Thursday Night Football DFS Showdown Analysis: New York Giants at Washington Football Team

Thursday Night Football for Week 2 features a divisional matchup between the New York Giants and the Washington Football Team. My thoughts for Showdown are below, and be sure to check out Rich Hribar’s Fantasy Football Worksheet for a full breakdown of NYG at WFT.

Strategy:

This game has an extremely low total of 42 with WFT as 3-point favorites. There are very few stand-out plays, so I will be heavily reliant on ownership projections for my strategy. Taylor Heinicke is starting for an injured Ryan Fitzpatrick, though there might not be much dropoff, as Washington’s offense looked better once Heinicke got into the game last week. The best value play by a mile is Dyami Brown at just $1,400 on DK, the WR3 for Washington, who is projecting for over 8 points from multiple sources. Antonio Gibson looks like the most solid play overall and projects to be the most popular, just ahead of Heinicke.

With Daniel Jones on the other side, I expect mediocre QB play from both teams with a high likelihood of turnovers. Nearly all of the best-projected plays are on the home team, while the main Giants like Jones and Saquon Barkley appear overpriced. Barkley is also expected to be on a snap count, likely limited to 15 or fewer touches. If the field relies heavily on optimizers for this slate, there should be plenty of leverage just building as if the Giants win which is quite likely given Washington’s QB injury and the close spread. I will update this with more thoughts on strategy once ownership projections are available.

(Updated) Exposure: Using anyone other than Gibson, McLaurin, or a QB will help differentiate with players expected to be rostered less than 8% at CPT and 39% overall. My favorite player to fade is Barkley, and I am willing to use more Devontae Booker than the field (projected between 4-13%) for direct leverage. This slate has low salaries and so it makes sense to have stricter max salary rules in place to avoid duplicates. Do some test runs in your optimizer and see what makes sense for you. Dyami Brown looks like a smash play in the 24-35% rostership range, and I’ll happily go way over the field. However, this does open up plenty of salary so I have to make sure the optimizer isn’t just creating mostly obvious lineups, as he is the most obvious salary relief.

DK Values:

Dyami Brown ($1,400)
J.D. Mckissic ($2,200)

DK Leverage:

Darius Slayton ($6,600) – WR3, deep threat
Kadarius Toney ($1,800) – Dart Throw WR4, busted Week 1

DK Build Guide:

Max 1 DST, Max 1 K
If CPT RB, negative boost opposing DST/K
If CPT QB, boost WR/TE, consider stacking 2+
If CPT WR/TE, force at least 1 QB, boost team QB
If using K, use at least 1 same team FLEX, negative boost opposing DST
If using DST, negative boost opposing QB/DST/K
Max 1 of Barkley and Booker
Max 1 punt option per team
Negative boost same-team RBs, especially if one is CPT
Leave EXTRA salary on the table, especially with chalky CPTs
Cumulative ownership under 250%
Use ownership product to reduce duplicates (Pairing chalk with low-owned players is superior to using all medium-owned players paired together when considering similar cumulative ownership).