FanDuel NFL Showdown Cheat Sheet: Week 1 TNF
By Sam Smith
September 10, 2026
Brock Purdy is my MVP for Week 1 TNF, 49ers at Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Thursday, September 10, at 8:35 p.m. ET, on FanDuel Single Game. His top-150 MVP exposure in the Stokastic Sims is 23.3%, clear of Christian McCaffrey at 14.7% and Puka Nacua at 13.3%, and his 1.70 value leads the four highest-projected players. Terrance Ferguson, a tight end at $2,400 and 1.97 value, is the salary floor that makes the build fit.
The Quick Answer
MVP Purdy; the tournament entry moves the multiplier to Harrison Mevis (4.6% MVP-slot leverage). Mevis (22.3% leverage, 46.7% exposure) is the first AnyFlex I fill; Nacua in one build, not both; underweight Kyren Williams. The full board and both builds, $58,300 and $59,400, are below.
The Melbourne Board On FanDuel
Board pulled Thursday at 8:20 a.m. ET on projections from 12:46 a.m. ET; ownership will move before the 8:35 p.m. lock. FanDuel Single Game is six slots under $60,000, the MVP at 1.5 times the salary and the points. The Sims play this game out tens of thousands of times, and in each run every player lives in the same game script, so a back who disappears in a blowout is priced into his exposure, not just a median; the Ownership Projections enter as a distribution, and Exp% is top-150 exposure, a player's share of the 150 highest sim-ROI lineups.
| Panel | No. 1 | No. 2 | No. 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AnyFlex Projections (Proj FP) | Christian McCaffrey 18.2 | Brock Purdy 18.1 | Matthew Stafford 17.6 |
| AnyFlex Ownership (Own%) | Matthew Stafford 54.1% | Brock Purdy 53.1% | Christian McCaffrey 46.5% |
| AnyFlex Exposures (Exp%) | Matthew Stafford 50.0% | Brock Purdy 49.3% | Harrison Mevis 46.7% |
| MVP Exposures (Exp%) | Brock Purdy 23.3% | Christian McCaffrey 14.7% | Puka Nacua 13.3% |
| Top Values (Value) | Terrance Ferguson 1.97 | Brock Purdy 1.70 | Matthew Stafford 1.55 |
| Leverage Plays (Lev%) | Harrison Mevis 22.3% | 49ers D/ST 18.4% | George Kittle 6.8% |
Mevis is the row. A kicker in the 150 best lineups as often as McCaffrey, 46.7% each, with the field 22.3 percentage points under the Sims' optimal exposure on him. His 1.47 value at $6,400 works out to about 9.4 projected points, a multi-field-goal median no other low-owned name approaches, so my read is that Rams drives keep stalling in field-goal range. Here the showdown leverage belongs to the pieces that score when drives fail: Mevis, the 49ers D/ST at 18.4%, the Rams D/ST at 6.7%.
More on this: FanDuel NFL Showdown Cheat Sheet: Week 1 Kickoff · DraftKings NFL Showdown Cheat Sheet: Week 1 TNF · FanDuel NFL DFS Cheat Sheet: Week 1 Picks And Stacks · DraftKings NFL Showdown Cheat Sheet: Patriots At Seahawks · DraftKings NFL DFS Cheat Sheet: Week 1 Picks And Stacks
Worked Example: Purdy To $58,300
FanDuel's MVP has cost 1.5 times his salary since the 2025 change, the same premium as a DraftKings captain, so what separates this from the DraftKings build in our 49ers vs Rams showdown breakdown is the $60,000 cap and the scoring. Salaries are the DataHub's FanDuel numbers for this slate.
- MVP Purdy, $10,600 at face value, $15,900 in the slot, leaving $44,100 for five AnyFlex.
- Mevis ($6,400), the Rams piece that scores when a drive stalls, and Ferguson ($2,400), the best value on the board at 1.97.
- McCaffrey ($13,000), whose 102 catches last year make him the Purdy pairing, Kittle ($8,200) so the San Francisco script pays three times, and Nacua ($12,400) as the bring-back. The NFL DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub carry the salaries: $58,300.
The tournament entry puts the multiplier on the kicker: Mevis at MVP ($9,600) with Stafford ($11,400), Purdy ($10,600), McCaffrey ($13,000), Kittle ($8,200) and the 49ers D/ST ($6,600, 18.4% leverage) lands at $59,400. Stafford fits the theory because the Rams moving the ball and stalling feeds his yardage and Mevis's field goals from the same drives while the 49ers D/ST collects the stops, both quarterbacks behind a kicker MVP, the single-game case in one lineup. The cheat sheet is free; code KICKOFF20 takes 20% off your first payment on the Stokastic NFL Sims behind it through Monday, September 14, whether you play FanDuel or DraftKings. 21+, play responsibly.