Hawks (

22.5) at
Cards (

21)

XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT

Week 4 is upon us, and it begins with the Seahawks visiting the Cardinals for a 43.5 total game with the visitors favored by a point and a half. So far, the Seahawks have been playing really well, barely losing to the 49ers in Week 1 before putting up 75 points across Weeks 2-3 against the Steelers and Saints while only allowing 30 points. While they have faced below-average offenses thus far, the Hawks defense looks pretty solid. The Cardinals are also 2-1 with a close loss against the 49ers while beating up on the mediocre Panthers and Saints, but those wins have been much closer affairs. Their defense has held on but still given up a lot of passing production, while it’s fair to say the Arizona offense has not yet fully clicked into gear. 

ARIZONA

We’ll start with the home team. The Cards backfield just lost James Conner for the season, leaving the backfield to Trey Benson with Emari Demercado backing him up. Benson had already been playing a fair bit and has looked good doing it, so far running for 6 yards per carry and catching 8 of 11 targets on the season. The Seahawks have looked good on run defense so far, but Benson is likely to step into quite a large role. Last week, Demercado only played 7 offensive snaps after Conner was hurt. It might look a bit different with a full week to prepare, but I’d expect Benson to play at least 70% of the snaps with a correspondingly large workload, and while the matchup isn’t great, he just isn’t priced for that at $8,800. The large passing game role we’ve seen so far is especially encouraging. At his price, he’s a solid value and a play I will be overweight on. Demercado is hard to get a handle on. He will certainly have some kind of role, but it’s unclear how big of one. He’s priced at an awkward level if he only ends up playing sub-20% of the snaps, like he did last week.

Showdown Ownership Projections!

Ownership updates automatically

In the passing game, the Cards will almost certainly be without Zay Jones, who sustained a concussion last week and is going to have a really tough time getting through the protocol on a short week. I’m assuming he’s out, which should leave Arizona primarily using Marvin Harrison Jr. and Michael Wilson, with Greg Dortch seeing increased snaps and then perhaps Xavier Weaver or Semi Fohoko will see the field in a very small WR4 role. Harrison is wildly talented, but so far has a very modest 19.3% target share this season with 5-6 targets in every game. $7,800 is a weird price for him in that it’s clearly too cheap for his talent, but his role has been oddly small. There’s still plenty of time for that to change, and at this point in the season, I want to buy the talent. The Cardinals may not be the sharpest franchise in the league, but certainly they’re not stupid enough to refuse to use one of their best offensive players…right? The rest of the wide receivers are all punt options as Arizona’s offense is really built around the running back, Harrison, and tight end Trey McBride. WR2 Michael Wilson is on the field for most of the snaps but has 8 targets on the year – he’d be my next favorite option, as at $3,400 he’s priced like a guy who’s a part-time player. OWS favorite Dortch is a guy who has always succeeded when given opportunity, but has had a tough time finding consistent opportunity. He’s a little riskier than Wilson as it’s possible the Cards could just continue to refuse to play him – he should see more run without Jones, but it might not matter if Kyler Murray doesn’t throw to him, or perhaps Arizona plays more 12 personnel sets instead – there’s risk but upside in a guy who has historically been a great route runner with an elite catch rate.

At tight end, McBride is the (very) rare tight end who leads his team in target share, target rate, and share of air yards. McBride’s 27.3% target rate is the highest in the league for a tight end. He’s the real primary pass catcher in this offense. He’s priced like it all the way up at $9,800, but he can be viewed more as a WR1 than a TE, and importantly, he’s the WR1 in a pretty concentrated offense. He’s a bit of a toss-up with Benson as my favorite Cards skill position play. He’s more talented than Benson, but Benson wins out on the strength of the role. The Seahawks have also given up an awful lot of production to tight ends early: George Kittle went 4/25/1 on 4 targets in just 21 offensive snaps before getting hurt, the Steelers two primary tight ends caught 7 of 8 targets for 58 yards, and the Saints Juwan Johnson caught 6 of 8 targets for 51 yards last week. McBride looks to be in a really nice spot. TE2 Tip Reiman is primarily a blocker who can be utilized as a “hope he gets a short touchdown” punt play (he does have 4 targets in two games, so it’s not totally crazy, and then TE3 Elijah Higgins is a similar player profile, except he’ll be on the field far less than Reiman. Both are viable punt plays, with Reiman being the (slightly) better option due to more field time. 

SEATTLE