XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Week 5 begins with the Bucs visiting the Falcons for a 43.5 total game with Atlanta favored by 1.5. Atlanta is off to kind of a weird start this season. After a much-vaunted offensive regime change, including dumping Arthur Smith and bringing in Kirk Cousins at quarterback, the Falcons have scored just 10, 22, 17, and 12 points on offense. Kirk Cousins has averaged just under 30 dropbacks per game and only 216 passing yards with a 4:4 TD/interception ratio. Not great. The Falcons defense has kept them in games, limiting opponent scoring despite not really getting after the quarterback. They have just four sacks all season but have also allowed only 21.3 points per game. The Bucs, meanwhile, have alternated looking like an absolutely offensive powerful against Washington and Philly, but then barely squeaked by Detroit, and somehow completely failed to get anything going against the Broncos. The Tampa defense, however, has been even better than the Falcons. Despite having to fight through injuries, they’ve racked up eight sacks (to be fair, six of those were in one game) and are allowing just 19.5 points per game. On paper it feels like the edge goes to the Bucs – both teams have done well at preventing their opponent from scoring (though the Bucs have done it better), but Tampa’s offense has looked solid overall while Atlanta’s has been stuck in the mud.
Atlanta
We’ll start on the Falcons side. Bijan Robinson is listed questionable with a hamstring injury, which of course has huge implications for the slate. Bijan played a season-low 64% of the snaps last week and saw just 11 touches while RB2 Tyler Allgeier played 38% of the snaps and handled 10 touches. Obviously, if Bijan misses, Allgeier is wildly mispriced at $4,800, and they would likely bring a practice squad guy up to back him up (“running back” Avery Williams has yet to see an offensive touch and is really more of a special teams guy, though he could still be used as a punt option just in case they surprise us). If Bijan plays, it’s a tough spot. The matchup is good as the Tampa run defense is not what we’re used to seeing in years past (allowing a whopping 5 yards per carry, 29th in the league) but it’s a bit tough to trust a running back playing through a soft tissue injury on a short week. I want exposure to the Falcons running game due to the matchup, but it’s risky if Bijan’s in. I’d probably end up roughly matching the field on Bijan ownership but trying to overweight Allgeier in case his role is bigger than expected or Bijan aggravates the hamstring during the game.
Showdown Ownership Projections!
Ownership updates automatically
The Falcons offensive struggles have resulted in awfully cheap prices for their skill position players. Drake London is $8,800, Kirk Cousins is $8,600 (well below where we normally see QBs in Showdown); Darnell Mooney is at $7,200 which is pretty fair, while Kyle Pitts at $5,600 might still be overpriced given how poor he’s been. Since Week 2, the Falcons three top wide receivers have played nearly every snap – London, Mooney, and Ray-Ray McCloud. McCloud was a half-time player in Week 1 as Pitts played nearly every snap, but Atlanta has pulled back on Pitts as he’s continued to disappoint and replaced him with more field time for McCloud. London, to me, feels like more of a floor than a ceiling play, at least the way this offense is currently designed. He’s going into the third year of his career with just three 100+ receiving yard games to his name, and while the hopes were high for Atlanta’s offense this year, nothing we’ve seen is really indicative of success – neither actual scoring nor the underlying passing game volume, which has remained below average. London’s not really a big play guy and tends to need a lot of volume to really smash, and we haven’t seen that kind of passing volume from Atlanta (the 12 targets last week were, of course, encouraging – there is some ceiling in here somewhere). He’s fine but nothing really gets me excited about playing him. Mooney is a guy who I was excited about when he was cheaper, but as his price has come up, he’s now more fairly priced. I do think he has more “boom” in his game than London with the consistent deep work he gets, and I think he’s a better captain choice than London because his role gives him access to a different type of ceiling, but deep ball specialists also have scary-low floors (i.e. perfect for tournaments). McCloud is also listed questionable but has been listed limited twice this week so I expect him to play and he looks very interested as a value play. $3,400 is too cheap for him, even if his upside is limited due to mostly running short area routes – he’s a better play on a PPR site like Draftkings, but he shouldn’t be priced below the kickers.
At tight end…well, Kyle Pitts has just been really, really bad. Hilow and Mike were on it all offseason in their Best Ball analysis – he seems to be a better athlete than he is a football player. He’s on the field enough to where I’m sure he’ll have a couple of decent games this year, and in Showdown it’s hard to X a guy out entirely, but he has 15 targets on the year and outside of one nice 50-yard catch, he hasn’t really done very much with just eight catches. I’ll keep him in my MME pool, probably, but be underweight where I expect the field to play him. Finally, TE2 Charlie Woerner can be viewed as an MME punt option.
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