NFL Week 5 wraps up with a Monday Night Football showdown between the Indianapolis Colts and the Baltimore Ravens at 8:15 p.m. ET.
If you’re unfamiliar with the single-game NFL DFS format, it differs a bit on DraftKings and FanDuel. On DraftKings, you have one “captain” spot and five flexes. The captain will score 1.5x fantasy points, but he also costs 1.5x salary. That means if you want to roster Lamar Jackson at Captain and take advantage of the scoring boost, you’ll have to pay $18,900 as opposed to $12,600.
FanDuel’s single-game format features one “MVP” spot and four flexes. The MVP also scores 1.5x fantasy points, but he doesn’t cost any additional salary. That takes away a bit of the strategy and makes the goal simple: Get your highest-scoring player in the MVP spot.
In these articles, I’ll be using various FantasyLabs tools to break down the slate. And don’t forget to check out our Lineup Builder if you like to hand build your lineups or our Lineup Optimizer for those of you that like to enter multiple lineups.
Studs
Jackson is the highest-priced option on this slate, just as he is basically every time he takes the field. He’s put together another excellent season so far in 2021-22, racking up at least 20.0 DraftKings points in all four games.
He remains one of the most dangerous rushing threats in football, but the Ravens have allowed him to air it out a bit more this season. They’ve increased their pass rate to 51% in one-score games, and while that’s still one of the lowest marks in the league, it’s a massive increase from their mark of 45% last season. Jackson has responded by averaging over 269 passing yards per game, which would shatter his previous career-high of 208.5. If not for an unusually low touchdown rate of 3.2%, his fantasy totals would be even more impressive.
Jackson is in a nice spot vs. the Colts. They rank just 26th in Football Outsiders’ pass defense DVOA, and Jackson owns an Opponent Plus/Minus of +3.3 on DraftKings. That’s the top mark in our NFL Models. The Ravens are also favored by 7.5 points, and Jackson has historically averaged a Plus/Minus of +5.23 when favored by at least a touchdown (per the Trends tool).
