Fantasy Football Today - Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl DFS Showdown Picks, Captains and Strategy (Fantasy Football Today DFS podcast)

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

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It's having the spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash businessplatinum. Welcome, everybody, to Fantasy Football Today, DFS. This is our last show of this season. Of course, we're going to be doing stuff in the offseason. But Mike, we've got the Super Bowl on board here. And as everybody knows, this is a very bittersweet week for me.

Sunday's going to be very bittersweet. But we have a really exciting game with most likely the two best teams in the NFL. A little italicizing there, but listen, Kansas City's amazing. Philadelphia Eagles are amazing. And we have a high total. We have a very competitive game, at least in terms of how the spread looks. And we've got showdown to talk about. So how excited are you? I know when I asked you last show, you referenced how, hey, listen, you're not going to the Super Bowl. You're staying home because you're interested in winning a million dollars this week. How are you feeling about it?

No, I'm feeling all right about it. Obviously, it's you'd be lying if you said you thought you were going to win the contest. It's very, very difficult to take down a showdown contest of this size. It's a one game slate, obviously, but it is a great opportunity. You know, the press points are reasonable out there to play for a million dollars and the coverage as far as only needing to cover one game versus a full slate, I think it's an interesting opportunity. So definitely fired up about it. Yeah, very unique opportunity to make some money. Well, one thing I want to remind people of a couple of things here. One is our fantasy football today, DFS DraftKings contest is live. It's about half full. So we still got some time to fill this thing up. It's only $5. As everybody know, it's 200 people deep. So get into this last Super Bowl showdown contest. But the other thing is, we're going to talk about showdown today. We're going to kind of construct some lines. I think we're going to do it a little different than most shows. We're going to talk about some of the captains that Mike likes in particular in terms of the captains he's going to be using, the optimal captains for him.

And we're just going to talk about, well, if you have that captain, what's the game script that follows? What's the lineup that follows? And so I think that's what we did last. It would have been last Tuesday. And I think that show is really important. If you go back to last Tuesday, and I'll remind everybody, it would be the, or it's probably last Thursday, excuse me, but it would have been the 23 minute mark. I said this when we had prop stars on.

That's evergreen content. I really think if you want to learn how to play showdown, you got to listen to last Thursday, again, seven days ago, that episode where we talk about some of the showdown theory. And Mike, I thought really laid it out, especially when it comes to game script. It's one thing to have a game script. It's another thing to know who to put into your lineup as a result of that game script. And I think that's where there's some disconnect, where people think they know who to put in

because of the game script, but kind of they really don't. They make mistakes. And I thought we really did a good job laying that out. So I highly encourage everybody. We might even chop that up and just make it its own episode in the off season so people can really appreciate and understand how to play showdown. So we're going to do a little bit of that out. So I highly encourage everybody. We might even chop that up and just, you know, make it its own episode in the off season. So people can really appreciate and understand how to play showdown. So we're going to do a little bit of that here. And so I just want to

remind everybody, Mike, just some fundamentals of showdown. Listen, I don't want to cover everything. We've already done that, but as we sort of get into your favorite captains, your favorite flex plays, what are some of the fundamentals of showdown, just bullet points that we really need to focus in on as we make our lineups for the Super Bowl? Yeah. So I think that one thing that stands out majorly in this is you don't have to use all the salary. That's one of the easiest ways to reduce the number of lineups that you're going to be duplicated with is going to be to not use all $50,000 of salary on draftings. So that's one thing. Number two, just building lineups that make sense, right? So build for a game script. Don't build lineups

using a projection set if you're just looking at a player's medium projection. While you can get away with building lineups using medium projection for a full slate, typically, players do on average come in close to where their medium projection is. That is when you're picking one player or two players from a specific game, you know, across the league. Now you are forced to build a lineup from everyone in the same game. It's no different than when you're on the sports betting side building a same game parlay. You need to think through how you build those because certain things are obviously positively and negatively correlated. So you really need to think through the lineup that you are entering and, you know, at least be able to justify some of the paths to victory there. Absolutely. And when it comes to I want to ask you how you think this game is going to go in terms of who's going to win. In other words, is there a huge slant towards

if you think Kansas City is going to win, 70% of your lineups are going to be sort of Kansas City outcome is the win based. Is that how you do that? A little bit, yeah. I take it slightly a step further, so I'll build a subset of lineups for the game that Dallas Goddard catches a touchdown pass, right?

And then I'll build a subset for the game where Devontae Smith has 100 yards and a touchdown or things like that. Build a game, build a set for where Miles Sanders does not score a resting touchdown. If you're playing multi-entry, building lots of lineups, I like to break them up into that. I know a number of people that play a bunch of lineups will prefer to just run one big set with the same thing

and kind of capture all the different possible outcomes within those. I personally am just going to take stances on focusing on different scenarios, whether it's a Mahomes MVP type game where the Chiefs likely win, he throws three touchdowns. You know, what does that build look like? That's what I personally will be focusing on more. And do you have, from an outcome standpoint,

where's the lean on this game? I know you have some props. We gave them out during our prop show. Are you leaning towards the Chiefs or the Eagles? And are you leaning toward the over or the under here? Or do you just think the total is so efficient that you don't really care one way or the other? You don't have money on that. Yeah, no, I think it's mostly efficient both ways, spread and total, uh, which makes a lot of sense. I mean, it's the most, it should be the most efficient game that we see all year when you've got this amount of time and only one game to focus on for a market. Um, however I lean towards the under, uh, but as far as like my, most of my builds, um, you know, I, I don't think that there's

a ton of, uh, I don't think there's a ton of value in like skewing everything to like only pick a cheap swing or a, uh, an Eagles win. I think it's really, really, really close to 50 50. So my personal recommendation to people building again, whether it's computer or by hand is to focus on what the outcomes look like on individual players and a little less so on the teams, just because I, you know, the spread, in my opinion, you should listen to the market on the spread in total. We're projecting a game where each team scores 25 points, basically, right? That's what we're projecting. And when

you have that, I would focus more on building, okay, what does that look like on the Eagles side? What does it look like on the Chiefs side? And less so on trying to capture a Eagles 31, Chiefs 24 win or vice versa. I think that you're better off building for scenarios when certain players score touchdowns. Speaking of certain players scoring touchdowns, I do want to get to some of your favorite captains for your builds and some of your favorite flex plays. And I'm noticing in our notes here that Jalen Hurts isn't at the top. And I'm imagining everybody, the casual player and even some of the more advanced players, I'm imagining they're thinking, this really looks good for Jalen Hurts. He can run the ball. He can pass the ball.

He's got dynamic receivers against a secondary that isn't great necessarily. And Patrick Mahomes, well, he, he doesn't do the running stuff, but he could certainly pass for a bunch of yards. Long story short, I would imagine at least the casual player, and that's not meant to be, you know, that's not meant to be insulting by any means, but they're going to probably put Jalen Hurts in the captain spot right away. And I'm, I'm assuming that's where you're seeing the ownership in the captain's spot, but I'm also assuming that's why you don't have Jalen Hurts as your most rostered captain.

Yeah. So there's a couple of reasons for that, right? Number one, thinking about the way the Eagles can score points, they definitely have a running game. Miles Sanders is a legitimate threat to run the football. On the other side, with a quarterback like Patrick Mahomes, when Kansas City scores, it's almost definitely coming on the arm of Mahomes, generally speaking, especially when they move the football down the field. The ownership is mostly equal across the board on those two. And when I'm running the simulations, I'm finding that, you know, in most cases here,

we're seeing Jalen Hurts pop up as an optimal flex play, but not the optimal captain play, just because of the risk of what Miles Sanders in the running game can do versus what Mahomes has to do in those certain paths. So that is basically the only difference here. I'm trying to look at my actual projections. I have them very close.

I do have Hertz as the top overall ownership at Captain, but I'm definitely playing more Mahomes. And, you know, some of that is also the $300 price difference. Yeah, well, that makes sense. But I noticed, you know, Mahomes has sort of the number two spot for you, at least as of now, with respect to the captain spot, you have a very interesting number one. And I assume we talked about him a lot. It's Dallas Goddard. And we talked about how he fit into a lot of builds in the flex play in

particular because of his price as it relates to AJ.J. Brown and Devontae Smith, for example. So tell us why, for you, he's potentially an optimal captain. Yeah, I mean, I think you mentioned it. It's also price point, right? So, you know, the path to victory here, I think that they're still going to get him involved. I think he's still not going to be the focus defensively of Kansas City. But when you look at the price points here, you've got Jalen Hertz, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelsey, AJ Brown, Devante Smith, Miles Sanders, Isaiah Pacheco, Jarek McKinnon, all more expensive than him at the captain spot. Um, is if we list players likely to score touchdowns, I would put Goddard above multiple names there on that list. Um, in terms of the

price point here, I think it's, it's hard to get away from Goddard in some sense. So he will be my most owned captain. And is there, you know, I think Dallas Goddard succeeds with multiple game scripts, but is there a game script you're kind of, one in particular that you're anticipating with Dallas Goddard where the rest of the lineup falls in place, or there's just so many variables with Goddard that, you know, you could go with literally 10 or 20 different game scripts. Yeah, you can go with so many different game scripts. You know, the reason why he's going to project so well is because a very simple and common Dallas Goddard build, it's incredibly easy to have Dallas Goddard at captain, Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Travis Kelsey in that lineup.

Very, very, very easily. So that that's going to give you such a high floor to begin with in the scenario that you are getting a game where Dallas Goddard lands in the end zone. It's going to be hard to to really kind of beat those lineups, right? Just because of what it allows you to do when you're not using that salary on Hurts or Mahomes at the captain spot. If Goddard has that game where, I mean, I think the game can be as low as four catches, 40 yards, and a touchdown. I think he might be, you know, unless this game is just a 60-plus point game,

I think that if this game goes under the total of 51 and Goddard scores a touchdown with more than three catches, I think he's probably going to be the optimal captain. As we kind of move past Goddard to some other potential captains, we got this question from Garrett. Garrett, thanks for watching. Hit the like button if you haven't already. This is an interesting point here, and it came up.

We did a Twitter Spaces, Mike, just an hour ago with Dave Richard, Alan Bell, and Propstars, of course. And this was something I was thinking about. Chiefs D was better last week, he says, versus the elite Bengals offense. Worried about neutralizing Phillies O question mark, score hitting the under. So my response to that, Mike, is that's true that the Cincinnati Bengals defense was neutralized a bit. But I think it was also true because that Bengals offensive line, while it shined against the Bills, it was absolutely horrific with no snow and none of those kind of conditions that might have ended up helping the offensive line against Kansas City.

So I think this is a scenario, right, Mike, where the Eagles can probably withstand the pass rush that we saw Kansas City exerting against the Bengals, right? Or do you just have a different opinion, kind of agree with Garrett, that the defensive line is good enough to maybe neutralize this offense a little bit? Yeah, I mean, look, I think the defensive line is good enough to maybe neutralize this offense a little bit. Yeah. I mean, look, I think the, the defensive line is good enough to get home. The question is, can they still contain Jalen hurts? You know, Jalen hurts is, you know, look, Joe Burrows, a fantastic quarterback. Jalen hurts is still more mobile than Joe Burrows going to be. You know, can he accurately throw on the run? We'll see in this particular game, but I don't think that there's going to be nearly as much pressure put on between the combination of what you said. I think the defensive line is certainly talented enough to get there. I think it'll happen, but the combination of the

offensive line being a little bit better and having more mobility with Hertz, I don't expect it to be the same issue. I think that the, uh, the issue as far as Philly scoring is simply just Jalen Hertz. Isn't a very good quarterback throwing the football right now. Right, right. Fair enough. Speaking of throwing the football, another captain that you really like and you address this is Patrick Mahomes. And one thing I like about Patrick Mahomes is I think he's relatively game script proof. I mean, I think he's going if you look at his passing attempts, it's 38 and a half. If you look at his completions, it's set at 25 and a half. For those of you that don't bet, those are very high totals. I mean, I'm usually looking at a quarterback.

You know, I like to take completion props when we do our when we do our prop show every week. And, you know, usually you're looking at 21 and a half for a high flying quarterback like a Mahomes type. You're looking at, you know, 22 and a half, 23 and a half. Those are pretty high numbers. So we have Mahomes all the way at 25 and a half completions, not pass attempts. And I think he makes sense, right? Because he's got all these kind of like middle grade receivers and he's going to be dishing it to all of them, at least all the ones that are healthy. So is it true that Mahomes is such a good captain because A, he's going to be a little less owned than, well, not much less owned, but a little less on than Jalen Hurts. He's, he's less expensive than Jalen Hurts, but also the game script probably isn't going to matter for him where it

might matter a little bit more if it's, you know, the Eagles with a big lead. I don't know that it matters too much with Mahomes. Agree with that. Is that sort of why, are those some of the reasons why you like him so much at the captain spot? 100%. Yes.

You know, there, there, that's one of many reasons. Um, yeah, it's the game script doesn't matter. I might argue that the game script where they're behind by one to two scores is actually the optimal game script for Patrick Mahomes. Uh, you know, the yards come a little bit easier later in those situations and, uh, he's so good. They're able to score, right? So yes, uh, Mahomes definitely a better captain play than Jalen Hurts, in my opinion. And the game script is a large, large reason for it. The other part of it is, is I think that the weapons on the Kansas City side are a lot more, not only affordable, but they're also kind of clear, which sounds funny to say because

they throw the ball to literally anyone. However, it's very clear in Travis Kelsey, right? And then when it's not very clear in Travis Kelsey, Kadarius Tony's only $4,400. Juju Smith-Schuster's only $5,600. You know who the running backs are, right? So if we get a bad injury report and we have to play guys like Jody Fortson,

he's $200. One catch in this game likely pays off that price tag pretty easily, right? So on the other side, it's not so clear. Like you've got to determine between Devante and AJ most likely, you know, the scenario where they both go off is relatively rare in this particular matchup, in my opinion. On the Kansas city side, you don't have to pick, you play Travis Kelsey and the other guys.

Right. So I think there's just so many more natural ways to build with the Kansas City side when you're using a quarterback at captain yeah and that obviously makes Travis Kelsey like a pretty great captain option as well yeah yeah all right 100% yeah we love Travis Kelsey at the captain spot yeah all right well we've talked about Goddard Mahomes and Kelsey at the captain spot we kind of laid out some of the reasons why we're going to get into some of the other skill players in terms of maybe why you want to play them at captain

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We are back. This is Fantasy Football Today, DFS, and we're talking Super Bowl. We're talking showdown, and we're talking Devontae Smith. I want to get into some of the skill players that we might want to play at captain. Now, what I think is really interesting about Devontae Smith, and Mike, I know you and I are both on his over 62 and a half receiving yards. It's kind of flipped between 63 and a half and 61 and a half. It's pretty much stabilized right now at 62 and a half. I think it's probably before kickoff, probably going to go up to 63 and a half. Either way, I think projection models, like you said last week,

and just looking at just box score watching, right? If you look at what happened, especially prior to the last two games, because the last two games have been kind of weird with the Eagles not having to put their foot on the gas in the second half. I mean, he is blowing this out of the water. I mean, he's getting a ton of targets, relatively efficient with them, a bunch of 100-yard games. What's interesting to me, though, is that nobody's really talking about A.J. Brown. And I just wonder, and I think Devontae Smith, listen, I like him at the captain spot. I just, before you talk about him, I just want to get your opinion. Have we come to a place now from an ownership standpoint where AJ Brown's getting so ignored that by the time Sunday rolls around, maybe he becomes more of an ideal captain or is that, is it just Devante Smith between the two and

all systems go? Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think that, you know, I'm looking at some of my ownership projections on it. I'm projecting them pretty evenly so that I would be more willing to still be on the Devontae side. If we saw it flip to where it was, you know, an absolute extreme case where it's like double, then yes, absolutely. We should be looking

at the AJ Brown side of it. I think Brown is a fine play. I prefer Devontae personally. I just think that in a game like this where I think you have two teams that can be very possession heavy in terms of we could see six to seven minute drives consistently here, that limits opportunity overall, right? In my opinion. It doesn't sound like it might, because they're moving the ball down the field with those plays, but I personally believe it

limits opportunity. I think what we're looking at here with Devontae is a situation where he gets behind the defense and has a big play or two in this game. I think AJ's going to, you know, he's certainly capable of doing the same. I think he's going to attract significantly more attention from the Kansas City side. So I'm far more interested in Devontae, but I will have a little bit of both. And from a game script standpoint, does Devontae in the captain's spot dictate a certain game script or not really? I think it can. Yes. I think it still dictates a competitive game more than anything. For example, I think that the scenario where Devontae has a game that is worthy of being in the captain's spot. Personally, I think that playing Mahomes is still more important than Jalen Hurts.

Sounds crazy, but I think there are scenarios where you don't have to play both. You typically would want to, and it's still easy to do so. But if Devante Smith has the game that's needed to go in the captain's spot, I personally think you definitely need Patrick Mahomes and probably Travis Kelsey or Kadarius Tony or one. You need to identify at least one pass catcher for a decent game on the Kansas City side because if Devontae Smith is scoring touchdowns, again, to be the optimal captain at his price, what that game looks like to me is I think 80 to 100 yards in a touchdown would be the bare minimum potentially 60 to 100 yards and two touchdowns would be what really really really gets it done and in those both of those scenarios you're not necessarily building for a game that's going under

you're building for a game that's either neutral or over. So I think the biggest core pieces, if you're going to play Devontae Smith, number one for me would be Patrick Mahomes, number two, Travis Kelsey, number three is then Jalen Hurts. And then after that, it would be either Harrison Bucker, the Chiefs kicker, or cheaper wide receivers, pass catchers for Kansas City, whether it's Kadarius Toney, Juju Smith-Schuster, Mark Esvada-Scantling, or Jody Fortson. Now you mentioned some of those sort of second-tier receivers, and I guess everybody next to Travis Kelsey is a second-tier receiver, but we've got

Juju and Kadarius Toney relatively high up on your sort of captain, you know, projections here. And of course they're behind, you know, Goddard Mahomes and Kelsey and Devante Smith. But it's really interesting, Mike, because they came up in our Twitter spaces conversation, which again, we just wrapped an hour ago. And somebody came in, a caller came in, I'm trying to remember who it was, but talked about Juju Smith under,

Juju Smith Schuster unders. And our response collectively was kind of like, we might like the longest reception under, but I think if he's healthy, he gets leaned on, especially in the short area. And I'm assuming if you have Juju at the captain, what are we looking at here? We're certainly looking at five to six catches,

a handful of yards, and maybe landing in the end zone. I don't think anybody's going to use Juju Smith-Schuster. I don't think anybody's interested in using him or even Tony in the captain spot. Tell me why you're interested in that. Yeah, because nobody really is, right? Basically, you know, you get some interesting builds. You know, the scenario where, you know,

Juju makes a captain spot, it's going to come on a big play, right? It's likely also to be a situation where Travis Kelsey is just, we're unable, the Chiefs are unable to get the football to Travis Kelsey for the most part. Right. That's the scenario I'd be more likely to build for. So, you know, looking at when I pull up Juju Smith Schuster captain lineups over here,

the very first one and the highest projected one that I have has Juju and the captain and Patrick Mahomes. Those are the only two Kansas city chiefs there. So what that's telling you is it's a scenario where like we saw a few times this season, Juju had, you know, 11, 12 targets. I think he had 10 catches in one or two games. Right. I think it's that scenario, right? They struggle to get the football to Travis Kelsey. He's able to hone in on Juju.

He just has that 10 catch game, potentially one of them in the end zone, you know, 10 catches. If you somehow approach the a hundred yards on DraftKings, you also get the three point bonus for the a hundred yard bonus. You know, volume, volume is key here. So I don't think that it's wise to stack Juju captains with Travis Kelsey at this point, just simply from a volume standpoint, right? Because if you're building on the scenario that Juju just catches the two touchdown passes, but only has four catches in the game, that probably isn't getting it done. So it's probably only coming on the seven to 10 catch game, which would absolutely hurt Travis Kelsey, right? So if you're building a Juju lineup like the one I have,

I'll quickly read it off. I think it's a fascinating lineup build, obviously. It's Juju Smith-Schuster, Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Devontae Smith, A.J. Brown, Quez Watkins. Wow. The game, right, it's all the star receivers minus Travis Kelsey. This scenario is either Travis Kelsey gets injured. Travis Kelsey is bracketed. They're not able to get them the football, but Juju has that Juju game.

And in order for that to happen, the Eagles have got to continue to throw the football to their big guys here. So, and keep in mind the captain spot on draft Kings does not have to be the highest scoring player. The captain spot on draftings is going to be a value play a lot of the time in these situations. It allows you to get all those other guys in the lineup. Yeah, allowing you to incorporate Mahomes and Hurts and A.J. Brown and Devontae Smith. I mean, that's pretty great. And for those of you that think we're so far removed from good juju games, Mike is right. It was week 14 and 15. Look at this efficiency.

Listen, I get it against the Eagles. That's a tough matchup, but again, we're trying to be contrarian here. We're trying to take advantage of people not playing juju and also getting juju at a low price coming off of this, this injury. He caught nine of 11 targets at Denver. And then at Houston, he caught 10 of 10 targets, never breached a hundred yards. He had 88 and 74 in those contests. But again, we're looking at him in the short area specifically, and he absolutely could

end up being the safety valve. Listen, I don't know how healthy Juju is going to be. I don't know how healthy Kadarius Toney is going to be. But judging by Kadarius Toney's history with injuries, if he's on the field, which I expect him to be, could be kind of like decoy-ish. I'm not really sure. But I think both Juju and Tony, there's something to be said.

And Juju's definitely proven it way more than Kadarius Tony is in terms of grabbing that target share. No, no doubt. I mean, think it through. If you're the Eagles here and you've got a set on the field, it's, you know, third and seven.

Are you more worried about Travis Kelsey, Kadarius Tony, Juju Smith-Schuster in that particular situation? I think Juju is clearly the third option defensively that you're worried about. Well, a hundred percent true. Tony is extremely dynamic. We don't only see it with the cutting. I mean, if you see him in space, this guy has a 4-3-9-40. So, I mean, he is absolutely dynamic. And if he's healthy, he's going to be a big factor in this game, which is part of the reason you don't mind him as a

captain either. I don't mind him as a captain. However, I will say he's the one that I'm more likely to throw Travis Kelsey back in the lineup with. I don't think Kadarius Toney's getting there through 10 receptions like Juju potentially could. I think he's getting there potentially through a few rushing yards. They might put the football in his hand in creative ways that way. He's a real threat in the red zone, but I would expect Travis Kelsey in those particular situations to still catch the football over the middle of the field, which is where Juju is going to want to work, which is why we don't want to pair Juju with Kelsey as often. But yeah, doing the same thing, like a sample build on that one. It's Kadarius Toney, Travis Kelsey, Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Devontae Smith, and Kwas Watkins. You have the game where Juju

gets those two touchdowns in the red zone, but it's because Travis Kelsey worked the middle of the field, moved the football. All of a sudden, Jalen Hurts has got to throw the football to Devontae Smith, Kwas Watkins, guys like that. I think the lineups are still very, very valid if Kadarius Toney's out there. Yeah, and for the record, we're only going to go a few more minutes because we can't go through every scenario and every captain. But I do want to just revert back to last Thursday because if you're kind of going through these mental impressions and you're like, okay, Mike's saying, okay, if Juju's the captain,

how is it optimal? How is it ideal? This is exactly what we went through last Thursday, the second half of the show at the 23-minute mark forward, where I literally gave Mike a game script. And we talked through, okay, well, what does that game script mean? What type of captain would I play? What's the rest of the lineup looking like? Why is it looking like that?

So I really think this conversation is important, but that conversation is important as well. We can't do a show without talking about, listen, you have on this list with a very low percentage of captain, you know, MBS, AJ Brown, chiefs defense, Harrison, Harrison, Buckrick, Wes Watkins. Those are very, very low percentages relative in terms of captains relative to Dallas Goddard, Mahomes, Kelsey, obviously Devante Smith, and some of the other guys we talked about, but we can't leave the show without talking about Jalen Hurts in the captain spot. And I think my question for you is what, what is going to be the conventional build with Jalen Hurts that everybody's going to do, and it's going to be duped even in single

entry contests. And what is maybe a way to get different with a Jalen Hurts lineup in the captain spot? Yeah. So that that's the biggest thing. Like, I think that, uh, you know, a lot of people are going to want to play Jalen Hurts, uh, in the captain spot. So you do have to get a little bit different. I'm going to pull up a few, uh, Jalen lineups here and, you know, we'll kind of look at some of the best ones, but it's going to be very similar to the Patrick Holmes builds just using, uh, the Eagles players, right? So you're going to want to stack it up, uh, Dallas Goddard, much like Travis Kelsey is on the other side. For me, Dallas Goddard's the first piece that goes in that lineup. Uh, the second piece would be Devante Smith. You could play AJ Brown if you want to. I think that that's totally fine.

Personally, I think that you need at least two of those pass catchers, and I'm likely to throw in Quez Watkins as well, just needing that stack and that correlation. But yeah, a sample lineup here. Sticking with one where we're playing, let's see. Hurts. Yeah, there's not. I see, that's the thing. I don't love them because the correlate, it doesn't, they don't fill out as nicely

as you would like. So I'll give you one that has A.J. Brown. It's Jalen Hurts, Patrick Holmes, AJ Brown, Quez Watkins, Zach Pascal, and Travis Kelsey. That's the Jalen Hurts type of game where I see him being the optimal captain. And what's happening there is he's throwing three touchdowns. One of those touchdowns goes to Zach Pascal or Quez Watkins, which is taking away a ton of scoring equity from either Dallas Goddard or Devontae Smith, who a lot of people are going to have. You're going to want Jalen Hurts in the captain

spot in those particular situations. But generally speaking, if the quarterback is going to be good enough to be in the captain, you typically want at least two of the pass catchers, bare minimum. I know Hurts is unique because he has the ability to run. I'm just not sure he's going to do it as much in this game. Fair enough. And speaking of running, we can't leave the show without talking about Miles Sanders, because I noticed he's not really on your list right now as an optimal captain and in your flex players, which again, everybody can see Mike's stuff on Sportsline for those of you that are listening that didn't know that. But, you know, I'm looking at them now. I'm hearing a lot of talk about Miles Sanders, that they're going to run the ball a lot.

I'm not sure I'm super buying into that in terms of how successful he's going to be. But you're certainly not looking at him as a primary guy in your build. It looks like it to me at least. Yeah, I'm really not. You know, I've got some Miles Sanders here and I'll probably end up having a little bit, but it's certainly not going to be a priority for me. I know a lot of people are going to want to go there. It makes a lot of sense.

Personally, I think the game is going to be really, really competitive. I think that if Miles Sanders at his current price point, he needs to go over his rushing total for sure. And he's got to land in the end zone at least once, potentially twice to be the optimal captain. You know, the game where he's just barely over his total 64 yards and one touchdown, it may not be enough at his current price point, in my opinion, to get there. So that's kind of why I don't have a ton of them in the, in the captain spot. I think that there's definitely

a game script that works for him to be there. And he can certainly have the touchdown variance and score at the goal line. I think that it's spots where the Eagles are forced to throw more, a little bit more. I think that if they're going to get beat, Kansas City is going to line up and try to make Jalen Hurts beat them with his arm more than people think. So, you know, if you want to play Miles Sanders at captain, it's very much the same. So like you've got to play Patrick Mahomes. I think that there's no real doubt about that one. And we talked about all these scenarios.

Mahomes isn't pretty much every lineup either way. Just the nature of how quarterbacks score in a one game slate. If you want to pair him with Jalen Hurts, I think that that's fine. The other guy, it's Mahomes pass catcher. It's got to be Travis Kelsey or it's Mahomes pass catcher. It's got to be Travis Kelsey or it's got to be the Juju and Kadarius Tony combo. But that's my focus on Miles Sanders. But again, I'm mostly, mostly fading that situation.

And one last thing from the running game standpoint, it looks like you're mostly fading Pacheco and Jarek McKinnon. Is that because they're kind of going to be eating into each other's work? You think there might be a little bit more coming from McKinnon? Pacheco might kind of take a step back. I think that that will definitely happen. And it's important to mention too, when I, when I go over these, I have exposed certain players like this through the betting market as well. And I do treat it all as one big portfolio. So if like, you know, Miles Sanders, for example, I'm going to be betting is over on the rushing yards because I don't necessarily see the path to him being useful for me in DFS unless he goes over that number. So my hope is I'm going to go bet that ticket. It goes over. I cash that he doesn't surpass it by much. It's a win-win for me. I fade him in DFS

and I cash over there. Uh, if I'm correct, I lose that one bet, but it likely pays off for me big time in DFS by fading him. So, you know, and then if I'm wrong and he has an explosive game, I've already cashed this ticket, pays for part of the DFS entries. I think it's the best way to really go about it. But as far as McKinnon and Pacheco, yeah, it's a price point thing, right?

I think that we see way more passing in the game. I don't think either of them are going to necessarily be optimal captain opportunities because I think that if they score, it's likely coming in the receiving game. I love it. Yeah. Again, their prices are, you know, a little bit higher, especially McKinnon. But again, Pacheco, he's had a nice couple of games, but maybe there's a step back there. Last thing, final score of the game. I gave it out on Twitter spaces. I went Eagles 30 to 23, shaded to the over a little bit there, which I'm not super confident in the total.

What's your final score? We won't hold you to it. Yeah, I'll say Kansas City 27, Eagles 24. All right. The Chiefs fan speaks. And I saw Chief in the background. No bias at all. I wore a green hat so people would think

that it's an Eagles hat. I love it. I love it. Well, you very well could be exactly right. You've been right about the Chiefs all season. And hopefully we've been right

for you all season. This is going to be our last show pre-Super Bowl, of course, but we'll be coming at you in the off season. We'll probably be coming at you at some point really close to after the Super Bowl,

just to kind of do a wrap-up episode and talk about things we might have learned during the 2023, 2022, 2023 fantasy football season. So until the Super Bowl, we're going to have CBS Sports is going to have a ton of content, obviously, so everybody tune in early edge and otherwise. But that's Mike McClure.

My name is Cian Ajad. This is Fantasy Football Today, DFS. Enjoy the Super Bowl. Make some showdown lineups. Be a little contrarian. Get some Dallas Goddard captains and some maybe some Devontae Smith, Juju Smith-Schuster. That would be fantastic. And Andrew Wagner, thank you so much for the comment about catching the live feed. This has been a great season for us. Hopefully it's been a great season for you,

and we will see you next time on Fantasy Football Today. We'll be right back.