TNF Showdown Week 6: Eagles at Giants

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Here’s today’s feature from the Daily Dose:

XANDAMERE’S SHOWDOWN SLANT

We’re already at Week 6, and it starts with Philly visiting New York for a 40.5 total game (which has moved down 3 points from the opening line) with the Eagles favored by 7 or 7.5 points depending on where you look. 

NEW YORK

On the New York side, Tyrone Tracy looks likely to return to the field after being hurt early in Week 3. Tracy, however, was already being displaced in the backfield. He played the lead role in Week 1, but then in Week 2, he was out-snapped by rookie Cam Skattebo and also out-touched 14 to 10. Skattebo has played well since taking on the lead back role with 90+ scrimmage yards in his last three games, including catching 14 of 17 targets. The role here is robust, and my expectation here is that Tracy probably slides into the RB2 role currently occupied by Devin Singletary rather than having much impact on Skattebo. As a big underdog, this doesn’t immediately jump out as a great running back spot, but Skattebo’s large passing game role keeps him firmly in play and somewhat game script immune, and Philly is also allowing a whopping 4.7 yards per carry to opposing teams so far this year. $10k is a premium price, and it’s tough to pay given that the field will want to play a lot of Jalen Hurts and Saquon Barkley. I actually quite like Skattebo here, and I think he’s likely to go a bit underowned. Tracy at $7k is a tough click in a small role – he’s a highly contrarian tourney option in case the Giants do something unexpected and give him his RB1 job back, while Singletary is likely to see his role shrink down to just a handful of snaps.

In the passing game, Jaxson Dart has looked at least somewhat capable to start his NFL career. He led the Giants to a win against the Chargers and then struggled on the road against the Saints with 3 turnovers, but also accounted for 2 passing touchdowns and ran for 55 yards. His rushing ability keeps his floor solid (he scored 18.6 DK points last week despite the 3 turnovers). Of note is that after taking 5 sacks in his first start, New Orleans only sacked him once on a massive 40 pass attempts. Of those 40 attempts last week, we saw 7 targets each to Skattebo, Wan’dale Robinson, and Theo Johnson, 6 to Darius Slayton, 4 to Daniel Bellinger, 3 to Jalin Hyatt and Beaux Collins, and 2 to Devin Singletary. Positionally, that’s 18 targets to the wide receivers (with very little success. The wideouts only accounted for a grand total of 9 catches and 68 yards between them).

Wan’dale is the safest option here as the clear WR1 without Malik Nabers, and $7.2k looks attractive at first glance, but he’s gone back to his near-0 aDOT role since the QB switch (remember he was playing more downside with Russ at QB, but since Dart took over, he’s playing super close to the line of scrimmage). That leaves him reliant on either a ton of catches, a broken YAC play, or a touchdown to find a ceiling. He’s fine from a volume perspective as he’s likely to see plenty of targets, but there’s not a lot about this matchup that makes him attractive beyond that. Darius Slayton seems likely to miss (Q tag, designated no practice on Tuesday’s walkthrough, short week) (UPDATE: Slayton has now been ruled out), but we’ll see. Should Slayton play, he’ll be in his deeper role with a quarterback who is not throwing deep (ranked 31st in adjusted air yards per pass attempt). That’s a tough spot for Slayton to succeed in, as he doesn’t have Wan’dale’s YAC ability, and he’s priced just $600 less. While Slayton always has some “boom” to his profile, he’s far more likely to bust in this matchup. Consider him a highly variant tourney play with low odds of hitting (but he CAN hit).

If Slayton misses, Jalin Hyatt is basically a direct replacement for him. Hyatt has a massive aDOT of 28.3 yards (albeit on just 3 targets this season), but much like Slayton, he has a very boom/bust profile and is more likely to bust. Unlike Slayton, Hyatt is just $3.2k. Assuming Slayton misses, Hyatt is basically the same play for a much cheaper price, which means I like him a fair bit more. Hyatt is also still playable if Slayton plays; he’s just likely to see fewer snaps and targets, but he’ll still be on the field. Collins is also a guy we’ve barely seen with 3 targets this year and a 4.7 yard aDOT – he’s playing much closer to the line of scrimmage, giving him very little upside unless he catches a touchdown. If Slayton’s out, we also might see Gunner Olszewski or a practice squad wideout called up. They won’t project well at all, but would make for an interesting tournament dart as they’ll likely be almost unowned but will still see some reasonable field time, and it’s even possible they play ahead of Hyatt or Collins.

At tight end, Johnson and Bellinger are splitting some time, with Johnson in the larger role. Worth noting is that the Giants played their highest rate of 12 personnel last week, which led to 11 targets for the tight ends as a group, including scoring both of New York’s touchdowns. The yardage upside here is fairly modest, but it looks like Dart is showing some preference for throwing to tight ends early in his NFL career (Johnson also tied for the team lead in targets in Dart’s Week 4 start). At $5,800, and leading the team in targets in each game with Dart, Johnson looks a bit underpriced here, though the Eagles D has been a difficult matchup for opposing tight ends thus far (I don’t personally put a lot of stake into positional matchup for tight ends because different teams use their tight ends in such different ways, but your mileage may vary). Bellinger won’t be on the field nearly as much, but at $2,800, he represents a reasonable value option. I’d prefer the two cheap Giants wideouts if Slayton misses, though. 

PHILADELPHIA

On the Eagles side of things, the offense has been a bit of a disappointment so far, though the team is still 4-1. Saquon Barkley has yet to reach 20 DK points or 100 rushing yards, but I expect it’s coming. The Giants strength on defense was supposed to be their front, but they’re allowing 5.3 yards per carry to opposing teams, 4th highest in the league, and their struggles on offense mean they’re also allowing 66.6 plays per game to opponents. Everything lines up here for Saquon to finally put up his 2025 breakout performance. He’s going to be highly owned, though there are a lot of expensive skill position players that should keep him from getting to really megachalk status (at least in Showdown terms). I’d guess around 60-65% total ownership across captain and flex, which feels reasonable. Backups A.J. Dillon and Will Shipley have 11 and 7 touches on the season, respectively (though Shipley did miss a couple of games), and are just weak dart throws.

In the passing game, the Eagles have not really delivered strong fantasy performances yet, but Jalen Hurts still has a 7:0 TD:INT ratio. It’s just that A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith have only scored 1 TD each, which has kept their fantasy outputs in check. Brown, in particular, has really struggled to deliver fantasy upside so far. In five games, he hasn’t even hit 200 total receiving yards and has only reached double-digit DK points once against the Rams in Week 3 (which we identified as a likely shootout spot, and it resulted in 32 pass attempts for Hurts, his 2nd highest of the season so far). However, the talent is still there, and the spot looks good. Brown has enormous splits vs. zone and man coverage, historically smashing vs. man while being far less productive against zone. Well, guess what, the Giants are running zone coverage at the 3rd lowest rate in the NFL. Pricing at the high end of this Showdown is tough as there are a lot of guys in the premium $9k+ range, and with people really wanting to play Hurts and Saquon, and with Dart and Skattebo likely to outproject Brown due to ABJ’s early season struggles, I think Brown likely comes in pretty low here – perhaps even as low as 30-35%. That’s too low for his ceiling, the matchup looks great for him, and he’s one of my favorite tournament plays. Everything I said about Brown really applies to Smith as well: they’re 1A and 1B in this offense (36 targets for AJB and 30 for Smith so far on the season), and they’re both elite talents. Priced $200 apart, they’re going to pull ownership from each other, and both are likely to be significantly lower owned than they should be.

WR3 Jahan Dotson plays a ton of snaps and has a modest 10 targets on the season, but a couple of long catches of 24 and 51 yards – he’s thin but does have a ceiling relative to his cheap price, albeit no floor. At tight end, Dallas Goedert is scoring all the touchdowns for the Eagles with 4 on the season already (out of 7 passing scores!). Under the hood, though, Goedert only has 3 red zone targets (Smith has 4, Brown has 3, Saquon has 2). Goedert’s a totally reasonable play, but his recent performances and his cheaper price are likely to result in him being higher owned than he should be relative to the other Eagles pass catching options. TE2 Grant Calcaterra seems likely to miss with an oblique injury he sustained last week, which would result in more snaps for Kylen Granson, who, at the bare minimum price of $200, would be a playable punt option.

STRATEGY OUTLOOK

The critical dynamic in this game is pricing. We have six different players priced at $9.6k or above, and then from there down to the kickers, there are only three other viable plays – Wan’dale, Goedert, and Johnson (assuming Slayton misses). Tracy is basically unplayable at his price). So, we’re going to see a lot of stars and scrubs builds. As I’ve already noted, I expect ownership to flock to Hurts and Saquon, then Skattebo and Dart, leaving AJB and Smith somewhat underowned. I also expect at the cheap end, we’ll see ownership pile up on the best projected value plays, and while I don’t see a lot of projections up around the industry as I write this, I’m guessing those will be Dotson and then Hyatt/Collins if Slayton is out. Those are all fine plays – just recognize that going stars/scrubs with those three as key value pieces is going to be a very popular construction. Some other ways to play things would be to play the other Giants WR, whoever it is, and hope he plays ahead of Hyatt or Collins, or you could play John Metchie (who won’t see the field much at all but does have 4 targets on the year), or Granson who is likely to be pretty low owned despite his minimum price tag because he only has 2 targets on the season. On a slate where the common construction is so clear, we have to be very intentional about the path we use to seek differentiation. 

CASH GAMES

In cash games, I think Hurts and Saquon are must-plays, with Dart and Skattebo as very strong options. It’s hard to get all 4, though, at least with one of them at captain. Skattebo’s the one I’m most comfortable leaving off if you want to captain Hurts. I think it’s also viable to punt your captain spot here in order to get all 4 studs for cash.

TOURNAMENTS

In tournaments, the most popular captains will be the six expensive guys – AJB and Smith are the spots I want to be overweight on, and then I’ll also want some overweight positions on Johnson and then Hyatt if Slayton is out. 

Some groups to consider ::

Both teams are fairly condensed, so not a lot of restrictions for me in this one.

• 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 Dillon and Shipley

• At most 1 of Calcaterra and Granson (if Calcaterra plays)

• At most 1 of Hyatt and Collins if Slayton plays

• At most 2 of all Giants WRs not named Robinson if Slayton misses