XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Sunday Night Football has the Falcons traveling to Minnesota to take on the Vikings in a 44.5 total game with the Vikings favored by 3.5. The Vikings offense looked absolutely lost to start their Week 1 tilt against the Bears before J.J. McCarthy found some level of comfort and led his team to a nice comeback win, while the Falcons lost at home to the Bucs in a game that was close throughout.
MINNESOTA
We’ll start with Minnesota’s backfield, where I was wrong about the workload distribution, at least in Week 1. I thought Aaron Jones would be the lead back and he actually played two fewer snaps than Jordan Mason, handling 11 touches (8 carries, 3 targets) while Mason had 16 touches (15 carries, 1 target). Minnesota even trailed for much of the game, which is where I would have expected Jones, who is an excellent pass catcher, to have thrived. So, this backfield is now murkier than I thought at first. It looks like more of a 50/50-ish split, but we don’t know if what we saw was something opponent-specific for Week 1 or due to game script or something else – there’s still time for the backfield to surprise us. I’m treating it as if it could go 60-40 either way in any given game, and if that is what happens, whichever back gets the 60 side looks underpriced. I’d lean a bit towards Mason here as the Vikings are home favorites and Mason is younger, thus potentially more likely to earn additional 2nd-half work if Minnesota is playing from ahead. He’s also $1k cheaper, which certainly doesn’t hurt. Both backs are in play, though.
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In the passing game, we saw the heavy snap counts of the main guys that we were looking for with Minnesota, as Justin Jefferson played 98% of the snaps, Jalen Nailor 88%, and T.J. Hockenson 80% (it just didn’t work out for Hock production-wise, sadly for me). Week 1 was odd in that even though the Vikings were playing from behind almost all game, McCarthy only attempted 20 passes. Of those 20 passes, 7 went to Jefferson, 4 to Hock, 3 to Nailor, 3 to Jones, and then 1 each to Mason, Adam Thielen, and TE2 Josh Oliver. The Vikings just didn’t run that many offensive plays, as they had a lot of extremely quick failed drives before finding their groove late. Jefferson’s market share of targets was elite, and worth noting as rookie QBs often lock on to their primary read/top receiver. If Jefferson gets 35% of McCarthy’s targets and we see the pass attempts at what we’d consider normal levels, he’s going to be in for a big year. He makes for an outstanding play.
As with last week, I think Hock is in for a big season if McCarthy is competent as the Vikings are short on talented pass catchers while Jordan Addison is suspended. $6,200 feels very fair for Hock. Nailor at $4,000 for a WR2 who plays almost every snap feels on the cheap side, though I’m a bit worried that as Adam Thielen has more time with the team, he might suck some of Nailor’s workload away. Thielen himself and Oliver are the other guys you can consider as more than just pure punt options but they’re tough sells for me. I’ll have a smidge of each, more so Oliver than Thielen (he’s cheaper and thus just a catch can pay off if he happens to find the end zone, while Thielen is likely to need to at least crack 10 points at his price to find his way into optimal lineups). You can play dart throw options like Tim Jones or Ben Yurosek, who each saw a handful of snaps, but I probably won’t, as this offense is highly concentrated and they don’t tend to mess around much with tertiary options.
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