Fantasy Football Today - NFL DFS Conference Championship Lineups, Picks, Stacks & Ownership Projections (Fantasy Football Today DFS podcast)

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

Download and follow Fantasy Football Today DFS! You can find FFT DFS on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else podcasts are found. Join our $5 Conference Championship DFS contest over on Draftkings- https://www.draftkings.com/draft/contest/140829787 Sia Nejad and Mike McClure are previewing the NFL DFS Conference Championship slate. They run through both games, offering their favorite stacks and plays, also letting you know which players to avoid. (1:00)- 49ers at Eagles  (18:24)- Bengals at Chiefs  'Fantasy Football Today DFS' is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Castbox, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Follow our FFT DFS team on Twitter: @FFToday, @Mike5754 @SiaNejad Watch FFT DFS on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter You can listen to Fantasy Football Today DFS on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast." To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does possible sound like for your business? 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.ca slash business platinum. Welcome everyone to Fantasy Football Today DFS. My name is Sina Jha. That is Mike McClure and it's sad but true Mike. We only have a few games left literally in this NFL season but it's championship week and Sunday is going to be amazing. And like,

I think you'd agree. We've got the four best teams in the NFL playing on Sunday. I definitely agree. We have the four best teams in the NFL playing on Sunday. Um, you know, if you look at some of the, the betting market, looking forward, you got look ahead lines to all the potential matchups. The biggest favorite in any of the potential matchups is a minus one favorite. Yeah, never seen this before. Four very evenly matched teams. So we don't have a TCU situation potentially occurring in the Super Bowl, which I think is music to a lot of people's ears.

Swaggy P, thanks for being in the chat. He says, fellas, fellas, fellas. Swaggy, go ahead and hit the like button. Everybody else that's in here, go ahead and hit the like button. Certainly helps the show. Mike, I think we should just get started. I don't want to like start the show with any sort of fluff other than saying that our DFS contest is live as we speak. And the link is actually, it'll be in the YouTube description here if you're watching, but it'd also be in the podcast description. Now we have 150 people in this one. So I don't know if it's going to fill up fast or not, but what I can tell you is there's nobody in it because we just sort of released the

link. So normally we release it on Tuesday. So I encourage everybody to just get in there right now, get your spot. Again, it's only five bucks. This is going to be the last one where we actually have more than one team. Of course, we'll do one for the Superbowl as well. But again, our FFT DFS contest, it's only five bucks. It's live top 15 get paid out. Mike, how about we get started? Right? I mean, we got, we got this game. I think can go so many different ways. It's the NFC championship game. It's the 49ers plus two and a half at the Eagles, 46 and a half appears to be the total there. All of these lines, you know, have been sort of shifting, especially that AFC championship game on the news of Mahomes. Things are going to shift. We'll get to that shortly. But I figured, Mike,

it might be a good idea to just go position by position here and just start at the quarterback position. And when it comes to the quarterback, I'm not playing Brock Purdy against the Eagles defense. I understand you want to be contrarian in some of this stuff, especially with a tight slate. Maybe you can change my mind, but there's three quarterbacks in play here, and I don't think Brock Purdy is one of them. Do you agree?

Yeah, I would agree with that for the most part. I don't anticipate myself playing Brock Purdy. I think that it is okay to play him in certain scenarios if you are incredibly confident in guys like Jamar Chase, A.J. Brown, Travis Kelsey, Christian McCaffrey. That's the scenario where you're playing it and you're hoping that his seven to eight fantasy points is enough because every other quarterback scores 20 or fewer. You're hoping that there's not a quarterback that scores 30 points. If you want to build for that scenario, I don't mind it. The reason why I don't mind it

is because we expect that Eagles 49ers game to be relatively competitive. I expect it to be scoring. They pride themselves on defense. They both want to run the football, keep the clock running. So while I don't like Purdy in this game, I don't think he has the 30 point upside. I don't think it's absolutely crazy to play him because I don't think he has the 30-point upside. I don't think it's absolutely crazy to play him because I don't think you're building for the scenario of his 30-point upside. I think you're building for that scenario where Bengals-Chiefs is a 20-17 game where Mixon and McKinnon get a rushing touchdown, right? If that happens, which we've seen these Bengals-Chiefs games,

we think they're going to be shootouts. A couple of them have, but some of them have been, you know, the 24-17 game even. If you've got one rushing touchdown in there that's not a passing touchdown, those quarterbacks may not score, you know, more than 18 fantasy points, right? So it's not crazy to play Brock Purdy, but don't do it with the assumption that he's scoring 30 points. Do it with the assumption that you're just playing the best player at every other position. That makes a ton of sense, actually. Speaking of best player at the quarterback position in this game, it's Jalen Hurts. He's 7,200. I think everybody understands at this point, if you're listening, maybe you don't because you just haven't been following along

the last few days or so. But in terms of this matchup, I mean, this 49ers team is hard to run the ball on. I think everybody kind of knows that. And the path is through the pass. The secondary for San Francisco can be exposed. Honestly, Dallas didn't do a good job exposing it last week, but they should have. If Dak had even just a medium game, we would have seen plenty more yards coming from Dak, in my opinion, with T.Y. Hilton just being wide open down the scene. There was just some things that Dak didn't take advantage of. Now, the question is, can Jalen

take advantage of it? And he's got a condensed target share, which I like, with Devontae Smith and A.J. Brown, which we'll get to. I like Jalen Hurts quite a bit. I like his rushing potential. Again, it's kind of a Captain Obvious call here. So eventually, we're just going to rank these quarterbacks in terms of points per dollar or how your simulations sort of bake it out. But Jalen Hurts, is he in the top two? Is he number one? You're on mute. Jalen Hurts is the number one quarterback currently. And a lot of it has to do with the rushing upside.

And I think that's where the majority of it is coming from. But yes, when I run a basic run here, I've got about 65% Jalen Hurts, 25% Joe Burrow, and 10% Patrick Mahomes. Okay. And that's probably, you know, I think I'm going to end up with more Burrow exposure than Jalen Hurts personally. But obviously those are going to be up with more more burrow exposure than jalen hurts personally but obviously those those are going to be my two favorite i wonder and we'll get to patrick mahomes in a little bit when we cover that game are we getting an ownership discount on patrick mahomes as of now

we are but it's not as substantial as you would think uh i'm showing him around 20 percent while i've got burrow and uh hurts up to around 32% each, 33%. Gotcha. And by the way, speaking of those rushing yards, and this is going to be important. I mean, I think the shoulder injury is something that's sort of passed Jalen Hurts. We'll find out pretty quick because he's going to get hit by these San Francisco front seven, these linebackers. It's a completely different story than what we saw last week

with the Eagles going up against the Giants. But nonetheless, Jalen Hurts' rushing yards are 46.5. That's a lot. Passing yards, 251 and a half. That's not terrible either. So they are expecting, the books are expecting Jalen Hurts to run the ball quite a bit. Let's talk about his receivers though, because to me, Devontae Smith and A.J. Brown present like tremendous upside. I think the question that everybody wants to know though, when it comes to those two guys is, which one do you like better? For me, it's hard to say because I think either of these guys can break it. If you look at the targets over the last five, six weeks,

Devontae Smith is eclipsing A.J. Brown, and he's certainly, I think he's got a slightly better chance to get deep than A.J. Brown, but I think it's also kind of equal. So where are you at in terms of playing Devontae Smith and A.J. Brown? Yeah, it's such a great question. Look, I like both of them for different reasons, but the thing that I think no one's really talking about too much here is, are we sure that A.J. Brown is 100% right now? Good question.

If you watch that last game, he definitely appeared to be dealing with a hamstring issue. It's possible that he's totally fine. I personally think that he might be dealing with that hamstring issue. It's a very difficult matchup. The issue with it is I think it's really hard to ignore both of them just because of the lack of top-tier receivers on the slate. It's such a small slate.

Either one of these guys, very, very, very capable having a 100 yard day with two touchdowns. I don't think you can say the same for a ton of Kansas City receivers other than Travis Kelsey, who obviously plays a different position. So yeah, I think it's tough to fade both of them. I'm going to tell you quickly who I have more of initially. It looks like it's slightly more A.J. Brown than Devontae, but my head would tell me I like Devontae a little more. I think he's got a little more upside. I'm very worried about A.J. Brown and the hamstring. Yeah, I'm a little worried about that too, which is why I give Devontae the bump as well. And Robert, thank you. We know Mike's mic

is on sort of a different setting. So we're trying to fix that on the fly, but at least we can hear him. So that's the good news. Swaggy P says, I like Devante Smith more. You know, I think we kind of agree there. And for the record, their receiving props are very similar to each other. AJ Brown's is around 70, 70 and a half. Of course, it's always going to be on that half.

And Devante Smith is around 66 and a half. And just to give you sort of the tiered order and mike you can correct me if i'm wrong but i checked this about an hour ago the the highest receiving prop is jamar chase at 83 and a half receiving yards next behind him is travis kelsey i'm just going to go ahead and include travis kelsey because as mike always says he's not a tight end he just plays a tight end on the field he's an absolute receiver so he's 78 and a half aj brown is next at 70 and a half. And then Devante Smith at 66, 67 and a half, depending on where you get it. There's a dramatic

drop-off after that. The next guy after that is T Higgins at 56 and a half. And then there's an even bigger, bigger drop-off after that. You start getting into like Debo Samuel, Brandon Iuke, those types of conversations. So you do probably, Mike, is it fair to say that people building lineups want to have at least one of the two, A.J. Brown or Devontae Smith, and conceivably both, but you probably shouldn't have a lineup without at least one of them. I won't go that far. I will go as far to include Dallas Goddard in there. I think that it would be a little different. I wouldn't recommend playing a lineup without one of the pass catchers, but I want to include Dallas Goddard in there.

I think that there are going to be very competitive lineups that include just Dallas Goddard. And the reason why – do you mind if I read you a lineup? It's actually the top lineup from my projection. It doesn't have one of those two receivers, but I actually think it's got some upside if you like Christian McCaffrey. It's Jalen Hurts, Christian McCaffrey, Jarek McKinnon, Debo Samuel, Kadarius Toney, Jamar Chase, Dallas Goddard, Tee Higgins, and the Eagles defense. So that's a lineup where all the other lineups I've got definitely have one of the two Eagles receivers.

That one is one that I can see being very competitive without one of the Eagles receivers, but it does have Dallas Goddard in there. Okay, very, very interesting lineup. Let's go to the other side of the ball. Let me touch on Miles Sanders first. I'm not expecting much from Miles Sanders. And again, San Francisco's rush defense is very good. Miles Sanders has a bad game two out of three games, frankly,

and this is probably not the right setup for him. Any love to Miles Sanders is potentially a contrarian play. Are you off him? No, I do like Miles Sanders a little bit. Again, it's likely due to the fact that it's a price point play, right? He's $200 cheaper than Jarek McKinnon. I think that, you know, look, I've got lineups with both of those guys in there. Again, looking at all the lineups that I've generated so far, Miles Sanders, I actually have more Miles Sanders than Christian McCaffrey at this point. So yeah, he's showing up in 40% of builds.

Yeah, and it's probably now, now it's a good time to probably get to Christian McCaffrey because, you know, I'm not really big on Christian McCaffrey this week. That doesn't mean I'm not playing him. But when I'm looking at the prop market, I'm certainly considering some unders, specifically his rushing under,

which for the record is 60 and a half yards. This might end up being an official play for me on Sportsline. Everybody, by the way, not only do I have picks on Sportsline, along with Mike McClure, of course, but I'll be doing the prop show with Dave Richard, with prop stars, Jonathan Coachman,

and myself tomorrow at four o'clock. Every Friday, we do that show for NFL props. So I think one of them might be McCaffrey's under rushing. However, the receiving, you know, it certainly makes sense that he's going to get a handful of targets. I know there's a lingering calf injury for Christian McCaffrey. So it's something we need to monitor. But I don't love Christian McCaffrey, but I'm probably playing him in a majority of my lineups. What say you on Christian McCaffrey? Yeah, I don't love him. I'm'm probably playing him in a majority of my lineups. What say you on Christian McCaffrey? Yeah, I don't love him. I'm going to play him in a couple of the lineups.

I say a couple. I'm actually thinking I'm only going to play three lineups, so it'll probably be one Christian McCaffrey lineup. I've got him in 30% exposure when I build 20 lineups, which is lower than Miles Sanders' exposure. I am right there with you on looking at his unders. He's a terrifying player to bet under on because he can have one 50 yard play that totally ruins everything.

But yeah, I think that if you watch that last game, there's a couple of things in play here. Number one, it's certainly the calf injury makes it difficult to be explosive at times, but number two, this team is healthy for the most part. They've got Elijah Mitchell back there.

I think that they want to run Elijah Mitchell between the tackles to ensure that Christian McCaffrey is healthy and rested enough to play every critical third down snap in this football game. That is where I expect him to be used mostly, which typically is more in the passing game. I also expect Debo Samuel to touch the ball out of the backfield in this particular game as well. So I think that he'll be out on the field. He might be used as a decoy at times, but I don't envision the scenario where he just takes all the running back

touches in this game. I certainly think we see Elijah Mitchell again. Yeah, and I agree with you that Debo Samuel, I think, gets a few more touches out of the backfield than people are potentially predicting. And for the record, if you're squeamish about, and I don't want to turn this into a prop show, but if you're squeamish about taking the under in Christian McCaffrey's rushing yards, his rushing attempt prop is at 14 and a half, which again, I think is pretty high. If you consider that Elijah Mitchell is going to get a lot of that work between the tackles and perhaps Debo Samuel is going to get, let's say three to five to maybe even six carries. So something to consider there. The Eagles rush defense, just to kind of put a cap on the Caffrey thing. They've been very good, especially since Jordan Davis has been back. Don't forget when Jordan Davis was injured, they picked up Linval Joseph and in Dominican Sioux. So they've got a lot of weapons now, now that Davis is back, they still have those guys. This is a legit rush defense. It's a legit pass defense as well. But we got to talk about at least three of the big guns here

before we get to the next game. Debo Samuel, who I think you would probably like. I like him. I think he's a little bit boom or bust, but I do like Debo Samuel this week. Brandon Ayuk, I don't like so much. I think he's going to be taken away as a boundary receiver against this Eagle secondary. And then there's George Kittle trying to work the middle of the field. Of those three, Mike, I like Debo Samuel the best. That's who I plan to play the most. I'm not even sure I'm playing any Brandon Ayuk. And I might put in George Kittle, but I'm worried about his volume.

What say you on those three? Yeah, I'm right there with you. I love Debo Samuel. He's going to be one of my core plays, actually. When my initial run here, I've got him in 90% of those lineups that are generated. So love Debo Samuel. I think the scenario here in this game, the scenarios that can play out, I, show that he is a young rookie quarterback, this could potentially be it. I also think this team is going to beg them to throw the football still. I don't think they're going to set up and let the 49ers try to run the football all over him. So I do like Debo.

I think he's going to be involved in every aspect of the game. I'm not playing any George Kittle as of right now, mostly because I love Travis Kelsey. And I think Dallas Goddard, the narrative there is that no one's going to, not no one, but people aren't going to want to play Goddard nearly as much. They're going to see Hayden Hurst in his recent production. They're going to drop down, save that money. There's the narrative that the Niners defense is obviously very good covering that position and they are. So I'm going to kind of pivot there, play Dallas Goddard, not going to touch George Kittle. Fantastic plays in the last game, but the volume is simply not there.

You know, you can remove one of those catches and while the game would have still been good, it would not have been an absolute spike game for him. Much different matchup here at this spot. So as far as Brandon Ayuk, I'm not going to play Brandon Ayuk. You just said something that just makes me laugh. You said save that money. And Mike, I don't know if you've seen this. Maybe some people in the chat have seen it, but there's a really funny video with Fetty Wap and Little Dicky. It's called Save That Money. It's like a six or seven minute video. Trust me when I tell you it is worth a look. It's just really funny.

So again, it's called Save That Money. Go ahead and YouTube that, but don't do it right now. You got to do it after the show. The new people in here, please hit the like button if you can. And thanks for being in here, Dwayne. I see you. And yes, you already answered your own question. Mike does, in fact, live in Nashville.

Haslan, good to see you. I'll take a look at your question in a second anybody else to discuss in this game are there any sort of like third tier receivers that you're willing to take a shot on in this game or have we talked about everybody at this point uh we talked about everybody that I want in this game personally yeah yeah I mean you know I'm looking at the just the laundry list of receivers here listen if you want to take a shot at Quez Watkins against San Francisco's defense more power to you like it's the 3 listen, if you want to take a shot at Quez Watkins against San Francisco's defense, more power to you. It's the 3,100.

It probably allows you to do a lot of things, including get a high-profile quarterback and perhaps get an expensive running back or wide receiver, but he's just not getting the target, so you really got to get lucky there. That's okay. Get lucky all the time. Jawan Jennings, I think, is in that conversation as well,

perhaps Ray-Ray McLeod, but you're really taking some chances there, and that's fine in a bigger tournament, perhaps to take a chance like that and get different, but not somebody I'm planning on playing in like my single entries that are relatively small. Okay. Before we get to, man, this is going to be, this game is just incredible. I think I can't wait for the Bengals Chiefs game, but we are all going to have to wait just a few more seconds until we get there because we want to hear a word from our partners. We are back.

This is Fantasy Football Today. DFS, that's Mike McClure. My name is Sina Jhaan. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Thanks for everybody being in here and watching. We appreciate you. And now we get to the Bengals. And this line is kind of moving around, the Bengals and the Chiefs.

The Bengals are plus one as we speak at the Chiefs it's a 47 and a half point total you might have noticed this total is similar to that 49ers and Eagles game which I think is interesting I think when the week opened these were maybe a few points apart but now they've come a little bit closer from a total standpoint let's talk about Burrow and Mahomes right off the jump and I will mention I think props are really instructive here as much as quote, don't want to turn this into a prop show, it is instructive. And by the way, I do want to mention Debo Samuel has a rushing prop too. So part of the reason we love Debo Samuel is because we think he's going to get the work in the receiving game and in the rushing game.

And his rushing and receiving prop, pulling those together, is 74 and a half at most books. So again, that's pretty good considering most receivers aren't getting the potential rushing equity as well. Okay, let's get back to this game. The passing yardage for each of these quarterbacks, they mirror each other. Burrows at 279 and a half, Mahomes around 281 and a half. Again, these can vary at each book, but it's going to vary by a yard or two. Let me just ask you right off the bat. For me, I obviously, I've been talking about the Bengals this week. They're one of my plays on sports line. When the line came out, I got them at a plus number. Burrow seems like the obvious play here. And because Mahomes isn't going to be

much of a contrarian play, as each day goes by, there's going to be more confidence in Mahomes. So people are going to play Mahomes a little bit. But I love Burrow in this matchup in terms of what I think he can do against this Kansas City Chiefs defense. And we've seen plenty of examples of it. So my question here is, sounds like Jalen Hurts is your number one quarterback, but is Burrow firmly your number two? Burrow is firmly number two, but I am going to play all three. I think as of right now I'm going to have three lineups.

It's going to be a Hurts lineup, a Burrow lineup, and a Mahomes lineup. We'll watch the reports over the next few days still and see what else we can gain from it. But, you know, I think that the reports that we get on Patrick Mahomes certainly going to impact the ownership pretty significantly here. I also might build the lineup and utilize late swap. You know, we talked about late swap a few times this season. You'll have a pretty good idea after that first game locks, right? So we'll still get to make the decision whether we want to play Mahomes or Burrow.

We can start to make that decision based on the result of the game there. If Brock Purdy's smashing or if Jalen Hurts is smashing or not smashing, for example, say Jalen Hurts is not having a big game, that might make me more interested in taking a more contrarian route on Patrick Mahomes at that point, knowing that he might have an increased probability of outscoring that Jalen Hurts lineup. So keep that in mind and watch it.

But yes, the computer wants me to play Hurts first, Joe Burrow second, Patrick Mahomes third. Makes sense. And by the way, we see somebody in the comments saying that the Chiefs are actually plus one. Well, at DraftKings, they're minus one. They're back to a favorite. It's been like that all day. So certain books might still have it at plus one.

I would actually be surprised if that's the case. But Chiefs minus one at DraftKings. Maybe some other books have them as a one-point dog. Either way, we're looking at basically a pick-em game. And for the record, one thing about the Bengalsals defense that I think goes a little unnoticed, they've been good against the pass and the rush. And the last time these two teams played, which was week 13, my homes, 59% completion percentage and only 223 yards. Now, again, that's just one game. It's a very small sample size, but I think this Bengals defense probably should in Mike, tell me if you agree with this or not,

because I know you handicap these games, you know, from a betting standpoint too, but am I right in saying that maybe this Bengals defense isn't getting the credit they deserve, or maybe it's just the lack of competition and they look better than maybe they are. I think they might be undervalued just a touch defensively. As far as the spread on the game i think the spread is mostly correct um and i am seeing minus one and minus one and a half

everywhere i got 14 books pulled up on the odd screen uh every one of them has minus one or minus one and a half i again think that number is right uh the home field advantage worth typically two to two and a half to three at most um That line is still implying that on a neutral field, the Bengals would be minus one and a half, minus two favorites. So it's saying the Bengals are the better team still in this current setup. I think that that line is fair and correct personally, considering who it is and where they're playing the game. Yeah, as far as Mahomes, I think that he can definitely still have a good game. It's not going to shock me at all.

As far as him outscoring Burrow, I also think that that's possible only because I do think that Joe Mixon still gets his work, and there's always a probability of a Mixon rushing touchdown. They do still like to go to him in goal line situations. So while you may like the Bengals to win the game you might think that they're a significantly better team I won't agree with that part of it but there are definitely paths where Mahomes still outscores Burrow pretty easily I'm glad you brought up Joe Mixon because that's I wanted to talk about the running backs next and I

think listen we saw a great game from Joe Mixon last week we'll see what happens this week you know this is a makeshift offensive line for the Bengals, but that's nothing they are not accustomed to. He was really good last week and his rushing and receiving again, I'm going to stress rushing and receiving total this week is 87 and a half. Just to give you some comparison there, Christian McCaffrey's rushing and receiving total is 99 and a half. That's not that far off.

I mean, considering we thought there would be a huge Delta between those two, 87.5 is a really high rushing and receiving prop. For the record, everybody else rushing and receiving is well below this 87.5 point or yardage total for Joe Mixon. It makes me want to play Joe Mixon a little bit more than I was going to in the first place. And I think I'm going to do a lot of lineups with Mixon and McKinnon, and maybe McCaffrey might find his way in the flex spot, or maybe I just fade McCaffrey and I play Debo and I just take some chances there that Debo and maybe Elijah Mitchell get some of that rushing equity inside the 20, some of the more important rushing attempts. How do you feel about Mixon? And then I want to hear about McKinnon. Yeah, I don't mind Mixon. I, you know, typically not someone I'd want to play.

However, after last week, you know, you have to look at it and ask yourself, you know, was some of it aided by the weather? Typically playing in the snow helps the offense a ton. Playing in the rain does not help the offense. It hurts, but playing in snow definitely helps. I do think that helped that offensive line in that game. However, the price point is still fair here. At $6,500, you know, you're saving $1,500 off of McCaffrey.

McCaffrey, we know, is going to be in a timeshare in this game and a much lower scoring game environment, in my opinion, overall. So I like Mixon. The spot where I'm using Mixon most is in the Joe Burrow lineups. I'm going to take advantage of where I'm using Mixon most is in the Joe Burrow lineups. I'm going to take advantage of where I recommend playing Mixon is just simply betting on the Bengals to score 30 points. Right. I don't necessarily recommend Joe Mixon as a one off play. I would only really want to pair him with Joe Burrow. Now, I want to so we talked about him and McKinnon a bit.

I want to ask you about McKinnon and Pacheco. I want to move on to that because I wonder from a game plan standpoint, I don't know how healthy Pat Mahomes is going to be. I don't think anybody can really answer that question. I do think he's going to be hobbled. I think it's going to show up in terms of him extending plays or maybe a lack of extending plays. Again, I could be wrong. Maybe he gets an injection and feels completely fine throughout the entire game.

I really don't know. But what's interesting, if you're trying to protect that injury, I would think they'd want to establish the running game. I just don't think they can do it against Cincinnati. I don't think they have that option against Cincinnati, which makes me want to downgrade Isaiah Pacheco and perhaps upgrade Jarek McKinnon, who came off a very really poor game last week,

considering he got zero targets. So that's why I'm high on McKinnon and low on Pacheco. But how do you feel about those two? Yeah, look, I'm going to play McKinnon over Pacheco as well. I think they find themselves in neutral trailing game script, honestly. I'm not saying they can't win the game from that trailing game script, but I think that that's likely. I don't think it's a scenario where Kansas City, considering Mahomes' condition, that they get out and run away with this game. If you think that they win the game comfortably, yes, play Pacheco over McKinnon. I'm going to bet on McKinnon not having another game where he has zero targets in the passing game personally.

So I like McKinnon over Pacheco. And then the other running back in the game we haven't talked about yet that I like is going to be Samajit Piran. I know you're probably going to get there. I saw someone ask in the chat about it. I do like Samajit Piran once again. Yeah. And for the record, he got a lot of touches last week and his snap share is really good and he's only 4,500. So it sounds, so you're making three lineups. Is he making it in, in two of them or just one? Probably just one, but it's possible. I'll tell you the lineup that I could potentially end up building here that people might look at me like I'm absolutely insane for building. It might be a Joe Mixon, Samaje, Pirine lineup without Joe Burrow.

It might be that might be my Mahomes lineup. Betting on this scenario where the Bengals move the ball down the field, we're bracketing Chase, we're dumping the ball off to Mixon and Pirine. They each grab one of the touchdowns, whether through the air or the ground. Yeah, I'm looking at that right now. It'll come down to ownership. Where I would get into that scenario once again would likely be this scenario where we watch the first game and Hurts doesn't have lineup scores where it's obvious that he's going to be the optimal player. If that doesn't happen, I'm going to get a little different with the lineups for sure. And in that case, would you be okay, considering

that this is a late swap situation, would you be okay playing those two with perhaps one of the pass catchers for the Bengals as well, or you're just going to limit it to the running backs and hope all of it goes through the running backs? I think that you'll likely still have Jamar Chase in there just because of raw fantasy production here. I think that he's probably going to be there. But if not, it's a scenario where you've already got McCaffrey in, likely, because you're building lineups where you're using the salary, using the uh, where you'd be using those two running backs in the running back spot and the flex spot. Uh, but yes, at least one of my lineups will have both running backs in this game. Um, if not two of the three. Yeah. And, uh, James, I guess Mike already answered your question. Do

you like Piran this week? Mike says yes. And I think he's a, he's a good play depending on how you construct your lineup. If you need the savings there, I think at 4,500, he's certainly valuable. But you mentioned Jamar Chase. Let's talk about the receivers in this game. Just so you know, everybody, and I mentioned it already, his receiving yard prop is 83 and a half. That's the highest in championship week. His receptions prop is six and a half. Chiefs, not very good against wide receiver ones, not really good against boundary receivers in general. I mean, it's just, this is a poor secondary. How do you, I just don't know how to get away from Jamar Chase. Cause I know everybody's going to want to play him. Is there any avenue to get away from him? I, I don't see it really because of how he's being targeted.

Yeah, I don't, uh, I'm trying to look at one of my builds that may not have him. I know one of them doesn't have him. See if I can find that lineup and read off what the computer says to do in that spot. But, yes, it's very difficult to not play Jamar Chase, to answer your question. Okay, so we'll get past Jamar Chase. Any other receivers on the Bengals side that you like? T. Higgins really hasn't popped in quite some time. That doesn't mean he's not going to pop this time. His over-under in receptions is

four and a half. We know he can get deep, especially against this Kansas City secondary. He's only 5,400. It's just the target share has really gone down for him. It was well above 20%. Now it's kind of well below 20% over the last handful of games. How do you feel about Tee Higgins as maybe just a, I hate to say it, but almost like a long shot play at this point? Yeah, it sounds weird to say it like that, but I don't mind them, honestly. I think that loading up on receivers in this game is probably where you're going to want to go. This game certainly projects to have more passing volume than the other games. So again, remember that we're competing on a two-game slate, not a 10-game slate. A fantasy score from T. Higgins of 8.2 fantasy points could very well land him in the optimal lineup on the slate.

So that's how touchy it can be based on how these games play out, especially when you have that one game with lots of running volume. So he's in my player pool, certainly not at the level of Jamar Chase. And again, for those of you that are listening that might be just sort of new to these shorter slates, I mean, we talk about it all the time. So if you listen to this show, you get it. But the idea of just being even on this game and even on the other game and just like, you know, that's probably not the way to go. You want to make some calls.

You want to over stack. You want to be contrarian from the conventional, which is what we've been seeing this whole year. You can go conventional when it's a 12-game slate, but you can go unconventional with these two-game slates. So if you have 80% build on this game and 20% on the other game, I'm just throwing numbers out. That's okay. That's okay on a two-game slate. So get weird. If you're super comfortable with your lineup, that probably means you're doing it wrong.

You want to just get really, really different. On that side of the ball, before we get over to the Kansas City receivers, Tyler Boyd, Hayden Hurst, anybody else in the conversation? Yeah, they're definitely in the conversation. Hayden Hurst, it's hard to ignore because of the price point. He's down to $3,000. It definitely is one of the better values on the slate. His involvement has actually been pretty impressive. It really has probably taken away a little bit from T. Higgins, but I don't mind him at all. I think he's going to be incredibly popular. I think a lot of people are going to end up playing him to the level that

these probably similar ownership wise to Dallas Goddard and Travis Kelsey. Again, Travis Kelsey, you would think would be the obvious play here. The price point still becomes a little bit of an issue. If you like Christian McCaffrey, you want to play Jamar chase. You want to play Jalen Hurts,

for example, you know, you do have to start making that decision. Which one are we not playing? Right. You do still have to make that decision. I think Travis Kelsey gets left off a little bit because Hayden Hurst has been so good. You've got Dallas Goddard, you've got George Kittle. Not everyone likes to play two tight ends like we do at the show, but yeah. So I think Travis Kelsey is the one who actually goes under-owned relative to his skill set.

Yeah, and I will say this. I will be playing a lot of Travis Kelsey this week. Mahomes injured, Mahomes healthy. Travis Kelsey is going to get the ball quite a bit. And again, his yardage prop is 78.5, and I'm trying to remember what his receptions prop is, but it's somewhere in the 6.5, 7.5 range. It might even be 7.5 at plus money at this point. The other side of the ball, it's just kind of a hodgepodge at the receiver position. I'll just ask you right off the bat, anybody you like here, I mean,

Kadarius Toney, I think is the most interesting at 3,700. I'm not interested in MVS or Juju, but they could end up being slightly contrarian plays. And you're probably looking at ownership right now. Any of those three guys in your pool? Yes. Kadarius Toney is, once again, my highest known player, right next to Jamar Chase at this point. I love Kadarius Toney in this setup. I think he was on pace for a massive game last week until Mahomes got hurt. I think that Henney wasn't really able to look for him much

and didn't have much chemistry, didn't have much put together. I think and I believe that a lot of what's out there for Cadareous Tony is all new stuff that Chad Henney likely didn't spend a ton of time preparing on, which is why we didn't see a ton of them later in that game when in that spot. Obviously, Mahomes came back in and wasn't the same. This is a bet on Mahomes being a little closer than he was last week at the end of that game. I think Kadarius Toney has 10 targets in this game personally. I think that Mahomes is not necessarily going to be able to extend plays the way he wants to.

I think we see a ton of short area targets. I think that means that we see a ton of additional attention on Travis Kelsey. I think it's going to be big time for McKinnon. I think it's going to be big time for Kadarius Toney here. We all know the upside Kadarius Toney has anytime he touches the football. I personally think they lean on him heavily here. It's one of those games where I wouldn't be shocked if he scored seven points just on the receptions.

It's funny you say that because when I was examining the props for this show and for the prop show that we're doing tomorrow on the early edge. So his receiving yardage prop is out everywhere. It's 36 and a half, which is interesting. Maybe it feels a little bit low, but again, we're predicting a game script. We were not verifying it, but his receptions prop was not out. I couldn't find it anywhere because that was my first thought too. Mike, I was like short area. They're going to design some wide receiver screens, some quick outs, short area, like just get the ball out of Mahomes' hands as fast as possible, protect the leg. And Tony just seems like he's going to be a beneficiary of that. And I would have thought his reception prop, because he's a lower name, might have been as low as three and a half. And I was going to pounce on it. And I don't know. Do you see it anywhere? Do you see his reception prop anywhere i haven't looked yet today but i looked every other day earlier this week trying to bet it noticing the exact same thing uh they're not giving us a number on his receptions actually they are and they're going to watch me place a

rather large wager uh while we're on stream i love that so what number you did on golf earlier this afternoon uh cadareous tony on draftings over three and a half receptions at even money, plus 100 for a fourth catch in this game. We're going to see what the limit is on this one. I do like it a lot. Personally, I think he has at least bare minimum eight targets in this game. And by the way, we're going to get to our core four and then close the show. Anybody else we missed? I mean, we see names like Justin Watson, Sky Moore.

On the other side, Trenton Irwin, Stanley Morgan. I mean, I'm just not. Noah Gray is interesting at 2,500, I suppose, if you need the savings. But we're looking at two targets for Noah Gray, most likely. Anybody else you're interested in? We've covered everybody, right? Yeah, I think that the only guy I could say, yeah, I could see this happening again.

They've gone to Justin Watson a time or two. Former Tampa Bay Bucs wide receiver Justin Watson, obviously the last guy you're going to care about if you're the Cincinnati Bengals defensively. I think that it's possible that he sees his one to two targets. When he does, it's typically a longer reception, a longer depth target. I could see something in that scenario where Patrick Mahomes does take a deep shot that way and not necessarily a ton of those deep shots to Kelsey or anything like that that we've seen in the past.

So at 3,000, you want to get very different. I think it's possible Justin Watson can hit a big play. All right. And before we get to our core four, we're going to get out of here in about two minutes. But give me your favorite running backs on the slate. If you could go maybe like top four, top three, something like that. Yes. Jarek McKenna, number one.

Joe Mixon, number two, Miles Sanders, number three, Christian McCaffrey, number four. Uh, Samajit Piran is right there with McCaffrey though. Um, and in terms of the way the computer wants me to play them and is giving them out to me here, but it's McKenna number one, a very similar bet to, um, Cadareous Tony. I think that he's going to see a ton of volume yeah i'm all in on mckinnon as well and that actually takes me to my core four so i'm going to give my core four then mike's going to give his core four i got joe burrow we talked about it jamar chase that's going to be my favorite stack but listen i love the jalen hurt stacks i prefer davante smith over

aj brown but i think they're both good uh jerek mckinnon at the running back position, 5,400. I think the volume is going to tick up. I like the game script he's likely going to be in. And Devontae Smith at 6,800. So those are my core four. Mike, how about you? Yeah, my core four is going to be Jamar Chase. Not getting cute there. I think we're all going to play Jamar Chase.

Kadarius Toney, though, definitely going to be at my core four. 3,600. The value is impeccable here. I love this spot. Again, I just bet the over three and a half receptions. Jared McKinnon is also going to be in that core four. His number, interestingly enough, is up to three and a half receptions at minus 150. So definitely expecting some volume there.

Again, we don't expect him to not receive a target again in this game. And then finally, Debo Samuel. I like the price point on Debo. I'm going to play him over the Eagles receivers personally. I think he's going to be heavily involved in this game. I think they find themselves in a neutral trailing game script. That's where we expect Debo's magic to really come to play. All right. Mike, appreciate it. And Swaggy, I see your question about Miles Sanders. Listen, just to be clear, I'm not really playing any Miles Sanders, but Mike, I think you did kind of explain where you were coming from with Miles Sanders, kind of a price point play more than anything else, right? Yeah, price point play more

than anything else. He definitely can still get goal line work should they find themselves in that situation. I know that given Boston Scott carries, we obviously know the upside Jalen Hurts has with his legs. But again, you're getting an ownership discount. I think that there's definitely a scenario where Miles Sanders has even 50 rushing yards, one touchdown, and still lands in the optimal lineup. Yeah, fair enough. Again, it's all about the optimal lineup and what that price point can do for the rest of your lineup as well.

So Mike, appreciate it. We're going to be back. Listen, the show is not over. We're going to have Super Bowl shows and things of that nature. We're going to, we're going to talk about props for the Super Bowl, all that stuff. But for now, the show is over. My name is Cian Ajad. That's Mike McClure. You've heard our championship breakdown. You've heard our core four. Now it's time to play some DFS, win some money. When you see the green screen on Sunday, I want you to

tweet it out and tag us so we can celebrate with you. This is Fantasy Football Today DFS. That's Mike. My name is Sia. We'll see you next week.