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NFL DFS Showdown SZN: Eagles vs. Texans

NFL DFS Showdown SZN: Eagles vs. Texans

Welcome to this edition of the NFL DFS Showdown SZN breakdown. The aim of this post is to look at the best players to build around and constructions to focus on for the night's NFL DFS showdown contests on Draftkings. We optimize 5,000 lineups for the contest and look into the most common captains and FLEX. Likewise, we take into account the whole lineup's projection and ownership. Finally, we run the lineups through the tools found in the Theory of DFS: Advanced Players course (Buy it here) to see what combos are +EV.

Main Points:

  • While Miles Sanders appears undrowned, the real leverage play sits with Davis Mills.
  • Most of the highly duplicated lineups will be heavy on the PHI side, so having extra exposure to the HOU side of the game is an easy way to build in differentiation.
  • The spread and general consensus of these teams will lead to a heavily PHI-centric roster construction, so it'll be important to either build that path with a unique angle or build for a HOU competitive game.

For conversation and game theory on the charts with updated ownership distributions as well as the top 20 predicted dupes, jump in the Paydirt discord! Free with this link: https://discord.gg/mQ6u5dfawF

Captain and FLEX ownership distributions

Player ownerships for CPT and FLEX from Paydirt DFS optimizations along with their projected ownership

The most undervalued player on this slate has got to be Davis Mills. His projected ownership at captain is just 1.54% and his projected ownership at FLEX is a miniscule 15.69%. Meanwhile, the optimizations have those exposures at 11.36% and 36.70% respectively. In showdown, if you can get a quarterback at low ownership, it’s usually the right move to do so. Is this team trash? Absolutely. But big plays can happen and the field is undervaluing him.

The most overvalued player on this slate is probably AJ Brown. Now, granted, Brown is always live to have an explosive outcome. But the vast majority of his fantasy points have come on plays from outside the redzone, and we know those plays typically regress at some point. His captain exposures in optimizations are 1.68% versus 16.83% projected ownership. Fading him on this slate offers a lot of important relative value.

A couple other notes on exposures and optimizations:

  • Miles Sanders is an awesome play in all formats because of his relatively low ownership on a team with a massive team total.
  • The Eagles defense is sure to be massively owned, but the Texans defense will have less than 10% ownership.
  • Boston Scott sticks out as a strong punt if you need the savings.

Duplication projections and DFS lineups to avoid

Here are the top 20 lineups in projected dupes. To clarify, you should avoid playing these lineups in large field GPPs tonight:

Top 20 DFS lineups in predicted dupes based on the large $15 contest on Draftkings

Outside of some Dameon Pierce, we have a sea of Eagles in the captain spots of the lineups above. Jalen Hurts and all of his pass catching options show up in the highly duplicated lineups here. On the other hand, just Pierce and Brevin Jordan are valued pieces of optimals from the HOU side. It’s a bit surprising to see Miles Sanders have no captain exposure here, but that just shows how undervalued he is as an option on this slate.

For FLEX plays, we see Hurts and Pierce take up the most spots. After them, all of Sanders, Brown, Goedert and Brevin have 40%+ exposure to the highest dupe counts. While it wasn’t a surprise to see Mills excused from any captain spots, it is a surprise to see him nowhere in the FLEX spots. Once again, low owned QBs have some of the best upside in showdown and should always be a priority.

DFS Showdown SZN: Final Thoughts

It’s always fun to build for showdowns with a massive favorite involved. There’s going to be a disproportionately large amount of lineups with heavy PHI exposure tonight. That means two things:

  1. Any and all 4-2 and 5-1 PHI roster constructions will have much higher duplications than expected.
  2. The majority of HOU builds, even the optimals, will have more expected value than most of the strong PHI duplications.

Leverage isn’t hard to find tonight, but it is hard to realize. You are either building with a unique attack in the PHI onslaught with a unique captain, or you are building heavy on HOU and hoping for a miracle. Either way it makes for a super variant outcome.

The main ways to build for tonight look to be either a PHI onslaught with no AJ Brown and an emphasis on Miles Sanders or a HOU onslaught with an emphasis on AJ Brown. Those two roster constructions make the most sense for winning equity.

Some players that look overvalued:

  • AJ Brown
  • Eagles DST
  • Chris Moore

Some players that look undervalued:

  • Davis Mills
  • Miles Sanders (Captain)
  • Texans DST

Good luck and bink a unique!

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