Kickoff Monday, Dec 9th 8:15pm Eastern

Giants (
18) at

Eagles (
27)

Over/Under 45.0

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Notes

Key Matchups
Giants Run D
29th DVOA/30th Yards allowed per carry
Eagles Run O
6th DVOA/12th Yards per carry
Giants Pass D
19th DVOA/26th Yards allowed per pass
Eagles Pass O
7th DVOA/11th Yards per pass
Eagles Run D
19th DVOA/21st Yards allowed per carry
Giants Run O
31st DVOA/15th Yards per carry
Eagles Pass D
28th DVOA/13th Yards allowed per pass
Giants Pass O
30th DVOA/30th Yards per pass

Showdown Slant ::

Presented by top Showdown mind Xandamere!

Week 14 (are we already almost done with the season?) finishes up with the Giants visiting the Eagles, including the triumphant (or not…) return of Eli Manning. The game has a reasonable total of 45.5, but the Eagles are 9.5 point favorites, so Vegas is predicing a blowout here. Happily, in Showdown, we can still make money in blowouts! I want to note here that I’m writing this before pricing has come out as I’m getting on a plane Sunday morning, but I’ll come back through on Sunday night with notes once pricing is out. 

The Giants’ run game begins and ends with Saquon Barkley, as nobody else is even seeing 10% of the snaps. Saquon finally looked healthy last week, managing 4.4 yards per carry (his first time over 4 YPC since all the way back in Week 2) and seeing a solid seven targets. Saquon is also the one guy for whom Eli returning is good news, as Captain Checkdown should look his way often, especially with Evan Engram set to miss. Saquon will be the safety valve, and while he’s going to have a hard time having a massive game on the ground, 7+ targets should be a reasonable expectation here and that gives him a massive floor.

The Giants’ receiving corps gets Golden Tate back from a concussion but is still missing Engram, so we get a bit of the “narrow target tree” bonus that we’ve been able to utilize the Giants for all season long. The Giants should be running Sterling Shepard, Tate, Darius Slayton, and backup tight end Kaden Smith out for just about every snap, giving us a narrow tree and we don’t really have to worry about the Showdown bane of “who’s that guy who caught four passes and a touchdown?!” Shepard and Tate are very similar receivers, of course, and I’ll rank Shepard slightly above Tate just based on his familiarity with Eli and my guess, based on the full-week slate, that he’ll be less expensive. Slayton is a tourney play who brings solid big-play ability against an Eagles secondary that has been burned over and over by speed receivers. Finally, Kaden Smith has seen 14 targets in the last two weeks and could serve as another checkdown option for Eli here. His floor is likely higher than the kickers, so we’ll have to see how far above them he’s priced in order to determine our level of interest. 

On the Philly side, Miles Sanders finally took advantage of being the lead back in his third week in the driver’s seat, and while it was against the Dolphins, the Giants don’t really present a much tougher matchup. To be clear, the Giants are a slightly above-average run defense, but as a massive home favorite with solid pass game work (14 targets in the last three weeks), Sanders still shapes up as a very strong play. Jay Ajayi, who some (including me) thought might have slid into more of a Jordan Howard-type role, played 9% of snaps last week and got two carries. Jordan Howard has still not been cleared for contact. Absent a surprise Howard return, this appears to be Sanders’ backfield. 

We got some insight into the Eagles’ passing attack last week in a surprise shootout with Miami. Alshon Jeffery and Nelson Agholor were full-time players, while Zach Ertz and Dallas Goedert both outsnapped any of the other wideouts as the Eagles ran a lot of 2-TE sets. When your 3rd and 4th wide receivers are Greg Ward and talented-but-raw JJ Arcega Whiteside, this makes a lot of sense and we can expect to see more of it. Throwing a wrench into things is that Nelson Agholor didn’t practice at all and is listed as questionable, likely shaping up to be a game-time decision. If he misses, his role could be filled by one of Ward or JJAW (likely Ward), or they could split work. Both would be viable tourney targets, though I would want a little more exposure to Ward personally. Alshon has a wonderful matchup against a secondary that just oozes volume to wide receivers and cannot rush the passer, and Agholor also has a great matchup if he plays, while as JM notes, Ertz has a difficult matchup. (Update: Peppers has been placed on I.R. this week, which does improve the matchup here for Ertz.) Ertz can still hit, of course, but he’s really more of a tournament play while Alshon, Sanders, Goedert, and to a lesser extent Agholor are higher-floor options.

The way this game is likely to play out is for the Eagles to smash, while the Giants try to chase. New York should be forced into a fairly one-dimensional offense, which could spell trouble for a likely-rusty Eli Manning against a pretty tough Eagles pass rush. If Eli can stay upright, he can exploit a relatively weak secondary, and the Philly pass rush versus the New York O-line is one of the major factors on which this game will swing. 

Some other ways the game could play out:

  • The Eagles could just blow the doors off here and the Giants could struggle to get anything going, with a rusty Eli Manning absorbing sacks and turning the ball over. They won’t exactly be uncommon, but 5-1 onslaught lineups are highly viable in this matchup.
  • On the other side, the Philly defense is far from elite, so even a moderately-competent Eli Manning could make the Giants’ Vegas total look silly. The Eagles’ defense has given up an average of 23.7 points per game, and while they’ve averaged just 18 at home, that’s included matchups against some truly horrendous offenses (the Jets when Darnold was sick, the Bears before they figured out how to not suck again, the Patriots). I don’t think this is likely to be a shootout, but the Giants have pretty reasonable odds of putting up a mid-20s score here.

My favorite overall captain is awfully hard to pick out without pricing, but it’s likely to be Sanders or Alshon. I’m also partial to the Giants’ wideouts. 

Some groups to consider:

  • At most 1 kicker
  • At most 1 defense
  • Pair captain receivers with their QB
  • Pair captain QBs with at least 2 receivers
  • At most 2 of Ertz, Goedert, and the Philly WRs not named Alshon

Sunday night pricing notes (written from the Disneyland hotel, from which I will not be partaking in this slate, so good luck to those who are): 

  • Assuming that Jordan Howard is out (which looks likely), Miles Sanders looks like the strongest price-considered play on the slate; he’s just too cheap for his role.
  • Carson Wentz has a great floor but is incredibly expensive; he’s priced way up in the elite-QB stratosphere. He’s not a bad play by any means but he’s about $1k to $1.5k too expensive.
  • Eli, on the other hand, is one of the cheapest QBs we’ve seen in Showdown this season. An elite QB he is not, but is he really worse than some of the random backups who’ve been around $8k? 
  • Nelson Agholor is a game-time decision. If he plays, he’s underpriced but hard to trust as he may not play a full complement of snaps. If he misses, we already addressed that: Dallas Goedert gets a decent boost (and a guaranteed one), while at least one of JJAW and Ward will see increased work. 
  • I mentioned that I would prefer Sterling Shepard to Golden Tate as I expected Shepard to be cheaper. Well, he is, but not by quite as much as I had hoped (the gap was broader on the full weekend slate). This brings them closer in my mind. I think I still prefer Shep but it’s very narrow. 
  • I expected Kaden Smith to be priced right around the kickers, maybe a little bit more, but he came out at just $2,200. That’s way too cheap.

JM’s Notes for Thursday-to-Monday Players ::

  • Welcome back, Eli! What fun.
  • The Giants have been an offense we can target when injuries lead to them having a narrow distribution of touches, and an offense we should otherwise avoid. This week, they will be playing on the road with a Vegas-implied total of only 18.0, while Evan Engram appears set to return, and Golden Tate seems likely to get cleared in time as well. This will create a five-man range of core players :: Saquon Barkley // Sterling Shepard // Golden Tate // Darius Slayton // Evan Engram. If this is the case, it will be difficult to target this offense beyond “hoping to guess right on a touchdown or an individual matchup the Giants find a way to exploit over and over again.” One or two useful stat lines will surely emerge from the Giants, but slate-breakers are unlikely, and a dud or two is likely hiding here as well. If I play the Thursday-to-Monday, I may mix in a piece or two as part of a game stack, but nothing in this offense will stand out as an isolate-and-play option.
  • On the other side of the ball, the Eagles catch a matchup against a Giants defense that ranks bottom seven in DVOA, yards allowed per game, and points allowed per game. In 12 games, the Giants have allowed eight pass catchers to top 100 yards against them, while five of these players scored a touchdown (and three scored multiple touchdowns). The Giants have been hit by underneath receivers on volume and have been hit downfield for big plays. They have also been quietly excellent against tight ends this year since adding Jabrill Peppers in the offseason, with only two teams facing fewer tight end targets on the year (and with each of those teams having faced only one fewer than this team). (Update: Peppers has been placed on I.R. this week, which does improve the matchup here for Ertz.)
  • Ertz is good enough to hit in this spot, but the matchup should tilt action toward Miles Sanders, Alshon Jeffery, and Dallas Goedert. If Jordan Howard misses again, Sanders (recent touch counts of 13 // 15 // 22) should push toward 20 touches against a Giants run defense that is slightly above-average, but that is still attached to a poor overall unit. Alshon will have an outside shot at another elite game. And Goedert (who has five or more targets in five consecutive games) will continue to produce in the mold of a “reliable slot receiver with a low yardage ceiling but a solid shot at touchdown-driven upside,” as that’s the role he fills in this offense.
  • With the Eagles lacking explosiveness on offense and playing in a game that is less likely to be competitive, this spot doesn’t quite stand out on the larger slate the way the Sunday night game does (with that game certainly no slam dunk, but quite a bit more attractive than most of the games on the Main Slate); but this is still another spot to target, with the Eagles boasting one of the highest Vegas-implied totals on the weekend, and with the Giants even carrying outside potential to keep this game close and produce interesting pieces of their own.