XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
After a boring Thursday night matchup, Week 3’s Showdowns become a lot more interesting on Sunday with the Chiefs visiting the Falcons. We’ve got a 46.5 total game with Kansas City favored by 3, which feels a bit on the low side to me, but I’m not really a game total sort of guy. What I do know is the Chiefs offense feels a lot more fun with some actual pass catchers after Travis Kelce, and the Falcons offense sure feels a lot more fun with some actual coaches sans Arthur Smith.
Atlanta
We’ll start with the home team. The Falcons are feeling great after Philly gifted them a ton of extra time for a final drive, leading to a win, but now having to turn around and face the Chiefs next is a rough schedule. They’ll send out Bijan Robinson in a big lead-back role. Bijan has handled 32 carries and 10 targets through the first two games of the year but we do need to note that backup Tyler Allgeier went from 3 carries on 18% of the snaps in Week 1, to 9 carries and 1 target on 21% of the snaps in Week 2. I’d guess the latter is more where his role settles in, which would torpedo the folks who want Bijan to see 25+ touches per game. I’d guess Bijan settles into more of the 18-22 touch range but with a healthy dose of those coming in the passing game. I want to really like Bijan but he’s the most expensive player in the game and he’s attached to the weaker offense so it’s hard for me to really fall in love here. I believe his ceiling is massive and we just haven’t seen it yet, but that’s the kind of play I’d rather make on a main slate when I can get him at lower ownership vs. the ~50% ownership that the top plays tend to come in around on Showdown. I’ll probably end up trying to slightly overweight him in the captain spot but underweight him in flex. Allgeier falls into the “RB2s are valuable in Showdown” bucket – he’s a little too expensive for his workload, and he hasn’t had passing game involvement but if he falls into a touchdown or if something happens to Bijan he could quickly become a necessary piece.
Showdown Ownership Projections!
Ownership updates automatically
The Falcons passing game is a puzzle. When I wrote them up for their Week 2 Showdown, we had seen them coming off a game playing 12 personnel at a nearly 50% rate, leading to elevated snaps for tight ends Kyle Pitts and Charlie Woerner, while WR3 Ray-Ray McCloud played roughly half the snaps. Last week they played it completely differently, using almost no 12 personnel at all while boosting McCloud to 100% of the snaps. What this says to me is that Atlanta has an adjustable coaching staff who will look to game plan around how to best beat a specific opponent rather than just having an offensive identity that they stick to no matter what (if you’re a Falcons fan that’s a good thing). What will we see here? Well, through two games the Chiefs defense isn’t really getting to enemy quarterbacks all that effectively, with just four sacks so far – that leads me to think Atlanta plays in more 11 personnel sets in this one. Wide receivers Drake London and Darnell Mooney will be playing full-time roles regardless but this would boost McCloud into a full-time role as well while dinging the roles of Kyle Pitts and Woerner. The other important thing to note is that the five aforementioned players are the only Falcons pass catchers to play more than two offensive snaps in a game. If you want to take an MME shot on KhaDarel Hodge as the WR4, you can, but he hasn’t really seen the field yet this season.
So far we only have 55 Kirk Cousins pass attempts to look at but they have been distributed thusly: 10 for London, 7 for Pitts, 10 for Mooney, 12 for McCloud, 10 for Bijan, and 6 for everyone else. Raise your hand if you had McCloud leading the team in targets on your bingo card. We’re at that weird early part in the season where we have a couple of games’ worth of data and need to decide how much faith to put in it…will these trends continue? Pricing is still largely based on our preseason conception of players. My take here is that McCloud is going to have a bigger role on this offense than we thought in preseason but I expect he won’t continue to be the target leader for long – that will probably go to London. At $8,800, London feels like a value, especially in builds that are telling a story of a Chiefs win. Mooney’s profile will always be pretty boom/bust as he’s a deep threat guy (3 catches last week for 88 yards and a score for 29.3 yards per catch) – viable play but volatile, especially as his price creeps up (I liked him more last week). McCloud’s volume gives him a pretty safe floor for $3,600 and he looks like a strong value option. Pitts…I don’t know what to do with. Similarly to what I put for him last week, I’m pretty down on him – he’s always been viewed as this super talented star in the making but we just haven’t seen it on the field and he’s now entering his 4th season. I heard someone describe him as an amazing athlete but not an amazing NFL player and that feels like it might be apt. He’s a player whose brand name tends to bring a fair amount of ownership, both on main slates and Showdowns, and so it’s not like we’re being sneaky by playing him even though he hasn’t been good. At this point, I feel like I want to see it from him before I invest. I’m not X’ing him out entirely but I will continue to be underweight the field on Pitts until we see some semblance of ceiling out of him.
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