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Bettings

Showdown slates are some of the best sweats that NFL DFS has to offer. If you’re building lineups correctly, you can take advantage of these quick sweats week in and week out. I’ll be going through position-by-position to break down everything you need to know for the showdown slate that night.

What Does Vegas Think?

Team	Spread	Total
Pittsburgh Steelers	+3	43.5
Minnesota Vikings	-3	43.5

Notable Injuries

There’s speculation this morning that Dalvin Cook — despite just recently dislocating his shoulder and the team having another 11 days until their Week 15 contest — could play. I’m not a doctor, but that seems foolish. The reports say that he’ll need to wear a harness and potentially other forms of protection. This muddies the waters quite a bit with the Minnesota backfield. Make sure to check in with our Showdown Projections before finalizing your builds tonight and I’ll detail my approach to the situation in the running backs section. Adam Thielen has been ruled out with a high ankle sprain.

On the Steelers side, a few defensive players have been ruled out, but Chase Claypool, who was dealing with a toe injury, will give it a go.

Quarterback

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Kirk Cousins finds himself as the punchline on social media (and in my personal group chats) quite a bit. The boneheaded things he does deserve most of the ridicule he receives, though, but while he might not be the best reality QB in the league he’s been excellent for fantasy purposes this season. He’s averaging nearly 22 points per game and has been a QB1 in 8-of-12 contests to start the season.

Ben Roethlisberger. Not so much. He’s averaging under 17 points per game and has only had two QB1 performances in his 11 games. If you’re into the #trends, they’ve both come within the last three weeks but I’m not going to overrate those performances. I’ll be using the LineupEDGE Optimizer with the following rules for my build:

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Running Backs

Najee Harris has the most valuable workload in the league, per my RB workload score. If you’re not familiar with it, head over to the Matt’s Musings piece from this week to learn more

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Long story short, it quantifies high-value touches (rush attempts closer to the goal line and targets) into a neat metric that we can use to value the different work that backs are seeing. The Steelers use Harris in both phases of the offense and don’t really mix anyone else in. He’s been on the field for at least 75% of the offensive snaps in all but two games this season.

The split between Alexander Mattison and Dalvin Cook seems impossible to predict. Not only is it impossible to nail down what the expected game plan will be, but it’s also impossible to guarantee that Cook finishes the game. I’m using the optimizer rules with these assumptions in mind.

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If I have Mattison in my CPT/MVP spot, that lineup needs to tell the story that he winds up with most of the work and should, therefore, avoid Cook. When I have Cook in the CPT/MVP spot, I’m going to add in Mattison with that same assumption and hope they give Cook some red-zone work and he finds the box once or twice.

Wide Receivers

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Here’s how the targets have been spread out across the season for these two teams.

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Justin Jefferson’s target share floor and touchdown equity are certainly higher this week in Thielen’s absence. K.J. Osborn will see a bump here, as well, as the next man up. Osborn has had a couple of spike weeks, but I’m wondering if he goes over-rostered here. Again, refer to the showdown projections while building. If he becomes too popular, I’ll likely only have a few CPT/MVP shares and avoid him in the flex altogether.

Diontae Johnson is the clear leader on the Pittsburgh side. He’s seen more targets than anyone in the league not named Cooper Kupp. I’ll mix in some Ray-Ray McCloud and James Washington to go with Chase Claypool but I’m prioritizing Johnson.

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Tight Ends

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As with most non-Chiefs slates, the tight end situation on this slate is a bit gross. Tyler Conklin and Pat Freiermuth are really the main options here and they sit 15th and 25th in WOPR among tight ends, respectively. As lineup fillers, they’re totally fine but I’m not going too crazy on them outside of a few fliers here and there.

Kickers and Defenses

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As always, I’m not going to go too heavy on these options here. Both of these quarterbacks have largely avoided being intercepted this season but over their careers they’ve been known to make compounding mistakes in that regard. A flier here or there is fine, but I’m not going too heavy here either.

Favorite Captain Plays

Favorite Contrarian Captain Plays

Slate Edge

I build showdown with “stories” in mind, here are the allocations for those stories within my lineups for Thursday:
- 50% Vikings blowout with 2 Steelers in flex
- 30% Vikings win with 2-3 Steelers in flex
- 20% Steelers close win with 1-3 Vikings in flex