In Sunday's featured Showdown, Aaron Rodgers leads the Green Bay Packers against the San Francisco 49ers, as 3.5 point underdogs, with a total of 50.5. For a breakdown of this game, check out Rich Hribar’s Fantasy Football Worksheet.
I like the idea of building with alternate game scripts in mind. In the case of a close spread game such as this, that would be building 5-1 onslaughts for both sides while the field will overuse 3-3 and 4-2 builds. Normally I would lean more underdog-heavy, but this looks like an exception. The Packers are incredibly concentrated between Rodgers, Davante Adams, and Aaron Jones while the 49ers are more spread out and unpredictable.
(Updated) Roster Strategy:
Adams looks to be the most popular CPT near 18% with Rodgers just behind at 15%. Both guys are expected to be in over 70% of rosters. A group of five is clustered next in the 8-12% range at CPT and 46-55% total: Deebo Samuel, Jimmy Garoppolo, Aaron Jones, Trey Sermon, and George Kittle. Literally, any other player should help with differentiation especially if you were to use two or more together; a potential group for optimizers. As with the last time GB was in Showdown, keep in mind that Adams can be in the optimal at CPT or FLEX even without Rodgers in the lineup. The inverse is unlikely but not impossible. Given Sermon's value, he is my favorite play to go overweight on. He may be more popular than expected at CPT as he can help with jamming in more of the high-priced players. Brandon Aiyuk is a high-upside leverage play off of Samuel, who has underperformed so far this season and is a bit overpriced for his projection. I love Kyle Juszczyk and Trent Sherfield as low-owned value plays.
DK Values
- Trey Sermon ($3,000) – Extremely underpriced standout play, expected to lead SF backfield
- Kyle Juszczyk ($800)
- Trent Sherfield ($1,200)
DK Leverage
- Brandon Aiyuk ($5,600) – Flashed huge upside last season
- Randall Cobb ($4,400) – Getting more snaps at the expense of Lazard
- Trey Lance ($6,000) – Unlikely to pay off, but extreme leverage if he takes over in-game due to benching on Garoppolo injury
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
- If CPT QB, boost pass-catchers or consider forcing stacks
- If CPT RB, negative boost opposing DST/K
- If CPT Adams, Samuel, Kittle then force one of Rodgers or Garoppolo
- Use exactly 2 (or at least 2) of player group excluding top 7 most-owned (listed in Roster Strategy)
- 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)
FD Values
- Trey Sermon ($8,500) – Not as underpriced as on DK, but still the best value play by a mile
- Marquez Valdes-Scantling ($7,500)
FD Leverage
- Brandon Aiyuk ($9,500)
- Randall Cobb ($6,500)
FD Build Ideas
- No K or TE at MVP
- Focus on 3-2 build construction
- No solo CPT in 1-4 construction
- Negative boost opposing QBs (Lineups with both only win 30%)
- If WR CPT, boost QB
- QB is overused at MVP while RB and WR are underutilized at MVP
- Don’t stack 3 pass catchers from the same team
- Don’t force the max salary
For more optimizer build rules to consider, check out the list for each DK and FD here.