Saints (

19) at
Chiefs (

24)

XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT

Week 5 wraps up with the Saints at the Chiefs for a 43.5 total game that has the Chiefs favored by 5.5. I think a good starting point for this analysis is to address the elephant in the room, which is the Chiefs offense broadly and Patrick Mahomes in particular.  The Chiefs had a well earned reputation for being an elite offense for years, but then last year they scored 22.2 points per game – right in the middle of the pack. Mahomes had the worst TD:INT ratio of his career at 27:14, the lowest QB rating of his career, the fewest yards per game of his career, and the fewest yards per pass attempt . . . basically he just wasn’t as good. But he’s still Patrick Mahomes, we say. Well, so far this year his TD:INT ratio is 6:5 and all of those other metrics I mentioned are even lower. And that’s with having breakout star Rashee Rice for three of the Chiefs four games. This feels almost sacrilegious but is it fair to say Mahomes just . . . isn’t as good as he was? 

Mahomes

The answer to the above is that I don’t know. If you watch him play he still makes some absolutely incredible throws. And you can put at least some of the blame on the Chiefs organization for struggling to find a high-end wide receiver to pair with Travis Kelce, as he had earlier in his career with Tyreek Hill. But whatever the reason, Mahomes just hasn’t been that good for roughly one and a quarter seasons of football. The Chiefs are getting by because even a “not as good” Mahomes is still pretty decent, and their defense has become absolutely elite. In short, the identity of the team has changed from an offensive powerhouse to a defensive stalwart. And, if you haven’t adjusted your thinking about the Chiefs to fit this new reality, you need to. That doesn’t mean they can’t still have offensive explosions – any team in the NFL can do that – but I think it does mean we should no longer view Mahomes as a top-5 quarterback and we should probably stop thinking about the Chiefs as a top-5 offense that’s just struggling a bit of late. Anyhow, moving on . . . 

Kansas City

The Chiefs backfield has become an interesting place, much to my dismay as a Carson Steele drafter in Best Ball. Steele had one week of lead-back duties in which he performed pretty well, but then Kareem Hunt came back. Steele lost a fumble last week and that was all she wrote as he handled just 5 opportunities on 18% of the snaps while Hunt saw 17 opportunities on a 45% snap share. The rest was Samaje Perine, who saw 5 opportunities (though no targets, oddly) on a 40% snap share. I think Hunt is the clear lead back here and Perine is going to be the primary change of pace and passing down back, while poor Steele is likely relegated to RB3 duties, at least for the time being. That gives Hunt significant upside in a positive game script and he’s a solid pass catcher as well, which protects him in a negative one. The snap share doesn’t scream full-on bell cow, but it was also his first week back with the team (though of course he’s been a Chief before). I think he probably lands somewhere around a 60% snap share, and 20 touches is well within his range of outcomes. The Saints have been fairly good against the run (though some of that is noisy due to two absolute blowouts in their four games), but Hunt’s price of $7,400 just doesn’t reflect the volume he’s likely to see. He’s a very strong on-paper play. Perine at $6,400 is wildly overpriced for his likeliest role as is Steele at $4,400 – their prices relegate both to “pay up to be contrarian” MME plays, and ones I’m not super interested in.

Showdown Ownership Projections!

Ownership updates automatically

In the passing game, we must first note that when a player gets hurt during a game, the way a team responds in terms of doling out snaps and targets is often different than once the team has had a week to prepare. So, just looking at how things went last week isn’t necessarily indicative of how they’ll go this week. That said, rookie Xavier Worthy has gone from a preseason WR3 to the most talented healthy wide receiver left on the roster. His route tree has been extremely limited and he hasn’t yet seen more than 4 targets in a game – you’d think the Chiefs will be working hard this week to expand that route tree and make use of his talent, but it’s a question mark how much additional responsibility he’ll be able to take on after just one week of no Rice. Maybe he goes from 3-4 targets per game to 5-7? At $9,000, that’s a really tough sell for me. He’s crazy fast and so has a lot of upside with the ball, but man, $9k feels like a dramatic overreaction. I’m probably only going to use a little bit of him at this salary. The biggest beneficiary from a snap count perspective last week was Justin Watson, who went from 39% to 69%, but still only saw 3 targets. We’ve seen this with Watson before when guys got hurt – his role hasn’t really changed a whole lot even if he’s on the field more. He generally caps out at 4-5 targets (except for one weird game last year with 11). Still, at $3,400, that’s certainly in play as a value option. Juju Smith-Schuster played half the snaps without a target and looks awfully washed up but is $2,800. Skyy Moore and Mecole Hardman saw the field a bit as well. This is a tough wide receiver corps to figure out, but I see it like this: Worthy is overpriced as anything but a very contrarian tournament option, but he might get a lot of ownership as the “new WR1 for Patrick Mahomes,” so he may not actually be very contrarian at all. Watson’s a fine value play with a limited ceiling. JuJu, Moore, and Hardman all feel like pretty risky punt options to me. 

The biggest beneficiary of Rice’s absence last week was Travis Kelce, who finally had a solid game. After 12 targets through the first three games for 69 scoreless yards (nice), Kelce put up a 7/89/0 line in Week 4 on 9 targets. Let’s consider the story around Kelce this year: he’s 38 years old and the Chiefs were planning to pull back a little on his regular season workload to preserve him for the playoffs. Well guess what Chiefs, with Rice out you’re going to have to use him now, and I think they will. $8,600 is a fairly low price for Kelce based on his historical norms, so we’re getting a discount that accounts for the workload/age risk. I think he’s a great option here and my favorite Chiefs pass catcher – he’ll be popular but deservedly so, as he’s the best pass catcher the Chiefs have standing at the moment. We could also see a little more offensive involvement from Noah Gray, who got a nice contract extension right before the season and who caught 4 of 4 targets last week after Rice was injured (after seeing just 5 total targets in the first 3 games). The Chiefs frequently have Kelce and Gray on the field together so I’m happy to pair them as well, but I’d be a little wary of pairing Gray with JuJu as they’re the ones most likely competing for snaps as the Chiefs shift from 11 to 12 personnel formations. 

New Orleans