Kickoff Sunday, Oct 27th 8:20pm Eastern

Cowboys (
21) at

49ers (
26.5)

Over/Under 47.5

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Notes

XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT

Sunday Night Football has the Cowboys visiting the 49ers for a 47-point total game with San Francisco favored by 4. These teams are both underachieving, at least compared to preseason expectations, with the 49ers at 3-4 and the Cowboys at 3-3. I would never have bet their combined record to be 6-7 before the season, and I don’t think anybody else would have either, especially when you consider the 49ers have lost to the Rams and Cardinals while Dallas has dropped a game to the Saints. Yeesh. We also have an incredibly busy injury report for San Francisco. I’ll do my best to parse through but if we get any surprises when inactives are released, make sure you’re in the OWS Discord where we’ll talk through how it likely impacts things. 

San Francisco

On the 49ers side, Jordan Mason is the most expensive player in the game (more than CeeDee Lamb!). After starting off the season with a monstrous role, Mason has seen things shrink down a little bit. The snap counts are still strong in the last three weeks (64%, 28% when he missed a bunch of time, then 86% last week) but he’s seen just 14, 9 (again, injured in this one), and 14 carries in those three games. Mason did injure his shoulder in Week 6 against Seattle and perhaps that was still impacting him in Week 7, but he’s completely off the injury report. I’d guess he gets back to a full workload this week with San Francisco already missing two of its starting four pass catchers and the other two both being questionable. A full workload for Mason should look something like Weeks 1-4: 19+ carries, but only 1-2 targets. The Cowboys have struggled against the run all season though it’s been based on volume, not efficiency. They’re exactly in the middle of the pack allowing 4.5 yards per carry but they’re facing the 4th-lowest passing play percentage of any team in the league as their offense has struggled to maintain drives, leading to a 4th-lowest time of possession at 27:39 (lower than the Panthers!). Basically, teams can run reasonably well against Dallas, and because the Cowboys offense has been sputtering, that’s what they’ve done all game long. I wish Mason were a little cheaper because $11k is a really steep price to pay for a 2-down back, but with the 49ers down at least Brandon Aiyuk and Jauan Jennings, it’s reasonable to think that this already run-centric team will try to keep the ball on the ground. Watch George Kittle’s status here as Kittle being out would potentially lead San Francisco to be even run heavier but he’s such a key part of their run blocking scheme that it could significantly hurt their efficiency (San Francisco RBs have averaged roughly 1 extra yard per carry when Kittle is on the field). Behind Mason will be Isaac Guerendo, who has had a very small role all season, peaking at 14% of the snaps in games that Mason played from start to finish. Guerendo is priced at $7k as Mason started this week with injuries so he was priced up in case Mason missed, making him unplayable in all but the most highly contrarian scenarios. Fullback Kyle Juszczyk gets a couple of touches per game, and if he finds the end zone could pay off. He’s the kind of play I always want a couple of % but there’s nothing that makes him stand out. 

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The 49ers pass catching corps is where things get especially tricky. Aiyuk and Jennings are out. Deebo Samuel left last week’s game early and went to the hospital with pneumonia. He’s been released and got in limited practices, but oh man, this is hard to guess at. Pneumonia bad enough to require hospitalization can leave you feeling weak for a while, but it’s probably different for a regular person than for a professional athlete (then again, they need to do more physically than we regular folks). I have no idea if he plays and there’s a realistic chance he plays but is less effective than normal. What is clear is that if he plays and has a full role, he’ll be a huge focus of the offense. Deebo has a 38% target share and 4.88 yards per route run without Aiyuk, which are simply insane numbers. This is obviously an extremely small sample size as it’s usually Deebo missing games, but wow. I’d consider him the highest ceiling skill position player in the game, even higher than Lamb, but with a scary-low floor. Kittle’s the guy we tend to think of as a blocker first who also happens to be an elite pass catcher from time to time, and that’s been how he’s played in the past, but this season he has 14.5 or more DK points in five of six games. He’s been more consistently involved in the passing game, whereas previously we’ve seen him just disappear from the passing game for weeks at a time. He’s nursing a foot sprain but got in limited practices on both Thursday and Friday and I’m more confident that he’ll play than I am with Deebo. Especially if you believe Deebo will be limited, Kittle is a very strong play as the last man standing of the original receiving corps who has not been hospitalized recently. It’s easy for me to see a scenario here in which Deebo is active and not a decoy per se but just not 100% and not as heavily used while the offense runs through Kittle and Mason. 

With Aiyuk and Jennings both out, the rest of the wide receiver snaps are most likely to be taken by Chris Conley and Ricky Pearsall (who, of course, is returning from a gunshot of all things . . . what the hell is with the 49ers this season), with Ronnie Bell likely in a rotational WR4-type role and Jacob Cowing perhaps showing up for a couple of snaps here and there. Pearsall is a talented rookie who played 76% of the snaps in his debut and hauled in 3 of 5 targets against the Chiefs elite defense – not a bad start to a career. He’ll almost certainly be on the field for the bulk of the snaps, and at $5,800 he’s a very interesting tournament play on a team that could be rather desperate for people to throw the ball to. Conley is a depth piece for the 49ers – he’s played the 4th-most snaps of any wide receiver but has 1 catch on 5 targets on the season. He’s a punt play, as are Bell and Cowing. If Deebo and Kittle are in, I have little interest in the Conley/Bell/Cowing group, but if one of them misses, it elevates Conley and Bell because San Francisco will just run out of bodies and someone has to get targets – neither is especially talented but they would both just be too cheap for the volume we could project them for. 

Dallas

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