NFL DFS Showdown SZN 2023: Giants vs. 49ers

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 run the new Showdown Contest simulations to see what differences we can find in projected ownership and likely exposure. Likewise, we take into account the whole lineup’s projection and ownership.

Main Points:

• The biggest point of leverage tonight is Ray-Ray the Bay=Bay over Ronnie “Rookie” Bell in GPPs
• Try to avoid using the combo of CMC, Jones, Deebo, and Purdy
• Get ready to tilt some weird touchdowns between two teams that have a lot of depth and few bellcows

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

Captain ownership distributions

The best edge offered at CPT in the contest simulations is George Kittle, who is projected at just 5% captain ownership but has an 11% exposure rate in optimals. This number may close up with the news on Brandon Aiyuk being out, but it’s unlikely Kittle is higher than 10% owned at this slot. The biggest negative leverage goes to Brock Purdy at -6.45% leverage gained here. His optimality rate is still okay at 12.20% but he is being overvalued with a projected ownership at captain of 18.65%. This is a situation where you’ll want to rerun the contest sims closer to lock after final updates to make sure the ownerships here haven’t shifted considerably after the Aiyuk news.

FLEX ownership distributions

Christian McCaffrey offers the most edge at FLEX, with an optimal exposure rate of 81.70% against a projected FLEX ownership of around 56%. The key takeaway with McCaffrey is that he makes for a better FLEX than CPT, but he’s going to be in your lineup either way. The largest negative edge found is on Parris Campbell at -5%, but there are a handful of options in that range. The one that probably matters the most is the 49ers DST, which has a projected ownership of 12.70% and is probably projected too low, which makes them conservatively overvalued and possible the worst play on the slate.

Some other notes on optimization exposures and projected ownership:

• Free square is Christian McCaffrey. Don’t need to overthink it outside of the largest field GPPs, where you could fade for Elijah Mitchell if you felt inclined.
• Ronnie Bell is already creeping up in ownership, but people are ignoring Ray-Ray McCloud III at the same price point in the same situation. He makes for a fantastic large field GPP pivot.
• There’s not enough ownership on either kicker in the FLEX, which usually means the public is stacking for a higher scoring game.

Duplication projections and DFS lineups to avoid

Here is a sample of the lineups in terms of highest ownership from the contest simulations. To clarify, you should avoid playing these lineups in large field GPPs tonight:

The lineups most likely to be duped are utilizing a mid-priced captain along with a clear 4-man combo: McCaffrey, Daniel Jones, Deebo Samuel, and Brock Purdy. There’s enough value on the slate that you can fit all the studs together, so the easiest way to reduce duplication is simply avoid the full combo. The most high leverage way of doing this is to avoid Brock Purdy, who is an overvalued play at FLEX based on the contest sims. You could also use a Giants player in the captain, as the vast majority of the captains in high probability dupes are 49ers players.

The two most realistic ways to avoid duplication and have a strong ROI tonight are: Play towards a Giants victory with a 4-2 NYG lean or avoid Brock Purdy and/or Deebo Samuel. An interesting way to play the slate is with George Kittle captain and Christian McCaffrey in the FLEX with strong NYG options ins an offset 2-4.

DFS Showdown SZN: Final Thoughts

I’m interested to see what happens with the Ronnie Bell situation. He filled in last week with no Aiyuk and had 18% of the snaps ran but had no targets and is a late round rookie. Meanwhile McCloud had a targets per route run of around 13% (moderate) in 2022 and could feasibly see as many snaps as Ronnie Bell. There seems to be a considerably strong opportunity to pivot off the Ronnie Bell chalk and get massive leverage in GPPs in a really simple way. That said, both of them could suck, we could get nothing for the pivot, and have Arbys on speed dial.

Regardless, there’s a lot of value to be had on this slate in terms of both roster construction differences as well as value choices. Even with an 85% owned CMC to be had you’ll be able to fill in the blanks with a lot of unique directions. So long as you don’t play the super obvious 4-man combo of CMC, Jones, Deebo, and Purdy you can build a lot of strong lineups a lot of different ways.

Some players that look overvalued:

• Ronnie Bell (probably)
• Brock Purdy (CPT)
• 49ers DST

Some players that look undervalued:

• George Kittle (CPT)
• Ray-Ray McCloud III
• Giants 4-2 builds

Good luck and bink a unique

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