XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT
Sunday Night Football has the Vikings visiting the Cowboys for a 48.5 total game with Dallas favored by 5.5. J.J. McCarthy is fresh off the most impressive game of his career, in which he threw 3 touchdowns with no picks against the Commanders in a 31-0 demolition, while the Cowboys are trying to keep their playoff hopes alive after a three-game win streak was stopped by Detroit last week. Dallas has been one of the best offenses in the league (especially at home), averaging 29.3 points per game on the season, while also allowing 29.7 points per game, which is no surprise to anyone who’s been paying any attention to the league this year. Almost every game the Cowboys are involved in is a shootout. Can McCarthy keep up? That’s the question.
DALLAS
On the Dallas side of things, Javonte Williams has one of the best roles in the NFL, playing 72% or more of the snaps in all but one game this season. Wow. Javonte has handled 20+ opportunities in more games than not and is 4th in the league in red zone rush attempts – the role is absolutely elite. This Showdown has some bargain prices with only two players at $10k or above, so any pricing commentary has to consider that context, but $9,400 for Javonte still feels like a bargain given the volume he sees. After years of being a pass funnel defense, the Vikings have kind of flip-flopped, partly due to game script when losing, but they’re facing just a 49% opposing passing play rate. You’ll need to consider the scenario you’re building for, as a lot of that volume is due to the Vikings getting whomped, and in a competitive game, we should expect more pass attempts. Hunter Luepke and Malik Davis are splitting the RB role, with Davis getting work on the ground while Luepke handles some passing game work, but both of them are very lightly involved. I prefer Davis as Luepke has several games without a single touch, but both of these guys are thin (Davis has a season-high of 4 carries).
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In the passing game, CeeDee Lamb rapidly cleared the concussion protocol and will play, giving Dallas their 1-2 punch of Lamb and George Pickens at wide receiver. Something important here is that the Vikings have started bracketing opposing WRs1 for the last few weeks, and it’s worked very well for them, so I’d expect them to do it here. It’s obviously a little harder to just bracket one and ignore the other given this duo, but if they follow the same strategy, we should expect Lamb to have some really tough coverage all night, which pushes me to like Pickens more. Now, maybe this is wrong, and they choose Pickens instead, given his more upside and stronger performance this season, but they’re likely to be bracketing one of them, so one way to play this if you aren’t completely confident in betting it’s Lamb with the tough coverage, is just setting a max 1 rule between Lamb and Pickens. If the game is competitive and Dallas racks up passing volume, it does seem highly likely that one of Lamb or Pickens will get there, given how the offense is so concentrated around the two of them. Despite the tough matchup, I’m fine leaning into the Dallas passing game. Ryan Flournoy will play the WR3 role, but don’t get fooled by looking at game logs; his big games have come without Lamb, and with Lamb on the field, he has just 120 receiving yards on the season (yikes). KaVontae Turpin is, to me, a better bet as they always design some stuff for him, including carries, and he has elite per-target upside.
At tight end, Jake Ferguson is expected to play through his questionable tag, but he’s had a really tough time finding ceilings lately. Working in his favor is that his price has started to dip back down a bit, and at $6,600 it’s at least reasonable to think he can find a ceiling if he gets into the end zone, which he’ll almost certainly need as his per-target yardage upside is atrocious. He’ll get some volume and has a safe floor of around 8-10 points, so 14-16 with a touchdown at $6,600 would give him good odds of being in winning lineups, and the matchup is appealing. If the Vikings focus on eliminating one of the top wide receivers, it should result in some extra volume heading Ferg’s way. TE2 Luke Schoonmaker is a thin punt option.
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