Eagles (

24.5) at
Cowboys (

28)

XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT

Oh boy, Sunday night brings a super interesting game as the Eagles visit the Cowboys for a 51.5-point total game with Dallas favored by 3.5 points. After having to write up NE/PIT for Thursday I feel like I was owed a fun one, and here we go. Two of the best teams in the league, with Dak pushing for an MVP (and really needing to beat a legitimately good team in order to bolster his case), while the Eagles have won three straight against good teams (DAL, KC, BUF) before getting absolutely curb-stomped by the NFL’s best team, the 49ers. 

Dallas

Tony Pollard’s role in the Dallas backfield is really strong as he’s playing 65%+ of the snaps almost every week and seeing the vast bulk of the RB touches. But the way that Dallas has been using Pollard is borderline criminal, consistently just running him between the tackles instead of focusing on getting him the ball in space like they did last year, leading to a suboptimal 4.1 yards per carry. Pollard is averaging 15 carries per game and just over four targets but has just one game over 100 rushing yards (and just one with over 100 total scrimmage yards). Against one of the league’s top run defenses, ranked 4th in DVOA, running with Pollard just isn’t the likeliest path to success for the Cowboys here. The passing game role and a massive goal line role (second in the league in RB carries inside the 20, the 10, and the 5)  on a high-scoring team keeps him in consideration, especially since Draftkings was kind enough to price him at just $8,000, but it’s much easier to see Pollard having a “solid” game than a “smash” game here. I’m going to let ownership dictate my position. If people flock to Pollard based on him being at his lowest price of the season, I’m happy to be underweight. If people avoid him because, “oh no, bad matchup,” I’m always willing to play RBs with strong roles in Showdown. I’ll probably want to have something like 30-40% of him, no matter what the field does. Behind Pollard is Rico Dowdle, who isn’t likely to see enough work to matter unless the game blows out (Dowdle caught a touchdown in Week 12 and still only landed at 9.6 DK points – fine, but not exactly an elite separator score). 

Showdown Ownership Projections!

Ownership updates automatically

The passing game is where things get fun for the Cowboys because while the Eagles are elite against the run, they are just 21st in DVOA against opposing passing attacks while also facing the second highest opposing passing play rate at a whopping 66.7% (average is around 56-58%). Dallas has also been passing at extreme rates since their Week 7 bye, clearly indicating a shift in offensive philosophy. We should expect them to come out aggressively through the air and remain so throughout the game. It should not surprise anyone to hear me say that CeeDee Lamb is the top skill position play in this game. Lamb is averaging 10 targets per game and his role has expanded as he’s not just running shorter routes like he used to. Lamb’s aDOT is 10.5 yards, 61st in the league (but up significantly from a couple of seasons ago). He’s also fifth in the league in deep targets, first in the league in red zone targets, and 16th in the league in total share of air yards. Everything about his role is elite. He’s a smash play and he’ll be owned like one. The only other full-time receiver on the Cowboys is Brandin Cooks who, after a slow start to the season, is up to five receiving touchdowns and appears to have found his footing on this team. $7k is a little on the expensive side on a slate with so many premium plays, but I expect that will serve to keep his ownership down. As the clearest pivot to the best play on the slate, I want lots and lots of Cooks. After those two, Michael Gallup and Jalen Tolbert are splitting the WR3 role. I really have no preference here as they’re priced about the same (I suppose I have a very slight lean to Gallup, but it’s kind of splitting hairs). KaVontae Turpin is also in play as a gadget guy who gets decent red zone usage – the floor here is extremely low but he’s capable of paying off his salary on a single touch; he has six red zone targets to go along with two more rush attempts (i.e. he has more total red zone touches than Cooks, and more than Gallup and Tolbert combined). 

At tight end, Jake Ferguson is another premium play. He doesn’t generally have a lot of yardage upside (though he does have three games of 70+ receiving yards), but he has a whopping 22 red zone targets, which leads the NFL at the tight end position by a wide margin (second is David Njoku with 15). The red zone usage here is extremely condensed with Lamb and Pollard having 45 targets out of 86 Dak pass attempts, and so in what should be a high-scoring game in which Dallas will have an easier time scoring through the air, Ferguson is a high-priority play for me. TE2 Luke Schoonmaker is a touchdown-or-bust option. He does have five red zone targets, but just 14 total targets on the year. Priced near Turpin, I prefer the gadget guy, as while their number of opportunities per game is pretty similar (slightly favoring Turpin), KaVontae has more per-touch upside as he can break plays while Schoonmaker is more of a “catch and fall down” type. 

Philadelphia