XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Oh boy. Black Friday’s game has the Raiders visiting the Chiefs for a 42.5 total game with Kansas City favored by 12.5, which means the Raiders are projected to score just 15 points. This is projected to be a fairly one-sided bloodbath, especially with the Raiders losing Gardner Minshew and turning to Aiden O’Connell at quarterback. The Chiefs defense has been one of the best units in the league and it seems like their offense might (finally) be turning a bit of a corner, while the Raiders…well…suck.
Kansas City
We’ll start with the Chiefs backfield, where they expect to get Isiah Pacheco back after his early season broken leg. What’s unclear is how the workload will split between Pacheco, Kareem Hunt, and perhaps Samaje Perine and Carson Steele. I’d expect Steele to be removed from the rotation entirely and Perine to be relegated to a small role (at best). Keep in mind, both Hunt and Pacheco are capable pass catching backs in their own right, so he might just be hanging around in an emergency RB3 role with something like 0-3 touches as his range of outcomes. The matchup here is strong, and as a massive home favorite, that bodes well for the Chiefs run game, but the challenge is both Pacheco and Hunt are priced for pretty full workloads at $9,200 and $9,000, respectively. I’d be more interested in Pacheco than Hunt here as I think he likely gets the larger share of the workload (they were pretty confident he was ready to go last week but gave him one extra week just to be certain, so much like Nico Collins the other week, he could come back to a nearly-full workload). He also has a better per-touch upside as Hunt is fairly…well…slow at this point in his career. I would personally still leave Hunt in my player pool and try to get at least a couple percent of him. As for Pacheco, I’m sort of hoping industry projections will have him in a split. I think he’s going to get at least a 1A role, call it 15 or so touches as a floor, with upside for a full workload. He’s priced around the 1A level, so if he does get a full workload in this matchup he’s underpriced by probably $1k or so. I want to take the risk and play him.
Showdown Ownership Projections!
Ownership updates automatically
In the passing game, Patrick Mahomes is coming off of his best performance of the season (or, well, at least from a fantasy point standpoint) as he picked apart the surprisingly feisty Panthers last week. The problem is, he’s only gone over 20 DK points twice this season and both of those times required a high volume of pass attempts and a cupcake matchup. He’s…fine, I guess. I mean, if you don’t want to play a lot of Raiders, that means you’ll have salary to work with and so he’s reasonable. The Chiefs wide receiver situation is a bit bizarre. Justin Watson is leading the team in offensive snaps at wide receiver but is averaging just 2 targets per game. He’s on the field a ton but hard to view him as anything more than a punt option. Xavier Worthy has been a disappointment in his rookie season, but bear with me a bit: he’s been coming on a little bit lately. He’s caught 8 of 11 targets in his last two games and added a carry in each game (he’s only caught 4 targets a game three times this season, twice in the last two weeks). So…maybe things are looking up? We know he has huge per-target upside as he can really score from anywhere. This could burn me because his floor is awful, but I think he’s a really interesting tournament play. Then we have recent acquisition DeAndre Hopkins and JuJu Smith-Schuster in roughly half-time roles. Hopkins’ role hasn’t grown as he’s been with the team for longer, so it’s unclear what’s going on here. Are they intentionally holding him back and waiting for the playoffs? Is he struggling to learn the playbook? Or, maybe they just don’t see him as being good enough to be a full-time player (which I very much doubt is true). Hopkins is earning targets when on the field and he’s played very well during his limited time with the Chiefs, catching 22 of 27 targets, so why isn’t he playing more? I have no earthly idea, and that leaves him in an awkward spot pricing-wise at $8,400, as that’s a tough price to pay for a guy only playing half the snaps. I’d consider him a contrarian tournament option. JuJu had a huge game earlier in the season after Rashee Rice went down but then he got hurt, and since returning in Week 11, he only has 3 targets despite playing only slightly fewer snaps than Hopkins.
At tight end, Travis Kelce has still looked plenty capable when needed but as we’ve noted before at OWS, it feels like the Chiefs are very much trying to limit his target volume. They gave him some early volume last week against the Panthers, but once they got a lead, Kelce disappeared from the passing game plan almost entirely. I think you’re hoping for him to hit on something like 6-8 targets at most. Now, the matchup is awesome, he’s super talented, and I think he can deliver a ceiling at $9,600. Keep in mind here we need to consider slate-specific pricing context, and that while Mahomes and Kelce both look a bit overpriced, if you aren’t going to play a lot of Raiders you have salary to spare, and if Las Vegas gets stomped, something like 15 points from Mahomes and/or Kelce could easily be optimal. Finally, TE2 Noah Gray has seen 9 targets in the last two weeks and has caught a whopping 4 touchdowns. Volume-wise, Gray is still a bit of a punt option but he’s on the field a lot and clearly has Mahomes’ trust in all areas of the field. I think I’d prefer Gray straight up to any of the Chiefs wide receivers except Hopkins and maybe Worthy.
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