It’s a holiday week with a big Thursday slate, so today we’re looking at the Thanksgiving DFS offerings on DraftKings.
I love Thanksgiving.
If it weren’t for cranberry sauce, it’d be a perfect holiday.
For those of you looking for more than just turkey and pie this Thursday, DraftKings presents a ton of great tournaments for the upcoming holiday. There’s a three-game slate featuring a ton of fantasy potential for us to exploit. While it’s still early in the week to lock in any of our plays, there’s still plenty of information out there at our fingertips to help figure out how we plan to attack the slate. This article here will focus on solely tournaments for the Thanksgiving Day Slate, as cash games are an entirely different strategy on a three-game slate. Let’s dive in.
(For the Thanksgiving FanDuel guide, click here)
Tournament selection
DK did a great job creating tournaments that vary in both entry fee and payout for this Thanksgiving three-game slate. The $333 Wildcat posts a top payout of $100K. For any big ballers out there, this is a rather tight contest paying out just the top 22.13 percent and is open to 60 entries. The $33 Backyard Football Special is an interesting three-max entry tournament. That tournament has a top prize of $20K, paying out the top 25.05 percent of entrants. The $20 Wishbone Classic is our first mega MME contest, open to 150 entries. It pays out the top 24.11 percent with a top prize of $150K. For my fellow ballers on a budget, DK is also offering a 20-max, $3 entry for the Mini Wishbone Classic. This tournament pays out the top 24.32 percent of entrants while providing a crisp $50K to the winner. No matter what type of bankroll you’re working with, there’s an option for everyone looking to get in on the fun this Thursday.
Chalk plays
Adam Thielen, WR, Minnesota Vikings
“Five receptions in every game” is the popular stat everyone keeps touting for Thielen, but it’s the target volume he’s seeing that I find most appealing. Thielen has seen double-digit targets in four of his last five games while scoring in three straight. His receiving totals of 96, 41, 98, 166, and 123 put him well in contention of seeing that coveted three-point bonus for the century mark in any given week. He also leads the team in both red-zone targets and targets inside the 10-yard line. Running the plurality of his routes from the slot, Thielen also benefits from avoiding shadow coverage from Darius Slay, our No. 8 graded cornerback. Slay will likely shadow Stefon Diggs on the outside in this matchup, leaving Thielen in the slot against Quandre Diggs. Prior to last week, Quandre Diggs has allowed a 123.3 passer rating when targeted against in the slot — third-highest rate among all slot cornerbacks. There’s nothing wrong with eating the chalk this week with heavy Thielen exposure.
Sterling Shepard, WR, New York Giants
Shepard missed last week’s contest with a migraine, but hopefully should be back in this week’s matchup against Washington. The reason I say “hopefully” is due to the tremendous matchup in the slot against Washington. The strong play of the Redskins’ outside cornerbacks has created a funnel of opportunity toward the middle of the field as the way to exploit Washington. Over the last three weeks we’ve seen Doug Baldwin (7-108-1), Thielen (8-166-1), and Coby Fleener (5-91-0) all exploit the middle of the field against Washington with great success. In his last two games, Shepard has seen 22 total targets while playing 93 and 100 percent of Giants’ snaps. The Giants are currently 7.5-point road dogs in this one and will likely be forced to pass out of necessity.
Stacking options
Kirk Cousins, QB, and Vernon Davis, TE, Washington Redskins
The failed Terrelle Pryor experiment can be put to rest now that Washington placed him on IR this week. Unfortunately, PPR maven Chris Thompson will also be joining with him, narrowing down Cousins’ targets entering this matchup even more this week. Jordan Reed was a DNP in practice Monday and looks to be a longshot once again. Nearly by default, Davis should be in for a smash spot here against the Giants as one of their few healthy receiving options. Not only are the Giants the most fantasy-friendly defensive unit for opposing tight ends, Davis has been really carving out a role in this offense over the past few weeks. He has target totals of 9, 11, and 6 over his last three games. He now faces a Giants defense that has allowed either a touchdown or 100 yards receiving to a tight end in every game this year. Stacking Davis with his quarterback makes a ton of sense here against the Giants. New York is allowing the fourth-most passing yards and fourth-most passing touchdowns to opposing QBs, and Cousins enters this matchup red-hot. Cousins has thrown for 300 yards in back-to-back outings, netting 31.58 and 28.98 points in those performances.
Philip Rivers, QB, and Keenan Allen, WR, Los Angeles Chargers
Coming off a brilliant performance last week against the Bills, this Chargers offense will be looking to continue their upward trajectory against the Cowboys in the projected highest-scoring game of the slate at 48 points. Opponents are passing against Dallas 60.1 percent of the time (sixth-highest rate), which has led them to rank top-10 in most completions, passing touchdowns, and fantasy points allowed to opposing quarterbacks. Seven of the 10 quarterbacks they’ve faced have thrown for multiple scores against them, leaving a ceiling worth chasing with Rivers and his top target, Allen. Allen runs the majority of his routes from the slot, which puts him in an exploitable matchup against Orlando Scandrick. Scandrick is allowing a 63.8 percent catch rate on the season and has two touchdowns credited against him. Allen has some wild splits when he sees 10 targets or more — raising his fantasy output from 10.3 FPPG up to 22.7. Given how often teams throw against the Cowboys, this stack makes for a perfect GPP chase.
Contrarian darts
Orleans Darkwa, RB, New York Giants
Coming off a 20-carry game last week against the Chiefs, Darkwa is finally emerging as a somewhat reliable fantasy back for the Giants. Over his last six games he’s averaging 16.5 touches and has scored twice. Washington just allowed both Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara to score 25-plus fantasy points against them, and have now allowed the third-most fantasy points to opposing backs on the year. Eight different running backs have been able to reach the end zone against them, as opponents are converting on 64.64 percent of the red-zone trips into touchdowns against Washington (fifth-worst rate in the league). Washington has allowed six different running backs to score at least 19 DK points against them, leaving Darkwa with a sneaky-high potential ceiling. Given Darkwa’s pricing and the other available running backs on this slate, Darkwa could be the fifth- or sixth-highest-owned running back this week. That could provide some massive leverage if he were to capitalize for a score.
Hunter Henry, TE, Los Angeles Chargers
When most people construct lineups for this week, their natural inclination will have them gravitate towards either Evan Engram or Vernon Davis. Both draw positive matchups with bright green “OPRK” next to their name and are proven commodities. If paying down a bit, Kyle Rudolph should be the next highest-owned tight end after coming off six straight games of at least seven targets. Henry is someone that will be overlooked by a country mile. His recent performances aren’t flattering — 2-11-0, 1-7-0, and 2-25-0 — which should drive down ownership. However, the Chargers have a very exploitable matchup here against the middle of the field without Sean Lee in the Cowboys’ lineup. In the four games without Lee this year (including the Atlanta game, where he played on just 8 of 53 snaps), Dallas has allowed the following receiving stat lines to opposing tight ends: 4-55-0, 5-93-0, 7-59-1, and 3-36-0. The last one was against Philadelphia where the Cowboys were blown out by defensive touchdowns. However, there’s the potential for Henry to see a similar stat line given that the Cowboys allow the sixth-highest pass play percentage (60.1 percent) and the sixth-most red-zone trips to opposing offense (3.4). Henry has shown us that he’s capable of such performances earlier in the season, and makes for an interesting dart throw from an ownership perspective.
Onslaughts
Washington Redskins
On short slates, sometimes it’s a prudent move to simply load up on one of the best teams in anticipation of a shootout. I didn’t anticipate writing about Washington in this onslaught section, but there’s a lot of factors pointing toward them being a smart team to go overboard with on this slate. They’re playing at home in Washington as 7.5-point favorites. The Giants are allowing the fourth-most passing yards and the third-most rushing yards. They’re allowing the fifth-most red-zone trips to opposing offenses per game this year (3.5). Plus, the Giants likely aren’t very motivated at this point of the season and may want to go home and eat pumpkin pie with their families. Stacking combinations of Cousins, Samaje Perine, one of either Jamison Crowder or Josh Doctson, Vernon Davis, and Washington DST can ensure you garner the highest touchdown probability of who scores Washington’s implied 26 points. Bringing it back with Sterling Shepard and/or Evan Engram makes for a strong correlation play.
Minnesota Vikings
The other team I’m considering a viable option to go “all-in” is the Vikings against the Lions. This game opened with the Lions as a 1-point home favorite, but has since swung four full points in the Vikings direction while raising their projected game total. Those are things we should be noticing as DFS players and acting accordingly. Case Keenum is a true wildcard in this scenario. He’s scored fewer than 12 fantasy points four times this season, but has also shown some wild peaks with 29- and 31-point performances. In tournaments, we just want a slimmer of hope for that monster outing, attacking GPP’s with a Ricky Bobby-esque mantra. Helping our cause for Keenum is the strong play of both Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs this year. Thielen should crush it in the slot this week and while we should temper expectations for Diggs in his matchup against Slay, Diggs has shown he can make a big play any time he’s targeted. Deciding between Jerick McKinnon and Latavius Murray is no easy task with both seeing similar volume over their last five games (18.3 to 16.8). McKinnon would be my preferred choice given the receiving upside. Kyle Rudolph has an exploitable matchup against the Lions, who are allowing the fifth-most receiving yards to the position. Minnesota’s defense has allowed more than 17 points to opposing offenses just once over the last eight games and ranks toward the middle of the field in both sacks and takeaways. Bringing the onslaught back with some Golden Tate — who’s priced far too low at just $6,200 — would be the best way to correlate heavy Vikings exposure.
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