XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Week 12 comes to a close with another great looking Showdown as the Ravens visit the Chargers for a 50.5 total game with Baltimore favored by 2. High total, close spread . . looks like fun. The Ravens are the league’s 2nd highest-scoring offense behind only Detroit while the Chargers started slow but have been picking things up lately. The Chargers defense has looked elite but has faced a lot of weak opposition. They’re a good defense, absolutely, but the Ravens are the best team they’ve faced, and they just allowed 27 to the Bengals. Meanwhile, the Ravens defense is elite against the run but one of the worst in the league against opposing passing games. Fireworks time.
Los Angeles
On the Chargers side, the return of Gus Edwards has taken a little bit of the upside off of J.K. Dobbins’ role. Dobbins has 26 carries in the two games since Edwards returned, against 70 in four games without Edwards. The snaps for Dobbins are still robust, Edwards isn’t on the field a ton, but when he is in the game, he’s getting carries (16 carries the last two games since returning). Either way, the matchup is awful, and at $10k Dobbins is overpriced for it with a relatively modest passing game role. He’s a pay up to be contrarian play who you hope can hit in a bad matchup or can just find his way to a multi-touchdown game via some short yardage attempts.
Showdown Ownership Projections!
Ownership updates automatically
The passing game is where things look tasty for the Chargers. At the start of the year, they were an extremely run-heavy game, holding Justin Herbert to 26, 20, 18, and 27 attempts. But after their Week 5 bye they’ve opened things up, with Herbert dropping back 31 times per game. It’s still not a Bengals-level passing offense, but it’s a significant improvement. The matchup leans to attacking via the air, of course. The big question for LA is if talented rookie Ladd McConkey will play or miss. Ladd is listed as questionable with a shoulder injury – he got in two limited practices this week so I think the odds are that he plays, and that’s how I’ll write this up, but as their WR1 it obviously changes things quite a bit should he sit. Assuming he plays, he’s the clear WR1 with a reasonable 23% target share. What’s also important is that his aDOT earlier in the season was low but it’s up to 10.3 yards now as he’s adding more deeper routes to his tree instead of just hanging out close to the line of scrimmage. His price is reasonable and he’s an awesome-looking play. Quentin Johnston has solidified the WR2 role, emerging from an awful rookie season to look pretty darn good this year. He’s playing the deep threat role with a healthy 13.3 aDOT and has two games over 20 fantasy points. The downside is that he’s only averaging about 4.6 targets per game, which makes him somewhat overpriced at $7,400 despite the awesome matchup. He’s a volatile option who has ceiling but a scary floor. If Ladd is in, I’ll probably have modest exposure here. WR3 Josh Palmer has a very similar profile to Johnston – almost identical aDOT, the main difference is that he’s at about 3.5 targets per game, roughly 1 less than Johnston, but he’s also $5,200. Johnson has scored more touchdowns but we know how volatile those can be. These two guys are really pretty similar plays. Johnson’s a bit better due to the extra target per game he’s seeing, but it’s closer than most projections are going to lead us to think, and the target difference is accounted for by the price difference. He’s just as fragile as Johnston, but given that he’s priced right by the kickers and projects worse than they do, he might come in quite low owned. We’ll see how ownership projections shake out, but as of right now, I’m interested in being underweight on Johnston and overweight on Palmer. Backup WRs Jalen Reagor and Derius Davis are MME punts.
At tight end, Will Dissly has seen his role grow significantly since Hayden Hurst was left by the wayside. Since Hurst vanished, Dissly has averaged just over 6 targets per game. He doesn’t have as much per-target upside as Johnson and Palmer but his floor is significantly safer. He’s a solid play with a good floor/median outcome but only a decent ceiling. His red zone usage is pretty small (he scored his one touchdown of the season on a target from 29 yards out). He’s a fine play. TE2 Tucker Fisk is more of a blocker but he can TE3 Stone Smartt can be used as MME punts.
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