Raybon’s Week 5 NFL DFS Breakdown: Patriots-Colts Thursday Showdown

Here’s a breakdown of the Thursday Night Football one-game DFS slate featuring the Indianapolis Colts at New England Patriots at 8:20 p.m. ET on NFL Network and FOX.

Patriots

Good Matchups & Values

• Tom Brady’s averages have dipped from 289.0 yards and 2.2 touchdowns to 258.2 yards and 1.8 without Rob Gronkowski (ankle, questionable) since Gronk was drafted in 2010. But this slate is more about Brady vs. Andrew Luck, and Brady has an edge of more than 5 points in projected ceiling and 3.5 points in projected floor. The average double-digit road-underdog quarterback has managed just 13.02 DraftKings points per game since 2014 (per our NFL Trends tool). UPDATE: Gronkowski is expected to be active.
• James White and Sony Michel both benefit from this going from a three-headed backfield down to two with Rex Burkhead (neck) on IR. With starting corners Nate Hairston (ankle) and Quincy Wilson (concussion) already ruled out, the Colts may end up opting to protect their secondary and concede the flat to White and running lanes to Michel.
• Every Patriots receiver has a good matchup, but from a “hidden value” perspective, Phillip Dorsett is a top tournament play. Dorsett leads the team in air yards this season, and he’s played more on the outside than Chris Hogan (79% vs. 49%) and out-snapped Josh Gordon (pictured above) 70%-22% last week.
• The New England defense is in a good spot as a big home favorite against a Colts team that played 90 snaps four days ago and is down its top two pass-catchers in T.Y. Hilton and Jack Doyle. Sharp money is on New England and the under.

Colts

Good Matchups & Values

• Nyheim Hines averages a 14.33 DraftKings points, +7.07 Plus/Minus, and a 75% Consistency Rating this season and was in on 70% of the snaps over the past two weeks. He’s also averaged 7.0 receptions on 8.3 targets in the Colts’ three losses, and the Colts are a 10-point underdog.
• Eric Ebron‘s 23% share of Colts air yards ranks second on the team, and he averages 36.0 more air yards per game than any other Colt who will be active.
• 2017 undrafted rookie Zach Pascal caught six passes for 56 yards and a touchdown on 10 targets last week. Luck won’t throw 62 passes every week, but Pascal’s team-leading 22% air-yard share is a positive indicator.
• Robert Turbin served as the Colts’ goal-line back for most of 2016 and 2017 before dislocating his elbow and serving a subsequent four-game suspension. He’s expected to be active and has pricing-driven upside on DraftKings at $800. Frank Reich alluded to using Turbin in that role.

Tough Matchups & Fade Candidates

• Luck hasn’t had success without Hilton in a small sample (5.9 yards per attempt in two games), and his production dips by 0.3 yards per attempt and 20 yards per attempt on the road, largely because Hilton isn’t a factor there. He’s been way too volatile for cash games this season, failing to post 180 passing yards in both road games.

Roster Construction Notes

• Over the past year, Brady has extremely strong correlations of .80 or better with Hogan, Cordarrelle Patterson, Stephen Gostkowski, White and Phillip Dorsett (in a smaller sample for some than other, obviously), as well as a .55 correlation with his team’s defense.
• Brady’s weakest correlations (though still moderate) are Burkhead (.43), Michel (.42), and Gronkowski (.34).
• The correlation between Brady and the opposing quarterback (.24) is barely half the league average of .44 over that span (per our NFL Correlations tool).
• Michel has a .72 correlation with the New England defense and a .70 correlation with White.

Cash Game Strategy

The challenge on this slate is navigating the pass catchers. Both teams figure to have four-man rotations at wide receiver (Edelman, Hogan, Gordon, Dorsett for New England and Grant, Chester Rogers, Pascal and Marcus Johnson for the Colts), and we don’t know how healthy Gronk will be if he plays, or how involved Dwayne Allen will be if he doesn’t (which is likely not much: Allen has played 50% or more of the snaps seven times as a Patriot but still hasn’t topped 26 yards).

The safest way to approach cash games is to lock in Brady, Michel and White, thus gaining exposure to all of the Patriots’ passing and rushing production, and then punt with Johnson or Turbin if active. This still allows you to also lock in all of the Colts’ passing production on DraftKings, and on FanDuel, and you can also get Gostkowski, which essentially locks in all of the Pats’ scoring. This would normally not be the move, but on a one-game slate, the odds are in your favor: 10-11 point favorites have won 82% of their games since 2003 (via BetLabs).

Tournament Strategy

We know that historically speaking, the Patriots win this game four out of every five times. We also know their entire offense is correlated, and that the one Colts player who will benefit from that is Hines.

We also know that the Colts will be alluring due to recency bias — Luck is coming off a 464-yard passing day, four different players got double-digit targets and another two finished with at least 64 yards receiving.

I think the collective ownership of the Colts offense will be higher than it should be relative to their players’ odds of outscoring Patriots players, which is key because if Gronk is out, you can stack pretty much as many Patriots as you want.

So rather than sprinkling in Colts everywhere, I would recommend building around Pats onslaught stacks and getting some natural either/or correlation by dividing them into two groups …

1. Brady stacks
2. Michel-Pats D/Gostkowski stacks

The Brady onslaught stacks can still include Michel and vice-versa. In fact, when I used our Multi-Lineup Builder to optimize the top 100 lineups by projected ceiling, Michel had a 64%-42% edge over White. These stacks can also leverage the correlation with Hines and his wide receivers.

The Brady onslaught stacks also force you to use the highest-leverage Colts: Pascal, Jordan Wilkins, Johnson and Turbin.

Assuming Adam Vinatieri’s groin injury doesn’t keep him out, using him as the lone Colt is another way to leverage a Pats onslaught.

If Turbin is active, his potential to steal touchdowns and his cost would make him arguably the highest-leverage play on the slate on DraftKings. If he doesn’t play, those honors go to Wilkins.

The Michel-Pats D/Gostkowski stacks can be leveraged by including Edelman and/or White; in the event touchdown variance goes against Brady, his underneath pass-catchers are least likely to be affected.

If you’re looking to stack Luck, pairing him with Michel (and White to a lesser extent) makes the most sense because it again plays off touchdown variance going against Brady.

If Gronk is active as expected, he’s also a good stacking partner with Luck because he isn’t as correlated to Brady as you’d think, and if he was forced into heavy usage, it’s likely to be because the Colts are keeping the game close. He’s at risk of being a decoy, though.

Gronk being active also makes Gordon more attractive, because it will likely depress his ownership, which is ideal because Gordon is in a smash spot but will likely be owned at a higher rate than he should be considering the possibility that he’s on another limited snap count.

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.

Credit: Greg M. Cooper-USA TODAY Sports. Pictured: Josh Gordon.