MNF Showdown NFL DFS Strategy: Packers-Raiders

For nearly two years now, I have been hosting the High Stakes podcast for Stokastic, interviewing DFS pros on a range of topics. There have been a lot of recurring themes on the show, but the most relevant for this article: DFS pros love MNF Showdown.

That is because a lot of casual NFL fans enter the Showdown fray to have some action on island games. As a result, DraftKings and FanDuel offer enormous contests with generous prize pools. The contests become more difficult to win, too, when there are hundreds of thousands of entrants, but with a large portion of the new players being casual, the increase in difficulty pales in comparison to the increase in prize pools. It is a tradeoff DFS pros will gladly make.

My goal with these Showdown articles — which I will be writing for each Thursday Night Football and Monday Night Football NFL DFS slate this season — is to help you attack the largest-field DraftKings GPP like a pro. There are three main components to discuss when it comes to Showdown, and I will break them down accordingly: Projection, Correlation and Differentiation.

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Week 5 Packers-Raiders MNF Showdown: NFL DFS Showdown Strategy

Projection

The goal in DFS is to make the lineup that puts up the most points, so a natural starting point is looking at individual players who are likely to put up high scores or high point-per-dollar scores. I rely on Stokastic’s NFL DFS projections and tools to determine which players should be core pieces of my lineups. I primarily look at the base projections and the Top NFL DFS Showdown Plays Tool, which publishes results of thousands of advanced simulations run by the Stokastic team.

Studs

These are the top-projected players on the slate. I’d recommend having at least three of these players in just about every lineup you make tonight, either as captain or in a flex spot.

Davante Adams ($11,200) leads a two-man top tier in projection, though he is currently listed as questionable. If he is active, Adams will face his former team for the first time. The Packers are ranked 18th in pass DVOA, and Adams has a nearly 70% chance of making the optimal lineup, according to Stokastic’s Top Showdown Plays Tool.
Josh Jacobs ($10,600) joins Adams in the top tier against a Packers defense ranked 25th in run DVOA. He also currently has a nearly 70% chance of making the optimal lineup.
Jordan Love ($9,800) leads a two-man second tier against a Raiders defense ranked 28th in pass DVOA. Love has a greater-than-55% chance of making the optimal lineup.
Jimmy Garoppolo ($9,400) joins Love in the second tier and has around a 60% chance of making the optimal lineup.
A.J. Dillon ($4,600) leads a two-man third tier with teammate Aaron Jones ruled out. Dillon faces a Raiders defense ranked 19th in run DVOA, and he has a nearly 65% chance of making the optimal lineup.
Jakobi Meyers ($7,000) joins Jones in the third tier. Meyers is second on the Raiders in route participation at 81.5%, 27% higher than the next highest on the team, and his 23.9% target share through four weeks is 21st in the NFL among players who have played more than one game. Meyers has around a 50% chance of making the optimal lineup.
Christian Watson ($7,800) leads a two-man fourth projection tier. Watson made his season debut in Week 4 and was limited to a 46% snap share, but he may be back to full strength for this game. Watson has around a 40% chance of making the optimal lineup.
Romeo Doubs ($8,200) joins Watson in the fourth projection tier. Doubs leads the Packers in route participation and target share but may see Watson cut into his opportunities. Doubs has a greater-than-25% chance of making the optimal lineup.

Top Point-Per-Dollar Plays

These are just a few players who will be featured throughout my lineups due to their high points-per-dollar projection. At the same time, because I will typically have at least three studs in each lineup, the top points-per-dollar plays are often players I will be pivoting away from in some lineups in favor of players who project a bit worse but who will also garner lower ownership. I am also excluding any player with a projection below 3 fantasy points from this list.

Dontayvion Wicks ($200) saw his snap share drop from 66% in Week 3 to 58% in Week 4 with Watson’s return, and his snap share is likely to continue dropping as Watson gets back to his usual workload. Still, it was promising to see Wicks retain a majority of his snaps while Samori Toure’s snap share dropped from 42% to 19%.
Austin Hooper ($600) has run routes on 54.4% of Raiders dropbacks this season, but with the targets being so condensed to Adams and Meyers, Hooper has been targeted just five times, sixth on the team.
Ameer Abdullah ($1,000) has zero carries on the season, but he has 22.1% route participation and he’s tied for fourth on the team with seven targets.
Hunter Renfrow ($2,200) has run routes on 54.4% of Raiders dropbacks, and he is tied for fourth on the team with seven targets.
Luke Musgrave ($5,200) is third on the Packers in both route participation and targets despite leaving the Week 4 game in the first half with a concussion.
Jayden Reed ($6,200) fully retained his role as the primary slot receiver for the Packers after Watson returned in Week 4, running routes on 63.4% of dropbacks.
As usual, kickers and defenses are among the top point-per-dollar plays on the slate.

Correlation

In NFL DFS, correlations are endless, both positive and negative. Most are minor enough that they do not necessarily need to be factored into lineups. If you want to give a boost to your running back’s defense, for example, that is great; but running backs will frequently be optimal without the defense also being optimal, even in NFL DFS Showdown.

The only correlations that are almost mandatory to consider on NFL DFS Showdown slates involve quarterbacks — particularly non-rushing quarterbacks. That is because of the scoring dynamics on DraftKings. On each passing play, the pass catcher scores more fantasy points than the quarterback. For example, if a quarterback throws a pass for 5 yards, he will get 0.2 fantasy points — 1 fantasy point per 25 yards passing, divided by five. The receiver will get 1.5 fantasy points — 1 point per reception, plus half a point for 5 yards receiving. The quarterback also only gets four points per passing touchdown, while the receiver gets six points for a receiving touchdown.

The quarterback is also generally one of the most expensive players on his team. Thus, he will often need to be his team’s highest fantasy point scorer to be the optimal captain. Outside of rare occasions where the quarterback scores fantasy points by passing to a player who is not in the DraftKings player pool or gets points as a receiver on a trick play, there are essentially just two ways for the quarterback to be the highest-scoring player on his team: adding fantasy points via rushing or spreading the ball around to multiple pass catchers.

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Some General Thoughts

If you play a quarterback at captain, and he does not have rushing upside, and he is the most expensive player on his team, you will almost always want to have multiple of his team’s pass catchers in the flex. This is also largely true if the quarterback is only slightly less expensive than the most expensive pass catcher on his team.
If you play a quarterback at captain, and he has moderate rushing upside, you can consider playing just one of his pass catchers in the flex — but multiple may still be preferred, depending on the extent of that rushing upside. The quarterback’s price may also come into play here; the more expensive he is, the more likely you will need to have multiple pass catchers in the flex.
If you play a quarterback at captain, and he has major rushing upside, you do not necessarily need to play any pass catchers in the flex. This is relatively uncommon, and only applies to a few quarterbacks.
If you play a quarterback in the flex, and he does not have rushing upside, you will generally want to have at least one of his pass catchers elsewhere in the lineup, either at captain or in another flex spot.
If you play a quarterback in the flex, and he has moderate to high rushing upside, you do not necessarily need to include one of his pass catchers elsewhere in the lineup. But there will always be positive correlation there between a quarterback and his pass catchers.

Some Packers-Raiders Game-Specific Thoughts

If you play Love: Love has rushed for 18 yards per game this season and added two rushing touchdowns. He should be paired with at least one pass catcher in every lineup and preferably multiple when used at captain.
If you play Garoppolo: Garoppolo has started 60 games in his career and has just 244 rushing yards to show for it. He should always be paired with at least one pass catcher and multiple when used at captain.

Differentiation

Making highly projected lineups with smart correlations will separate you from the lowest level Showdown players, but there are many very smart casual players as well. Differentiation is the last step to separating pros from Joes.

In just about any DFS GPP, finding low-owned gems is key because lower ownership reduces the field of lineups you are competing against when the player has a 99th-percentile outcome. Taking it to the extreme, just as a thought exercise, let’s say that Jacobs scores 100 fantasy points tonight. You are not just going to need him; you will need him in the captain spot (150 fantasy points). If 20,000 lineups in your contest have Jacobs in the captain spot, you have essentially reduced the field of lineups you are competing with to 20,000. If only 200 lineups have Jacobs at captain, now we are talking.

On NFL DFS Showdown slates, there is an additional factor for large-field GPPs. We do not just want to find seldomly used players; we want to find seldomly used LINEUPS. Why? Well, I will give you two examples from 2021:

On Sept. 20, 2021, DraftKings had a Milly Maker for the Packers-Lions tilt, but the top lineup was duplicated 231 times. Rather than winning $1 million, the users who entered those 231 lineups had to split the top 231 prizes, for just a bit over $6,000 each. That is despite having everything go their way, which requires an extreme amount of luck.
On Oct. 11, 2021, we saw the other end of the spectrum: User rcoho1984 played a unique lineup in the Ravens-Colts Milly Maker, taking home not just a million dollars but a ticket to the Tournament of Champions.

If you are going to win — which takes a lot of luck, regardless of how well your lineup projects — I would suggest making it count. I am not necessarily concerned with making an entirely unique lineup like rcoho1984 did every single time, but I aim to be a lot closer to their unique lineup than those that were duplicated 231 times.

Some Easy Tricks

Low-owned players. Even if you are using other tricks to get unique, it is still a good idea to play a few players in some of your lineups who will not be getting much ownership. Some low-owned players to consider:

Patrick Taylor ($200) was signed to the Packers active roster today. With Jones out in Weeks 2 and 3, Taylor saw his role increase from 22% snap share in Week 2 to 39% snap share in Week 3. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Taylor’s role continue to increase, with Dillon averaging just 2.7 yards per carry this season.
Michael Mayer ($200), the third tight end drafted this year after Dalton Kincaid and Sam LaPorta, played 51% of snaps in Week 4, his highest snap share of the season.

Embrace lineups missing some correlation pieces or even with some negative correlation. Generally, highly correlated lineups will be over-owned, whereas the field will avoid negative correlation at all costs.

Quarterback against opposing defense.
Pass catcher at captain without including the quarterback at flex.
Multiple running backs from the same team in a lineup.

Leave salary on the table. This is the easiest way to lower your duplicates. Casual players assume that if they have salary left over, they should upgrade. The problem with this approach is that it almost inevitably leads to highly duplicated lineups. How much salary should you leave on the table? That is up to you. If it is less than $800 and you have not gotten extremely unique with player selections and weird correlations, it is likely you will have to split any winnings with many other entries.

Author

Neil Orfield

Neil Orfield has been playing DFS regularly since 2013, but his success really started taking off in 2019 when he had a six figure payday with a hand built NFL lineup. The next day, he signed up for a Stokastic+ subscription with FantasyCruncher. Since then he has won an NFL milly and added six figure wins in XFL, MLB, and NBA. He has recently excelled at NFL Showdown, with many five- and six-figure wins since 2021.