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Week 1 DraftKings Monday Night Football Showdown: Seattle Seahawks vs. Denver Broncos

Denver, Colorado, USA; Denver Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson (3) prior to the start of the game against the Minnesota Vikings at Empower Field at Mile High. Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

Best CPT Values: D.K. Metcalf and Rashaad Penny project as the best values in the CPT spot, with popular choices like Russell Wilson and Javonte Williams being over-rostered.

FLEX Options: In the FLEX spots, Geno Smith and the Seattle Seahawks defense should have positive leverage on the field.

Top FLEX Pairings: The best FLEX pairing for Metcalf as the CPT is his quarterback Smith, while if you roster Penny as CPT, you’ll want to have opposing quarterback Russell Wilson in one of the FLEX spots.

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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

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We'll analyze all of the NFL’s “island” games (TNF, SNF and MNF) and playoff matchups this season for DFS purposes, utilizing PFF’s weekly projections, current betting lines and millions of simulated historical combinations to identify the best and worst values for an upcoming matchup.

There are five main components to this Showdown slate analysis that you’ll find below:

  • A breakdown of methodology and the most similar historical matchup to this game: 2021 Week 1: Seattle SeahawksIndianapolis Colts, with Russell Wilson as himself and Carson Wentz playing the role of Geno Smith.
  • Optimal lineup allocations (CPT and total roster) for both teams based on the results of similar historical matchups.
  • Comparison of player ownership projections for FLEX and CPT produced by a model trained on 2018-2022 Showdown contest results to optimal allocations.
  • Recent CPT ownership trends illustrated for both starting lineups.
  • A table showing the most common players on optimal lineups for each player. This allows you to see which other players are commonly found on the same optimal lineups as a player you’re interested in rostering.

THE OPTIMAL ROSTER

To analyze this specific Showdown slate, I looked through thousands of NFL matchups from 2014 to 2022 and found the closest analogies to this contest according to the following parameters: Betting spread, over/under and average fantasy points scoring for the top-ranked positional players of both rosters (QB1, RB1, WR1, TE1).

I won’t detail every matchup that falls into the top 100 for this game, but for illustration purposes, let’s look at the most similar matchup:

Historical Current
Player Pos Team Player Pos Team
Russell Wilson QB SEA Russell Wilson QB DEN
Chris Carson RB SEA Javonte Williams RB DEN
D.K. Metcalf WR SEA Courtland Sutton WR DEN
Will Dissly TE SEA Albert Okwuegbunam TE DEN
Carson Wentz QB IND Geno Smith QB SEA
Jonathan Taylor RB IND Rashaad Penny RB SEA
Zach Pascal WR IND DK Metcalf WR SEA
Jack Doyle TE IND Noah Fant TE SEA

The spread and over/under are similar in these matchups (Seahawks -3, 48.5 O/U versus this matchup at Broncos -6.5, 44 O/U). All the players aren’t perfect matches, but that’s why we use 100 similar matchups and not just the single most similar.

The optimal roster for that historical matchup, assuming positional salaries equaled what they are for this showdown slate, would have been:

Player Team Position Roster Position Fantasy Pts
Nyheim Hines IND RB CPT 14.2
Russell Wilson SEA QB FLEX 27.1
Zach Pascal IND WR FLEX 20.3
Carson Wentz IND QB FLEX 19.3
Jonathan Taylor IND RB FLEX 17.6
D.K. Metcalf SEA WR FLEX 16.0

For this game and 99 other similar matchups, I calculated every possible combination that fits with Showdown rules (one CPT, at least one offensive player from each team) and would fall under the $50K salary threshold, assuming the salaries for the historical similar matchups are the same as those for this contest.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT CAPTAIN

The most unique part of the format, and therefore the biggest opportunity for a competitive advantage, is choosing your CPT. Should you always choose a QB who typically has the highest absolute fantasy scoring? Are defenses and kickers viable options? RB versus WR?

I went through the millions of possible lineup combinations for the 100 most similar matchups and found who the CPT selections were on the top-five scoring lineups for each matchup. Here are the 500 CPT choices from those matchups by position rank according to salary.

BREAKING DOWN TOTAL OPTIMAL ROSTERS

This graph illustrates the full range of allocations for the different positions to measure how many of the 500 optimal rosters had exactly zero, one or two of the given positions.

HISTORICAL OWNERSHIP

The boxplot above shows the ranges for CPT ownership for each starting player in contests since 2019.

Projected ownership versus optimal

This is where the analysis comes together and becomes actionable. What’s most important when viewing these numbers is to contrast them to the optimal numbers taken from the analysis above for different positions. Then, we see where the leverage may exist.

The two tables below compare the optimal allocations above, with adjustments for the personnel of this particular matchup, to our ownership projections for CPT and FLEX.

DRAFTKINGS SHOWDOWN CAPTAIN

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