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Week 7 DraftKings Sunday Night Football Showdown: Indianapolis Colts at San Francisco 49ers

Santa Clara, California, USA; San Francisco 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo (10) throws a pass during the first quarter against the Green Bay Packers at Levi's Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

The changing DFS and fantasy football landscape is shifting toward single-game contests. At DraftKings Sportsbook, the biggest is their Showdown Captain Mode format. The format blends the ease of focusing on a single game with the ability to differentiate yourself from the competition by choosing six players.

The biggest wrinkle of the format is the ability to choose one captain (CPT), who costs and is scored at 1.5 times the standard values. The CPT designation opens up another layer of strategy while exponentially increasing the number of possible lineup combinations, which is important for reducing duplicate winners and split prizes. I wrote a primer on playing this format, with details on historical positional trends and salary usage.

This season, I’m going to analyze all of the NFL’s “island” games (TNF, SNF and MNF) and playoff matchups, utilizing PFF’s weekly projections, current betting lines and millions of simulated historical combinations to identify the best and worst values for an upcoming matchup.


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There are five main components to this Showdown slate analysis that you’ll find below:

  • A breakdown of methodology and the most similar historical matchup to San Francisco 49ersIndianapolis Colts as an illustration of the matching process: 2016 Week 11 New York GiantsChicago Bears, featuring Eli Manning as Jimmy Garoppolo and Jay Cutler playing the role of Carson Wentz.
  • Optimal lineup allocations (CPT and total roster) for both teams are based on the results of similar historical matchups.
  • Comparison of player ownership projections for FLEX and CPT produced by a model trained on 2018-2021 Showdown contest results to optimal allocations.
  • Recent CPT ownership trends are illustrated for both starting lineups.
  • A table showing the most common players on optimal lineups for each player. This allows you to see which other players are commonly found on the same optimal lineups as a player you’re interested in rostering.

Related content for you: NFL Week 7 Odds and Best Bets via Eric Eager and George Chahrouri

METHODOLOGY

To analyze this specific Showdown slate, I looked through thousands of NFL matchups from 2014 to 2021 and found the closest analogies to this contest according to the following parameters: Betting spread, over/under and average fantasy points scoring for the top-ranked positional players of both rosters (QB1, RB1, WR1, TE1).

I won’t detail every matchup that falls into the top 100 for this game, but for illustration purposes, let’s look at the most similar matchup:

Historical Current
Player Pos Team Player Pos Team
Eli Manning QB NYG Jimmy Garoppolo QB SF
Rashad Jennings RB NYG Eli Mitchell RB SF
Odell Beckham Jr. WR NYG Deebo Samuel WR SF
Will Tye TE NYG Ross Dwelley TE SF
Jay Cutler QB CHI Carson Wentz QB IND
Jordan Howard RB CHI Jonathan Taylor RB IND
Cameron Meredith WR CHI Michael Pittman Jr. WR IND
Zach Miller TE CHI Mo Alie-Cox TE IND

The spread and over/under are similar in these matchups (Giants -7 41.5 O/U versus the matchup at 49ers -4, 43 O/U). All the players aren’t perfect matches, but that’s why we use 100 similar matchups and not just the single most similar.

The optimal roster for that historical matchup, assuming positional salaries equaled what they are for this showdown slate, would have been:

Player Team Position Roster Position Fantasy Pts
Rashad Jennings NYG RB CPT 23.9
Eli Manning NYG QB FLEX 17.2
Sterling Shepard NYG WR FLEX 16.0
Zach Miller CHI TE FLEX 15.1
Jay Cutler CHI QB FLEX 13.4
Jeremy Langford CHI RB FLEX 12.8

For this game and 99 other similar matchups, I calculated every possible combination that fits with Showdown rules (one CPT, at least one offensive player from each team) and would fall under the $50K salary threshold, assuming the salaries for the historical similar matchups are the same as those for this contest.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT CAPTAIN

The most unique part of the format, and therefore the biggest opportunity for a competitive advantage, is choosing your CPT. Should you always choose a QB who typically has the highest absolute fantasy scoring? Are defenses and kickers viable options? RB versus WR?

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