TNF Showdown Week 5: 49ers at Rams

XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT

Time flies. It’s already Week 5, and we have the 49ers visiting the Rams to start us off. The 49ers are just crushed by injuries here: George Kittle is on IR, and all of Brock Purdy, Jauan Jennings, and Ricky Pearsall were ruled out on Wednesday (which is why I was waiting to write this!). Oh, and on defense, Nick Bosa is out as well. Yikes. Because of that, the game total is all the way down to 45.5 (opened at 47.5) and the Rams are 7.5-point favorites. 

SAN FRANCISCO

We’ll start with what remains of the 49ers. Christian McCaffrey has probably the best overall role in football. Here’s a fun stat: if we only looked at CMC’s receiving work and pretended he wasn’t a running back, he would be a top-10 wide receiver. Lol. But here’s the problem: San Francisco may just be deciding to punt away this game. There are two ways this could go: if the game stays close and the 49ers think they might be able to pull off an upset, maybe they ride CMC, and he gets one of his 30-touch games with 9 targets. Or, they go down big early because they’re missing too many key pieces and decide there’s no reason to risk CMC’s health, and they just eat the loss and focus on getting healthy. I really don’t know which way it’s going to play out. CMC’s ceiling is sky-high in this one, and he probably has the best overall raw projection on the slate, but that projection comes with a lot more risk and fragility than normal. That could mean that RB2 Brian Robinson gets more work than normal, or it could mean that San Francisco goes all the way down the depth chart to give Isaac Guerendo some run if the game is truly hopeless. I think both Robinson and Guerendo can be included in player pools, though I would not play them together. And given this whole situation, there’s a fair argument that every roster should include one 49ers running back. If CMC has his full role, it’s going to be monstrous, whereas if Robinson or Guerendo get meaningfully larger roles, they just aren’t priced for it. 

In the passing game, the OWS crew is super disappointed because we’ve been hoping to play Kendrick Bourne all year…and now it’s a Showdown when everyone will play him. Keep in mind, Bourne played with backup quarterback Mac Jones in New England, and that familiarity could help him. The San Francisco wide receivers should be Bourne, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, OWS fan favorite and bane of Xandamere’s DFS existence, Demarcus Robinson, and Skyy Moore. Inspiring, eh? This is a mess, and I don’t know what to make of it. Bourne is the most expensive at just $4,600, and everyone else gets cheaper from there. Bourne’s my favorite play of the group based on his depth chart position and that he’s played with Jones before, but this entire situation is super volatile.

We can guess at how snaps and routes will play out, but we’ve never seen this situation before, so good luck projecting target share. Just recognize that any projections for the 49ers passing game are making some wild-ass guesses, but those guesses drive ownership, and thus, there’s some value in simply going another direction. A couple of years ago, the 49ers had another similar situation with 2 backup WRs starting. One was projected really well, the other wasn’t, and while I cannot for the life of me recall their names, the guy who was projected really well did nothing and the guy who wasn’t projected well at all had a huge game of over 20 fantasy points – just going for the “what if it’s the other guy instead?” approach won some Showdown players a huge amount of money at miniscule ownership. And yes, I know one of our industrious readers is going to DM me on Discord and tell me who the two guys were. Finally, the 49ers may call up Russell Gage or Malik Turner to serve as their WR5, and if so, they can also be included in the merry-go-round of options.

Tight end Jake Tonges is the other guy who I’m highly confident will be on the field, as he’s already a backup, and while he isn’t a super talented pass catcher, he’s a very viable play here – I’d probably rank him 2nd after Bourne in median projection. TE2 Luke Farrell is also playable as a punt option. 

LOS ANGELES

On the Rams side of things, Kyren Williams is in an elite spot. Kyren has touch counts of 20, 19, 23, and 17, which is not quite CMC level, but in today’s NFL, that’s an elite workload. At $9k, he isn’t priced like a bell cow back, and as a massive home favorite who also has a nice passing game role, the spot is elite for him, and the 49ers defense without Nick Bosa is not nearly as formidable (they’re just coming off giving up 151 rush yards to the Jaguars heartily mediocre run game). He’s a top-tier option with no real question marks beyond “football is weird sometimes.” RB2 Blake Corum has seen some ascending workload with 8 and 9 carries in the Rams last two games, and I expect that role will likely be fairly consistent going forward, putting him in the “RB2s are viable in Showdown” bucket. It’s also possible that if this game gets out of hand that Corum could see additional work. He makes for a nice correlated pairing with the Rams DST. 

In the passing game, the Rams run one of the most condensed offenses in the league, with Puka Nacua and Davante Adams accounting for 37.6% and 26.3% of the total target volume from Matthew Stafford, respectively. I tend to look for over 50% as a sign of a condensed offense, which is nice, but over 60% is basically unheard of. When we look at it from an air yards perspective, it’s even more skewed as Nacua accounts for 47.6% of the team total and Adams for 40.4% – a full 88% of the team’s air yards are just these two guys. Puka has been absolutely insane to start the year with 10+ catches in three of four games (and 8 in the other one), and he’s averaging just over 125 receiving yards per game. That’s nuts, folks. Matthew Stafford has long been known as a guy who focuses on one primary wide receiver and elevates them to elite fantasy status, and here we’re seeing it again. Much like Kyrie, Puka is a top tier play, and while football is indeed weird and weird things happen, Puka is an amazing play any time he’s on a slate. Davante Adams is not far behind him, and while the results haven’t been as elite as Puka’s, the opportunity is still extremely strong. He’s a little more volatile than Puka as he’s getting by with fewer targets, but he’s also $9,600, a full $2,000 cheaper than Puka. All three of the Rams primary offensive pieces are great options, and I would personally rank them Puka, then Kyrie, then Adams. But we’re splitting hairs because they’re all strong choices.

Past the primary three options, the Rams get very thin. Jordan Whittington has been playing most of the WR3 snaps, but has just 6 targets on the year. Tutu Atwell is barely playing (28% of the snaps last week), but wrecked my tournament sweat with a long touchdown – something I think that is unlikely to be repeated. Konata Mumpfield and Xavier Smith might play a couple of snaps here and there. These guys can all be used as thin dart throws, though the 49ers side of the value tier is clearly much stronger. However, this game could get weird fast, and it’s at least possible that the Rams crush San Francisco and have backups running around for a good chunk of the game. While that would primarily benefit the run game, it could also create elevated opportunities for some of the secondary wideouts.

At tight end, Tyler Higbee is doubtful, which will leave the position to some combination of Davis Allen and Colby Parkinson. Neither is especially good, and Higbee only has 11 targets through four games, so it’s not like he’s leaving behind a lot of work – both can be included in player pools. I would personally have a max 1 rule here, and I’d view them both more as dart throws than solid value plays.

STRATEGY OUTLOOK

The way this game is likeliest to play out is…chaotic. Football’s weird. The 49ers are down so many guys, but remember we just saw the Panthers not just beat but shut out the Falcons in Week 3, and then we saw the Cowboys without their best player get into a shootout with a Packers defense that had previously been the best in the league. Any given Sunday, right? The first thing to decide is if you want to bet on the Rams stomping the 49ers or the game being competitive, and from there, decide how you want to build. Keep in mind that projections drive ownership, and so whichever cheap 49ers project the best are going to be really highly owned. Also, keep in mind that the Rams being a crazily condensed offense is not exactly a secret, and so we’re going to have a very, very common type of roster construction involving 3-4 expensive players, with CMC in there but mostly Rams, and then 2-3 cheap 49ers to make the salaries work. You can try to work within that overall construction and be different on the individual players you select, or you can try to flip the construction on its head – play CMC and Mac Jones and only 1 expensive Ram. Play a cheap 49er at captain while most of the field is using one of the 3 main Rams at captain. Or, leave salary on the table. On slates like these, people tend to jam in the studs because there are a lot of well-projected value plays, but just leaving salary creates a lineup that is different without being too weird. The point is, we can have a high degree of confidence that we’ll know how the field is likely to build for this one, which means we can be smart about how to build strong lineups that are also differentiated. 

CASH GAMES

In cash games, just play Rams and the best projected 49ers. Good luck in cash games, though. Yikes.

TOURNAMENTS

In tournaments, the big 3 Rams and CMC are obviously the best on-paper captain options. Duh. I also want to be overweight on guys like Bourne (the best overall SF receiving play) and MVS (he’s bad but can still break a slate with 1 big catch) as well as the Rams D.

Some groups to consider:

• At most 2 kickers + DSTs

• Pair captain pass catchers with their QBs (or consider boosting the QB if using a captain receiver if you don’t want 100% exposure to this pairing – discussed in further detail in the 2020 update to my Advanced Showdowns course)

• If captaining a pass catcher, at most 1 other pass catcher on the same team

• At most 1 of Parkinson and Allen

• At most 1 of Whittington and Atwell (unless going for the “Rams blowout and backup guys get more fun” build)

• At most 1 of Robinson and Guerendo

• At most 3 San Francisco wide receivers (I don’t know who’s going to get all the snaps and routes, but I think it’s very, very unlikely more than three of these guys can possibly hit, and I’m even tempted to cap it at 2)