• Best big-name player: Everyone knows it’s Patrick Mahomes, but there is plenty of reason to believe he can have an even bigger night than usual despite Travis Kelce’s injury.
• Best mid-priced player: Skyy Moore is well suited to take on the Detroit Lions‘ defense in his first real opportunity to be a starter.
• See where these players rank: Our weekly rankings landing page will show where all of these players rank relative to each other to get a sense of who else you might want to include in your lineup.
Estimated Reading Time: 5 mins
Ahead of Thursday night's bout between the Detroit Lions and Kansas City Chiefs, here are three players at different salary ranges who I believe will perform well in the DraftKings Showdown.
Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs ($12,200)
Mahomes is the blatantly obvious choice for the best player in this game, but that doesn’t make him the wrong choice.
- As PFF's Judah Fortgang mentioned in his best bets article, Mahomes has been excellent in Week 1 games.
- The Detroit Lions ran the third-most plays out of man coverage last season, which is a defense Mahomes has found success against.
- He has a 76-13 touchdown-to-interception ratio against man coverage over the past five seasons.
- Mahomes tends to throw the ball further down the field against man, which has led to a higher big-time throw rate (7.1% to 5.1%) but also a higher turnover-worthy throw rate (3.7% to 2.3%).
- This might lead to one or two more mistakes from Mahomes than usual, but it should also result in bigger plays and more fantasy points.
- No team gave up more fantasy points to quarterbacks than the Detroit Lions last year, at 20.2 points per game.
- While you need to differentiate your lineup to win the Showdown, it would be surprising if Mahomes isn’t on the winning lineup this time around.