This is a breakdown of one-game DFS contests for the Week 15 Thursday Night Football matchup featuring the New York Jets at Baltimore Ravens at 8:15 p.m. ET on ESPN. Be sure to check our Models up until kickoff for up-to-date projections that reflect the latest breaking news.
Cash Game Strategy
Lamar Jackson has topped 20 DraftKings points in 12-of-13 games this season, with a season-low (14.4) that would top the median projection of every other player on tonight’s slate in our DraftKings Showdown Models. Jackson’s 1.5x median projection comes in a whopping 15 points higher than the next closest player on the slate (Mark Ingram).
Luckily, injuries to Jets wide receiver Demaryius Thomas (hamstring, out) and tight end Ryan Griffin (ankle, out) have created enough value to jam Jackson in the 1.5x spot. Vyncint Smith played a season-high 49% of the snaps last week and is expected to fill Thomas’ spot. At cost of just $600, Smith carries the slate’s second-highest Projected Plus/Minus.
At tight end, Daniel Brown is expected to fill Griffin’s role and comes with the top median projection of any player under $3,800 after playing a season-best 87% of snaps last week. However, Ravens wideout Seth Roberts is within tenths of a point and makes for a better option, in my opinion. Why? Under defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, the Ravens are the NFL’s highest-percentage blitz team (53.9%, per Pro Football Reference). The extra rushers naturally force opposing backs and/or tight ends to stay in to block, and the end result has been the Baltimore defense allowing bottom-two reception volume to running backs (50) and tight ends (46).
USA Today Sports. Pictured: Daniel Brown
As Jets tight ends have blocked on 26% of pass snaps this season compared to 14% for running backs, Brown figures to take on the bulk of those responsibilities. Meanwhile, the Jets also blitz at a top-five rate on defense (38.2%) while allowing eighth-highest reception total to opposing wide receivers (171). Roberts stands to be one of the prime beneficiaries, as he and Marquise Brown are the only Ravens wide receiver to run a pass route on at least 50% of the team’s dropbacks in each of the past four games.
Even with Smith and Roberts as punts, rolling with Jackson as Captain and Ingram in one of the FLEX slots forces you to fade either Le’Veon Bell or Sam Darnold. Both players’ have equal floor projections, but Bell has a half-point edge in median. Then there’s this: According to our NFL Trends tool, Darnold is averaging a lowly 11.50 DraftKings points with a lineup-sinking -4.84 Plus/Minus in six matchups this season against defenses with a blitz rate of 30% or more like Baltimore, surpassing salary-based expectations just once (16.7%). For those same reasons, this is one of the rare weeks when a DST is cash-viable. Averaging 14.1 fantasy points per game over the last seven, Ravens DST has a top-eight floor projection in our models and is the optimal cash play with a Jackson-Ingram-Bell core.
On FanDuel, you can get in Jackson, Ingram, and Bell along with Smith and Justin Tucker, who has a top-five median projection in this game thanks to his team’s 30.75 point implied total (view live odds here).
Core GPP Plays
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