Here’s a breakdown of the Thursday Night Football one-game DFS slate featuring the Miami Dolphins at Houston Texans at 8:20 p.m. ET on FOX/NFL Network/Amazon Prime.
Houston Texans
Good Matchups & Values
- Any game with Deshaun Watson but not Keke Coutee has been a smash spot for Will Fuller:
#Texans WR Will Fuller’s career stat lines w/ QB Deshaun Watson but w/o WR Keke Coutee (out; hamstring):
5-101-1 (’18 Wk 3)
8-113-1 (’18 Wk 2)
5-125-2 (’17 Wk 8)
2-62-1 (’17 Wk 6)
2-57-2 (’17 Wk 5)
4-32-2 (’17 Wk 4)— Chris Raybon (@ChrisRaybon) October 25, 2018
- The top guaranteed prize pool leverage play for Houston is Ka’imi Fairbairn. He’s projected higher than three players priced at or above his salary on DraftKings, and only the two quarterbacks, Hopkins, Fuller, Lamar Miller and Kenyan Drake are projected for more points on FanDuel. (Fairbairn is not a bad cash option, either.)
- The absence of Coutee and Ryan Griffin (illness) should create opportunities for Houston’s rookie tight ends Jordan Thomas and Jordan Akins. Last week with Griffin out, Thomas played 55 snaps and ran 15 routes while Akins played 30 snaps and ran eight routes. Running back Tyler Ervin also played 23 snaps and ran 12 pass routes and could see some action in the slot.
- This is a potential smash spot for the Houston defense. It’s a top five unit in Football Outsiders’ DVOA, top seven in pressures and faces a depleted Miami offense that grades out as the seventh-worst pass-blocking team by Pro Football Focus and is on the road on a short week.
Miami Dolphins
Good Matchups & Values
With wide receivers Albert Wilson and Kenny Stills ruled out, all three Miami receivers are in for an uptick in usage against a Houston pass-funnel defense that ranks No. 1 in run defense DVOA but No. 14 in pass defense DVOA. Stills accounted for 14% of Miami’s targets and 33% of its air yards, and Wilson accounted for 18% of the targets and 16% of the air yards.
- Danny Amendola has drawn 23% of Brock Osweiler’s targets over the past two weeks.
- Jakeem Grant runs a 4.38-second 40-yard dash and owns the second-best Projected Plus/Minus on DraftKings in our NFL Models. His speed gives him an advantage over a Texans secondary that starts a 30-year-old (Kareem Jackson) and a 34-year-old (Jonathan Joseph).
- DeVante Parker is the wild card. He’s likely to resume playing a full complement of snaps and was targeted 20% of the time in his first two seasons under Adam Gase. Parker has seen only four targets this season, but his average depth of target is 28.8, and he’s the most likely receiver to replace Stills’ air yards.
Miami’s tight ends should also see an uptick in volume against a Texans defense that ranks 31s in DVOA vs. tight ends.
- Mike Gesicki (shoulder) turned in a career-high 44 yards last week. He played 16 snaps to Nick O’Leary’s 39, but was only four routes run behind O’Leary. If Gesicki is inactive, O’Leary becomes a much stronger value.
Roster Construction Notes
- The fantasy points of Watson and Hopkins have been very strongly correlated this season, with a correlation coefficient of .85 according to our NFL Correlations Dashboard.
- The fantasy points of Watson and the Houston D/ST have a negative correlation (-.53), but the fantasy points of Houston’s RB1 and D/ST have a slightly positive correlation (.10).
- Grant has returned 23 of Miami’s 26 kickoffs and punts this season and is stackable with the Miami D/ST.
Cash Game Strategy
We’re always trying to gain exposure to as many touchdowns as possible in cash games to minimize downside. On DraftKings, the safest way to do this is to lock in Watson, Hopkins, Miller, Fairbairn and either Thomas or Akins along with Osweiler.
The temptation to lock in Fuller is real, but the math disagrees: Fuller’s median projection of 14.6 as of this writing trails Osweiler’s 14.8, and Osweiler’s projected floor is 4.8 points higher than Fuller’s — not to mention Osweiler is $2,000 cheaper. Locking Watson into the Captain spot also minimizes your risk of being underexposed to Fuller.
Considering Grant’s explosiveness and the fact that his median projection is 2.2 points higher than Frank Gore’s — and the fact that Gore is a road underdog running back on a team with a low implied total — forfeiting the potential Gore rushing touchdown for the upside of Grant makes sense. (Gore doesn’t actually, you know, have a rushing touchdown this season.) But Fairbairn’s median projection is only 0.2 points off Grant’s, and Fairbairn protects against the offense getting stopped in the red zone, so he’s still the safest cash play in this spot.
On FanDuel, you can also get a Watson-Hopkins-Miller-Fairbairn combo in if you punt the fifth spot with Gesicki, which obviously depends on whether he’s active. If not, you’re pretty much forced to go Watson-Hopkins-Miller-Grant-Gore; other combinations might have higher median projections, but they end up leaving you underexposed to too many potential scores.
Tournament Strategy
It’s all about the Watson-Hopkins, Watson-Fuller and Watson-Hopkins-Fuller stacks in tournaments. The best way to gain leverage here is to roster Fuller in the Captain/MVP slot at a higher rate than the field.
Another shrewd move you can pull on FanDuel is to stack Watson and Fuller without Hopkins, and bring it back with Osweiler stacked with Amendola and Grant or Parker.
I also think there’s some leverage to rostering Kenyan Drake paired with Osweiler. It’s quite possible that due to pricing, Drake is the least-stacked Dolphin (outside of Gore) with Osweiler because he’s the most expensive and isn’t technically a receiver. But Drake is averaging 5.0 catches on 8.3 targets per game over his last three games and leads Miami with a 19% target share on the season.
The pivot off the passing-centric Texans stacks is to go Miller-Houston defense.
I already mentioned Fairbairn is the top leverage play on Houston. On Miami, Grant and Parker are the top leverage plays because they can account for large chunks of yardage at once.
Based on opportunity, I’d go with Thomas as the top dart throw on the Houston side. On Miami’s side, Gesicki (if active) and/or O’Leary are my top dart-throw picks. The defense also has some GPP appeal on DraftKings because of its correlation with Grant and Watson’s tendency to take sacks and throw picks.
Let’s get this shmoney!
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Chris Raybon is a Senior Editor at the Action Network and a co-host of “I’ll Take That Bet” on ESPN+. He has watched every snap of every NFL game since 2010 — even the kneel downs. Follow him on Twitter @ChrisRaybon and read about how he quit his accounting job and got paid to watch sports.
