Panthers (

20.75) at
Bucs (

23.25)

XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT

Week 18 is upon us, and that means fantasy wildness as some teams choose to rest starters for the playoffs, and eliminated teams want to get a look at young players. However, we don’t have to worry about that for Saturday’s Showdowns, as the NFL has scheduled games in which both teams will be extremely motivated, starting with the Panthers at the Bucs. In this 43.5 total game with Tampa favored by 3, the winner makes the playoffs while the loser is eliminated. Well, unless the Falcons beat the Saints on Sunday, but that’s irrelevant since this game plays first.  The Bucs have collapsed of late, going 5-2 before their bye but then a Jets-esque 1-7 since, while the Panthers have ridden a midseason hot streak to a somewhat surprising 8-7 record (my buddy who has been a long-suffering Panthers fan is incredibly excited for this).

TAMPA BAY

On the Bucs side of things, the backfield looked like Bucky Irving’s at the start of the season, with 70%+ snap counts in his healthy games. He then got hurt, missed a chunk of games, and has averaged around 54% of the snaps in the five weeks since his return. In that time, we’ve still seen relatively robust opportunity counts of 19, 18, 19, 19, and 15 (keep in mind four of these games were losses, albeit close ones), which includes 14 targets. RB2 Rachaad White has played modest snaps while averaging 6.2 opportunities per game in that stretch, while Sean Tucker has earned a bit of a role and is taking 3.8 opportunities himself. Bucky has always been extremely inefficient since his return (and really overall this season). He’s averaging under 4 yards per carry on the season and has yet to go over that mark in any of his post-injury games. The Panthers, after starting the season tough on the ground, have been absolutely trampled of late, giving up over 100 rush yards to eight of their last nine opponents. So the matchup looks good. There’s some risk here, but I’m quite interested in Bucky. The snap counts aren’t great, but he’s still touching the ball a ton when on the field, and that’s in a bunch of unfavorable game scripts. As home favorites in the most important game of the season and in a great matchup, this feels like a get-right spot for Bucky. White and Tucker are fragile RB2 plays. Both are viable in tournaments, but since they’re cannibalizing each other, they aren’t quite the robust “RB2 in Showdown” plays we’re normally interested in using, and I would definitely max 1 of these guys. 

Showdown Ownership Projections!

Ownership updates automatically

In the passing game, the Bucs are finally at full strength with the primary trio of Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, and Emeka Egbuka, and then their “main” WR4 of Jalen McMillan are all healthy. We’ve seen that for three games now, so let’s look at how volume has been distributed. In those games, Evans has 28 targets, Godwin has 19, Egbuka has 14, and McMillan has 14 (TE1 Cade Otton has chipped in another 10 while WR5 Tez Johnson has been mostly phased out of the starting offense, playing mid-teens snaps with 5 targets in that window of time). Evans is the top guy (duh), Godwin is earning a lot of volume but has relatively modest per-target upside with a 7.1 yard aDOT (if we take away his one huge 59 yard catch last week he would have a combined line of 15 catches for 99 yards in the three game sample we’re evaluating), McMillan has a healthy downfield role on a modest target share, and then Egbuka appears to have significantly fallen off since his early-season heroics.

• Evans is obviously the strongest on-paper play (duh) but also the most expensive – he’s the clear WR1 with a significant volume gap between him and everyone else, and his 27.3% red zone target share is borderline elite.
• Godwin has an extremely robust floor but a shaky ceiling.
• McMillan looks like a reasonable value option for his price.
• Egbuka looks clearly overpriced for his role of late. However, looking around the industry, most projection services seem to be really down on Egbuka – fair, given his price and target share, but we’ve also seen his upside plenty of times. He’s the riskiest of the Bucs wideouts on a per-dollar basis, but I would argue he’s got plenty of ceiling for his price, and his low median projection makes him an interesting but risky tournament play.

At tight end, Otton’s role has become much weaker with all the wide receivers healthy, and while his price is attractive, you will almost certainly need a touchdown out of him in order to matter and with just 4 red zone targets on the year (including many games without 1 or more of the primary wideouts), the odds here are extremely low. 

CAROLINA