week 2, and we have to be careful not to overreact to Week 1. Will these trends continue? I have no idea. But what I do know is that most projection systems are going to project that whatever happened in Week 1 will likely continue in Week 2. For example, Curtis Samuel will project pretty poorly. So, if you want to bet that the Bills will run things differently in Week 2, there’s generally an ownership discount on players who sucked in Week 1. Overall I’d expect the main guys here to be Kincaid, Coleman, and Shakir. I’d expect Samuel to ramp up a bit as the season goes on (he had a preseason injury he was recovering from), but I don’t know if we’re going to see a massive jump for Samuel just in one week. I would view this as the main trio being the most attractive pieces and everyone else being a punt play. Samuel is significantly overpriced for what we saw in Week 1 and is thus enormously risky, but all of Kincaid // Shakir // Coleman are very underpriced and are attractive value options in the mid-range. The field can see this too, of course, so expect them to be popular, though the three of them being priced so closely together will somewhat spread out ownership. I’ll personally just lean towards whoever is the lowest owned and let the field somewhat dictate my stance, but I want exposure to all of them.
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