Monday Night Football DFS Showdown Analysis: Philadelphia Eagles at Dallas Cowboys

In Sunday's featured Showdown, The Philadelphia Eagles visit the Dallas Cowboys for a divisional matchup. For a breakdown of this game, check out Rich Hribar’s Fantasy Football Worksheet.

Dallas is a small favorite and the optimizer's top projected lineups are filled with 5-1 onslaughts with some 4-2 mixed in. There are even some 1-5 builds with Jalen Hurts at CPT and five Cowboys near the top. Building as if the Eagles win will be very effective for differentiation.

One interesting concept I recently learned for showdown is that even if the lineup uses a low-owned CPT, it will not necessarily avoid duplicates, because people tend to fill out the rest of the lineup with the same players. So I want to reiterate that avoiding duplicates is more about low-owned player combinations and using rostership product than just mixing in less popular choices. As a refresher, roster productship is the concept of multiplying players’ projected ownership together rather than just adding it, which is cumulative ownership.

(Updated) Roster Strategy:

There is disagreement on which players will be most used at CPT tonight between sources. Daily Roto has it from the top as CeeDee Lamb, Hurts, Dak Prescott and Amari Cooper all projected between 12.9-14.6%. Their FLEX ownership is similarly close between 44.5-47.3%. Establish The Run expects hurts to be the most popular CPT at 19.5%, with Prescott next at nearly 16%; Lamb and Cooper are at 11.5% and 10% respectively. Their flex projections are similarly spread out in the same order.

Normally with these numbers I would be leaning towards Cooper from that group, But his serious rib injury lowers both his floor and ceiling. In this case I think it makes sense to go under the field with Cooper and look more towards less popular options including Cedric Wilson and Blake Jarwin.

Building with two or more Eagles, not including Hurts, is a good way to lower duplicates here. My favorite player to go overweight on is DeVonta Smith at both CPT and FLEX, but Jalen Reagor, Quez Watkins and Zach Ertz are all viable as even more contrarian options.

Both teams are using a committee approach with their RBs. Given that the RB2 from each team is priced up, it’s even more likely that they can appear in the optimal with their teams RB1, so I’d recommend a large negative boost between teammate RBs or a build group if you’d prefer to rule it out completely.

DK Values

DeVonta Smith ($7,000)
Blake Jarwin ($3,000)

DK Leverage

Tony Pollard ($7,600)
Quez Watkins ($5,400)

DK Build Ideas

Max 1 DST, Max 1 K
Max 2 depth WR/TE/RB
Max 1 dart throw group (or 1 per team if MME)
Max 1 TE per team
Max 1 RB per team (or negative boost them)
If CPT Dak, stack 3+ pass-catchers
If CPT RB, negative boost opposing DST/K
If CPT WR/TE boost team QB and force at least 1 QB (either team)
Cumulative ownership under 250%
Use rostership 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).