NFL DFS Showdown Spotlight: Week 13 Sunday Night Football DraftKings & FanDuel | Chiefs vs. Broncos

For each of the featured games, typically Sunday Night Football, Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football slates, we will provide free analysis for the single-slate action on DraftKings and FanDuel. This will include team capsules, player rankings, comments and NFL DFS picks for today. There are loads of information and NFL DFS Showdown picks to get into for both DraftKings and FanDuel on this Week 13 Sunday Night Football slate featuring the Dallas Cowboys at the New Orleans Saints.

NFL DFS Showdown Picks: Week 13 Sunday Night Football

Melvin Gordon (hip/shoulder) is out and while Teddy Bridgewater left the last game with an injury, he did return and is not on the injury report. Clyde Edwards-Helaire is dealing with a non-Covid related illness and is questionable.

Denver Broncos: 18.75 Points

Quarterback

This has been a dreadful season for the Denver passing game. Newcomer Teddy Bridgewater has only two games with more than 300 yards and in his last games he has failed to reach 200 yards twice. In this recent stretch he is averaging 200.8 yards with five aerial scores. On a positive note he has only one interception along with two rushing touchdowns in this timeframe.

Kansas City has seen their passing DVOA improve to 21st and in their last six games they have not allowed any opposing signal-caller more than 270 yards with just seven touchdowns against seven interceptions. They have not faced any world beaters in these games, though Derek Carr is leading the league in passing yards and he was held in check with just 261 and a pair of touchdowns. Dak Prescott was also neutralized managing only 216 yards with a pair of interceptions.

Running Back

Melvin Gordon is out which means that rookie Javonte Williams will be the lead running back. Williams was a second round selection from the University of North Carolina and he has been a solid performer in the running and passing game while sharing time with Gordon. DraftKings ($7,600) and FanDuel ($10,500) did a solid job of getting ahead of this injury news, though Williams is still going to be quite popular. Andrew Beck is mostly a blocking back with just one carry in three seasons (340 snaps) and a dozen targets. Journeyman Mike Boone will likely serve as the backup and undrafted rookie Damarea Crockett should be the third option, though he has not seen the field on offense since getting four snaps in Week 3.

Wide Receiver

Aside from K.J. Hamler, the receivers are all healthy… of course with Bridgewater under center they have an artificial ceiling in place. Courtland Sutton and Tim Patrick should be on the field for around 90% of the snaps with Jerry Jeudy working in as the third receiver or spelling the other two 60-70% of the time. In the last five games, Patrick has 22 targets, Sutton has 17 and in his four games, Jeudy has 24. Kendall Hinton is the only other receiver with targets in this stretch with a grand total of two.

Both Gallup and Lamb were showing up as great plays in the NFL lineup optimizer today. Check out all of Awesemo’s free NFL DFS lineup optimizer picks from the DraftKings NFL cheat sheet and FanDuel NFL cheat sheet.

Tight End

Noah Fant has been a solid source of fantasy production when healthy. In his last two games on either side of the bye week he has six and four targets. Albert Okwuegbunam is on the field for around 40% of the snaps and is in play as a differentiation option. Eric Saubert is typically in as a blocker getting only 11 targets on 224 snaps this season.

Defense/Special Teams

Denver has been solid this season with 2.5 sacks per game, though Kansas City has allowed the fifth fewest sacks this year. On the turnover front, the Broncos have just over a takeaway per game, though the Chiefs have ceded the second most giveaways in the league with 22 split evenly between interceptions and fumbles.

Kansas City Chiefs: 28.25 Points

Quarterback

Despite their reputation, Denver has a bottom five rushing and a bottom ten passing DVOA. On the flipside we have Patrick Mahomes who has only seven touchdowns in his last five games with five of those scores coming against Las Vegas in Week 10. In this stretch, Mahomes has two single digit fantasy performances for the rest of his career he has just one. There are several contributing factors in these poor performances. The lack of a consistent running game, shaky offensive line play, the skill position players being a year older and Mahomes admittedly forcing the issue downfield instead of taking easy completions. While it is not time to panic just yet, it is not that far off either. Kansas City is coming off their bye week so let’s hope they have a good game plan for tonight.

Running Back

Clyde Edwards-Helaire is dealing with an illness and we have seen him active but not play in prior prime time games. Coach Andy Reid has stated he expects Edwards-Helaire to be good to go for Sunday Night Football. In Week 11 the second-year back was solid with 12 carries for 63 yards and a score and bringing in both of his targets for another 13 yards. Darrel Williams saw just four more snaps than his counterpart in what was a nearly equal split. However, Williams only had five carries and three targets. Jerick McKinnon (hamstring) is now on the injured reserve, though last week Michael Burton was the only other running back to see the field and he was in on just five plays.

Wide Receiver

Tyreek Hill is second in the league with 11.1 targets per game, fourth with eight touchdowns and fifth with 84.7 yards per game. Demarcus Robinson has fallen out of favor with zero or one target in three of his last four games with Mecole Hardman getting 18 targets and Byron Pringle has chipped in with nine targets in this span. Josh Gordon has at least been on the field for 29-33 snaps in three of the last four games, though he has just four targets for one reception and seven yards in this timeframe.

Awesemo’s data scientist Matt Savoca wrote about some of the best salary-saving plays into tonight’s Thursday Night Football matchup, and a lot of them included these Saints wide receivers. Check out all of his value plays in the Week 13 Thursday Night Football Showdown Matchups & NFL DFS Picks.

Tight End

Travis Kelce is second on the team with 98 targets for an average of nearly nine per appearance. The disappointing part is that he has only two receiving touchdowns in his last nine games, though he did get a wildcat snap last week that turned into a four yard touchdown run. Over the last six games, Blake Bell has four targets and Noah Gray has five. Non-Kelce tight ends are combining for just two targets per tilt.

Defense/Special Teams

Each team is averaging just over a takeaway/giveaway per game. Despite being a run-heavy squad, Denver has allowed nearly three sacks per game, though Kansas City is in the bottom five so it will be interesting to see if they can take advantage of this matchup.

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Sunday Night Football Single-Game NFL DFS Strategy

The rankings below are best utilized for building out single-entry and three-max lineups and for head-to-head and three-man formats. They provide a nice barometer for player value, but for those taking the MME approach, remember that correlation is key. This means matching a receiver or two with a quarterback in the Captain/MVP slot. This also works conversely with pairing a Captain/MVP pass catcher with their quarterback.

Week 13 Sunday Night Football NFL DFS Rankings

Top 10 NFL DFS Showdown Picks

1. Tyreek Hill: Apologies to the Mahomies, but we have to join the Tyreek Freaks tonight.
2. Javonte Williams: Should be able to consolidate the workload, anything less than 100 combined yards and a score will be disappointing.
3. Travis Kelce: It is unfair to compare him to last year when he had arguably the best tight end season of all time.
4. Patrick Mahoms: Gut check time, Andy Reid bye week (19-3) narrative is in play.
5. Teddy Bridgewater: Teddy “Two Gloves” projects well in this matchup, good luck guessing which pass catcher does well.
6. Clyde Edwards-Helaire: Should be good to go, but we have seen this movie end poorly once before.
7. Darrel Williams: Excellent leverage play as a direct pivot if Edwards-Helaire picks up steam.
8. Jerry Jeudy: Proportionally sees more targets per play than the rest of the receivers.
9. Noah Fant: Seems to be Bridgewater’s safety valve.
10. Harrison Butker: Slight breezes in the 10-12 mph range, should not be a dramatic impact on the kicking game.

Secondary NFL DFS Showdown Picks

1. Courtland Sutton: Needs a different quarterback to unlock his upside.
2. Brandon McManus: Two of his three misses this season have been from 50 or more yards.
3. Kansas City D/ST: DraftKings has goosed their salary to $4,400.
4. Tim Patrick: Perfectly neutral option at this salary on both sites.
5. Byron Pringle and Mecole Hardman: Pringle for the savings, Hardman if you have the means.

Lottery Ticket NFL DFS Showdown Picks

1. Denver D/ST: Reputation does not match up with results.
2. Albert Okwuegbunam: There are worse punts, just look below.
3. Demarcus Robinson an Josh Gordon: Over/under for this duo is 3.5 targets.
4. Blake Bell and Noah Gray: Over/under for this duo is 2.0 targets. However, random tight end touchdown narrative is in play for all prime time games.
5. Kendall Hinton, Andrew Beck, Marcus Kemp and Diontae Spencer: It would make more sense to play a backup quarterback.

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