XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Week 16 concludes with the Saints visiting the Packers for a 42 point game with Green Bay favored by 14 (lol). Yep, that’s right, the Saints implied team total is just 14 points. The Saints are absolutely wrecked here. Chris Olave was designated to return from injured reserve but won’t make it back for this game just yet, Alvin Kamara is now out, and even Marquez Valdes-Scantling may miss this game. Yeesh.
GREEN BAY
MONDAY UPDATE: Luke Musgrave has been activated from injured reserve and is expected to play tonight. I was not expecting this as we’ve had very little news on him since he had ankle surgery in October. They activated his return window on December 11th but I thought it would stretch out longer. He’s expected to play a modest role, so it doesn’t make Tucker Kraft unplayable, but he’s obviously the guy most impacted by Musgrave’s return. Musgrave himself is playable at his price as a punt play but with a wide range of outcomes.
On the Packers side, this sets up perfectly for a huge Josh Jacobs game. Jacobs has 18+ carries in five straight games, and he’s averaging 18.9 carries on the season as well as just shy of 3 targets. The Saints are allowing a whopping 4.9 yards per carry, 2nd worst in the NFL. The Packers are massive 14 point home favorites. Everything lines up for Jacobs. About the only thing you can say against him being a smash play is, “well, football is weird sometimes.” It certainly is but there are no other reasonable arguments against Jacobs. The only thing other than injury or variance that can derail him is the game getting out of hand quickly and the Packers deciding to take it easy on him with the end of the season approaching, which IS a viable outcome here, in which case we’d look to Chris Brooks (most likely) or Emanuel Wilson (less likely) to pick up the slack. Given the spread and the matchup, either RB2 is a perfectly viable play who has a good chance of seeing meaningful carries in this game. I’d be fine playing them alongside Jacobs in a story of, “Jacobs smashes early, RB2 puts the game away late.” Based on who’s been playing more lately I’d guess Brooks is the more likely one to gobble up any extra garbage time work, and I would not pair them together.
Showdown Ownership Projections!
Ownership updates automatically
In the passing game, I feel like I just wrote this up…the Packers will roll out Jaylen Reed, Romeo Doubs, and Christian Watson as their primary options with Dontayvion Wicks as the primary backup and then Bo Melton and/or Malik Heath taking a small handful of extra snaps as needed. The latter two are just thin punt options. The big 3 guys are all priced very close together, just $1k apart. Reed has the highest ceiling, while Doubs has the highest floor, and Watson is somewhat in between. The matchup here is excellent and you just have to decide how much exposure to the passing game you want when the Packers already spread the ball around a lot and may not end up passing much deep into the game. That leads me more to Reed and Watson, who have elite per-target upside. They’re the ones who are more capable of putting up smash scores on limited targets. Doubs is fine as well, but I have to have some kind of preference here (or at least I do if I want this to be useful to you guys!). Wicks all the way down at $4k is kind of interesting…his target floor is low, but the same can be said of all the Packers WRs, really. He probably tops out at maybe 5 targets in a normal game script, but it’s possible he plays a bit later into the game if the Packers pull other starters, and given the normal volume distribution on this team if he gets to 5, he could be right up there with the team leaders. It only takes a little bit of volume variance for Wicks to match the volume of any other Packers pass catcher at half the price, so I think he makes for a really solid value option.
At tight end, Tucker Kraft has a very similar volume projection to the wide receivers (again, this team spreads the ball out a lot). He has less yardage upside but more touchdown equity, so at $5,800 he looks like a strong option. Finally, Ben Sims and John FitzPatrick can be used as MME punts. The Packers passing game stuff is tricky overall because there’s no real alpha and it’s hard to project Jordan Love for a ton of pass attempts, so we’re really relying on efficiency: big plays and/or touchdowns. We also have to consider the pricing dynamic of this slate – the main Packers are all very expensive, but the Saints…well….suck. That leads me to be very interested in the Packers value options: the RB2 spot, Wicks, and Kraft. I want to play more of the team that has ~2x the Vegas team total, and the way to do so is by investing heavily in the cheaper guys.
You must be logged in to add notes about a game.