DraftKings NFL Showdown SlateIQ - Week 10 - Monday Night Football

Erik Beimfohr (ebeimfohr)

Created 4 months ago, Last Updated 4 months ago (Premium)

Welcome to the beta version of a new product here at RotoGrinders, DraftKings Showdown SlateIQ. For those not familiar, we offer a SlateIQ product for NFL, NBA and MLB main slates that uses our very own ResultsDB data to match the upcoming main slate to the historical DFS slates on DraftKings that are most similar based on several different characteristics at the slate, game and player level. You can take a look at the NFL Week 10 SlateIQ from the main slate here.

We are creating something a little bit different for NFL Showdown SlateIQ since, well, Showdown contests are quite a bit different than main slate contests. Instead of trying to match previous slates, we want to match previously similar games. So, in order to do that, we created Game Archetypes based on the total amount of scoring in a game, as well as the final point differential. That way if we think a game is going to be a close, low-scoring slugfest, we can see how we should be building our Showdown lineups based on what has been winning in Showdown lineups in other close, low-scoring slugfests.

We’ve typically been running our Showdown SlateIQ for Thursday Night Football, but this week we decided to pivot a little bit & take a look at the big Monday Night Football matchup of NFC West foes as the Seattle Seahawks travel to the bay to take on the San Francisco 49ers. The 49ers are 6 point favorites, and the game total sits at a solid 47 points. Just based on the betting market, we should expect a reasonably close game with moderate scoring, so let’s take a look at where we can find leverage in both our Captain spot and our overall lineup construction on tonight’s showdown slate:

Close Game With Moderate Scoring

I’m not going to lie to you guys, I despise playing DSTs in showdown, so this one pains me. Shockingly, the DST 1 on similar slates to tonight have actually provided far and away the most leverage, so it might be wheels up on the Niners defense. If defenses in captain are anti-brand for you like they are for me, WR 2 does also provide some positive leverage on the field, and I think given the context of tonight’s slate makes a lot of sense. We’ve seen Emmanuel Sanders immediately become the alpha WR for the 49ers since being shipped over from Denver, and with George Kittle out for the 49ers tonight, I think we could see an even larger role for Manny in the offense, making him a strong captain candidate.

Positional Breakdown

So, what positions should you be using to fill out your lineup? The top lineups have been pretty in line with the field on QB use, typically using just 1 QB. However, you see the top 0.1% of lineups capitalizing on 2 RB1 builds and 2 WR1 builds compared to the field. We also see the trend of higher DST use in winning lineups, but it’s another tougher to pinpoint leverage spot that really jumped out to me on this slate. The double TE build is pretty intriguing, being used by 6% of top lineups vs just 3% of the field. Ross Dwelley steps in for George Kittle as a pretty obvious play, but Jacob Hollister also emerged last week for the Seahawks as their pass catching TE with Will Dissly out for the year. With both players being cheap, you can afford some of the studs on this slate with double TE, while also giving yourself some leverage over the field.

Team Allocation

Finally, we look at the leverage and ROI on the different roster builds in terms of how many players you should play from each team. In past weeks, we’ve typically seen the most leverage on unbalanced builds like 5-1, but tonight we see the opposite. From both an ROI & leverage perspective, the 4-2 and 3-3 builds are far and away the best way to go tonight, which makes sense with two capable offenses matching up in a game we expect to be competitive.

As I mentioned last week, we are continuing to work on building this Showdown SlateIQ out even further with more flexibility for you to analyze different game types (and improve the image sizing), so be on the lookout for that coming soon!