XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Our second Monday night game has the Packers visiting the Giants for something Vegas thinks will be closer with a 37 point total with Green Bay favored by 6.5. The Packers have been playing much better of late, beating the Chargers, Lions, and Chiefs in the last three weeks as Jordan Love has once again looked like a capable NFL quarterback. Meanwhile, the Giants have gone 2-1 over that span, getting crushed by Dallas but convincingly beating Washington and squeaking out a 10-7 stinker against the Pats.
New York
The Giants offense starts with Saquon Barkley (and kind of ends with him, too). Saquon’s role is as strong as ever, and while his touch counts look low lately (13, 14, 12 carries in the last three games), that’s due to extremely low overall play volume for the Giants in those three games. The Giants aren’t good, but they’re at 53 plays per game in their last three games while over the course of the season, the lowest team is Denver with 58. So there’s room for some regression here, which helps all the Giants but really benefits Saquon’s ability to get back to the kind of workloads we’re used to seeing from him. Behind Saquon is Matt Breida, who is likely to play 20% or fewer of the snaps and is just a punt play who doesn’t have much upside unless Saquon gets hurt.
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In the passing game, the Giants are becoming the new Chiefs, trotting out six different wide receivers most weeks. Good lord. In the last few weeks, all of Wan’dale Robinson, Darius Slayton, Jalin Hyatt, Isaiah Hodgins, Sterling Shepard, and Parris Campbell have seen the field (listed in orders of snaps played). This is a mess on a low-scoring passing offense, but at least almost all of them are really cheap. Let’s start with Hyatt because for some wild reason, he is $7k which is the most expensive Giants pass catcher by a wide margin. I like Hyatt, he’s a talented rookie, and he just had his first big game of the season. At $7k, it’s pretty wild to chase that unless you’re just hoping to pay up to be contrarian. Wan’dale has a solid floor due to his short area, high catch rate role, but he has very minimal ceiling because of that same role. Slayton is the best play of this bunch and $3,800 is cheap for him as he gets some deep work. He’s up there with Wan’dale in the lead for target share with Tommy DeVito at quarterback, and he’s pretty clearly too cheap for his role and upside. Everyone else is a punt option as the rest of those guys are all playing under half the snaps. Campbell in particular has been disappearing lately, and if you’re looking for a guy to X out entirely to condense your player pool, he’s the best bet.
At tight end, Daniel Bellinger is playing almost all of the snaps with Lawrence Cager in a very small role. Bellinger is questionable with an illness so it’s hard to predict if he’ll be on the field or not. If he is, he’s mostly a blocker but given the overall crappy Giants pass catcher situation, he’s fine to include in player pools. These guys are basically ALL dart throws anyhow. If Bellinger misses, Cager will play almost every snap and is fine. The only good thing about Cager is that he saw two red zone targets from DeVito a couple of weeks ago so I guess there is some touchdown upside here (if you’re feeling like I don’t have a strong sense of any of these guys . . . you’re right). Slayton’s a solid play, everyone else is a “good luck figuring this out” situation.
Here’s something to be aware of: because of how cheap these guys are, a lot of the field is likely to have two or even three of the cheap Giants pass catchers. Simply NOT doing that is a pretty solid way to consider differentiating your rosters.
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