 NFL DFS slate of the year is coming up on Sunday. It is Super Bowl 56 between the Rams and the Bengals, which means one last chance to win some cash on the NFL before a long, long hiatus before we get back to some football once again. So let's savor it, let's win some money and go out on a high note for the 2021 season. Welcome on into the heat check fantasy podcast powered by Number Fire. That's right here on the fan dual podcast network in numberfire.com. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for numberfire.com. Joined here as always by Brandon Gedula. He is the managing editor of numberfire.com. Brandon, it is our final NFL podcast of the year. I am sad about that, but happy. We get to break down a pretty fun game with a lot of exciting dudes attached to it. How are you doing today? Yeah, I mean, it's a fun game to break down because like you said, we have like engaging skill position players. We have like five names that, well, let me think here. Both quarterbacks, Cup, Mixon, Chase, T. I don't think I'd go past that. I don't know if I go to T even personally. For MVP, but like, okay, so five. I think five justifiable options at MVP. That's fun. So I'm all for that. Yeah, and I think that the fact that we have the ability to deviate without being stupid to me is the main appeal of this single game slates. What we're gonna do today is break down as single game slates, make strategy perspective, break down this game, talk through some injuries, break down our MVP thoughts and much more to get you set for everything you need to know for Super Bowl 56. But first, Fandals bringing Super Bowl bingo to your Super Bowl party. And it doesn't matter if you're watching the game with hardcore fans or someone who is just there to watch the commercial. Super Bowl bingo is perfect for everyone and it's absolutely free to play. Here's how it works. You can get your free card now at Fandal.com or down on the Fandal app. Then on game day at Super Bowl and pop culture moments on your card happen, your squares will automatically fill up. And if you get five squares in a row, all you do is press bingo to win a share of $100,000 in prizes. Fandal is the exclusive home for Super Bowl bingo. Grab your free card now. So you're all set for game day opt-in to Fandals Super Bowl bingo contest today. Fandal an official partner at the NFL and Super Bowl 56 eligibility restrictions apply go to Fandal.com or download the Fandal app. More details is weird to be able to say Super Bowl in like these ads. That's a new thing with this partnership. So hey, at least we got that going for us. Big game. Super Bowl, Super Bowl, Super Bowl. Suck it. There we go. Got that out of the way. Okay, let's break down to Super Bowl 56 here between the Rams and the Bengals right now. The Rams are four point favorites at Fandal. They are four and a half point favorites. Some other places, noteworthy. But either way, four point favorites are the Rams, 48 and a half point total. Injury snowed here for this late. We have Tyler Higby still missing practice on Wednesday due to his knee injury. I think it seems pretty grim for him to play personally. I've read elsewhere that maybe he'll go, but like, you know, he doesn't seem to think so. And if he goes, he's probably gonna play in full capacity. Mike, we still have some high leverage work which would be unfortunate, but- And he probably canceled Kendall Blanton, which would be super, super fun. I don't think Higby's gonna go. Van Jefferson also did get in a limited session on Wednesday, Cam Acres limited. So that's good. Higby knew is not great. On the Bengals side, CJ Uzama was not able to practice Wednesday. He said he's not gonna miss this game. Zach Taylor said after practice that they still felt as though Uzama would be able to play. So if we're talking right now in Thursday morning, I am assuming that Uzama goes Higby does not, but I'm assuming Uzama probably pretty heavily limited with that knee injury. So the tight end stuff not looking great for this game. We'll break down what that means from a player level perspective later on. But first, this is our only single game podcast we have for the entire year, which means it's important to dig into strategy. And who better to talk to you about that than Brandon freaking Canula, wrote a piece a couple of years ago over on numberfire.com, breaking down the data behind how a single game slates break. And you updated that data over on numberfire this week. You can find that on Brandon's Twitter. A county tweeted that out yesterday. It does have updated data from the 2020 and 2021 seasons to let you know what the typical MVP outlook is, the relationship between positions, et cetera, et cetera. So Brandon, if you were to give us a TLDR on what we should be looking for here, what we're looking for as single game slates, what did you find in that piece? Like all games. I don't know. This is one. Just in general. What do we need to know? So, okay. So the one thing that's important to keep in mind is that obviously not all games in NFR are the same. So you're not gonna say, okay, so in single game slates, you want a quarterback, you want a running back, you want two receivers and a tight end. Like that's what happens. It depends on a lot of things. It depends on things like over under, point totals, spreads, things like that. So it's hard to talk about everything on air because the numbers can just sort of like gloss over you. So I would recommend that if you're curious about the overall trends that you go to Number Fire, the piece is called How to Dominate Single Game Daily Fantasy Football with Perfect Lineup Analysis. That will help you key in on, you know, there are things like, okay, when a quarterback is MVP, what does that lineup tend to look like more compared to when the running back is MVP? So that is gonna help you dictate whenever you're saying, okay, I wanna play, and this is a name that I think you and I both love at MVP this week, Joe Mixon at MVP. What does that sort of change about the rest of the lineup? And again, it's a lot of averages and it's a lot of frequency stuff because if you play out millions of NFL games, you're gonna get like a Mixon Stafford Cup stack that like you wouldn't normally anticipate. But again, it's sort of overall trends. So I would point everyone to that. But as it pertains to this game specifically, I pulled from my database 43 games since 2019 with a single game slate offering on Fandle with a total of 46 and a half to 55 and a half, or 50 and a half, sorry, and a spread between three and five. Try to keep the spread a little bit narrower, the over-under a little bit more in this range. So typically a quarterback is the optimal MVP, about 45% of the time in the overall sample. In games comparable to this, it falls to 23%. So that is a massive drop off of 21 points. What we see then is a trend up for running backs from 29% overall to 44% in this split. And then for receivers, it's about 21% overall and about 26% in games like this. That's why historically, quarterbacks are great MVP picks. However, in games like this, where there might not be a lot of scoring as much as games with a 50 plus point total, we might have a more likely play at a running back or receiver, and then we have to apply that to the specific game. Does it make sense that we wouldn't want to play any running backs from this game at MVP? Yes, with Joe Mixon, we'll talk more about the Rams running backs later with Jamar Chase, Cooper Cup, that makes sense. So you have to blend the trends with the actual game itself. Now, here's the final thing I'll say, and then we can kind of open this up a little bit more. If you're playing this from an under perspective, then you would shy away more from the quarterbacks at MVP based on what this data says. If you say, I think the total is too low, this game is gonna have 60 total points. It's gonna play more like a game with a total of 55, then the quarterbacks are gonna be much more justifiable at MVP. However, you're realistically getting leverage every time you play a running back or a receiver at MVP based on the field because people love to roster quarterbacks because on Fandle, everyone's the same salary whether you play them at MVP or at Flex. So that's kind of the overview. I think the real takeaway is that this game sets up well for Joe Mixon, for Cooper Cup and for Jamar Chase to be your MVP choice depending on how you choose, however you think the game's gonna go. And that goes into something you talk about all the time when you build your main slate lineups is making your assumptions, talking about how do you think the game's gonna play that is vital for a single game idea. Yeah, because you don't wanna use players who don't interact well, like you could use, I don't know what the best example of this would be, but like two guys who are best in opposite scripts. So I would say like a, I would say usually tight ends and running backs who can be a little bit more touchdown dependent. If you're really in on a running back, I'm a little bit lower on tight ends from just because that tight ends need touchdowns generally, very few of them have yardage upside. So that's the one correlation I try to look at a lot. Not to say I never do it, not to say I won't do it this weekend, but that is the sort of my go-to for single game. Yeah, so for me, I just like decide the way you think the game will play out and go from there. Like if you think the Bengals win by 10, that's a very different lineup than the Rams winning by three. So decide that first and go from there, but also it's important to note that like the field may assume the same thing. So for me on single game slates, I prefer to play single entry and I wanna think through, okay, where am I going to get the best leverage on the field in a way that I'm not being stupid? Be different without being dumb. That's kind of my key thing I wanna look for always. I think that Joe Nixon is actually the optimal way to do so. So we'll talk about that later on, but I think the data backs this up with seeing running backs at the MVP slot so frequently. So I think to me, just confirmation bias, like I entered this wanting to use Nixon and MVP because I thought that he'd be under rostered. Then I see your data on this split and see that running backs were in the MVP slot 44% of the time in similar games, it leads me to feel pretty good about that. And like honestly, anecdotally, the quarterback stuff makes sense because the higher the total, the more touchdowns are implied. The lower the total, the more often you expect those red zone trips to be field goals versus touchdowns. So like Brandon said, if you and your head are expecting a shootout, then you should be inclined to use the quarterback. So if you're expecting this game to go under, then the kickers have more viability because it's fewer chances converted into touchdowns. So thinking about it in that way, I think is necessary for this for sure. And just having an idea of the way you think this game will play out in that specific lineup because if you're doing multi-entry, you can do multiple different ways. And for single entry too, you should do multiple lineups. So like not in the same contest obviously, you do a $5 single entry with one lineup. You do a $10 single entry with a separate lineup. That way you're effectively getting multiple entries that's in different contests. I think that's a way we should think of things here. So let's spin that now to the MVP conversation and talk about guys we think great out well in that regard for this week. And this is different if you're playing a cash game, obviously I don't tend to play cash games for a single game personally. But for me, if I'm looking to a single entry tournament, I think that Joe Nixon is kind of a rockstar level play under the assumption that he will be under rostered by the field here because this goes back to work you've done on the PGA side of things, knowing that the highest salary to person is likely to get a lot of consideration. That for this latest Cooper Cup at $16,000 over on Fandall. That means Cooper Cup's MVP allocation will increase as a result of his salary. But behind me of Stafford and Burrow and in general, like you said, people love to use quarterbacks as MVP. So if I'm like allocating expected MVP shares across the entire pool of players, I feel like at the field, a large percentage of the time will be going to Cup Stafford Burrow. And if they go to the Bengals, it might be Jamar Chase versus Joe Nixon, given Chase has had some bananas. Yeah, he's had a ceiling, that's for sure. To me, that means Nixon will likely go over under rostered, which is interesting because in the playoffs, Nixon is at 17 carries five targets per game, 98.7 yards in scrimmage per game. He has 48% of the team's red zone opportunities. So carries or targets inside the red zone that is slightly up from what it was during the regular season. It's 44% for his full games this year. And the other thing that leads me to believe Nixon will be under rostered is his betting markets have been sour, I would say. His rushing plus receiving yardage total was in the mid 90s last week. It's at 87.5 over on Fandall. I think I saw some 92s lingering last night. But like, it's been coming down. I don't think it should, I think 87.5 is an overreaction and I'll take the over on that personally. That leads me to believe people who are putting their money on the line for this game don't think that Nixon's gonna do a whole lot here, I think he will. So to me, that's why I've been looking for leverage, looking for a guy who will be under rostered relative to the field. I think that guy is Joe Nixon. If you give me one lineup for a tournament to try to maximize my ROI, I'm putting Joe Nixon in MVP personally for those reasons. What about you? What's your in MVP and that market in general? Yeah, actually I had an idea on the fly. I was trying to pull up. Okay, so according to my database here, when a running, let's assume a running back is the MVP, his draft percentage as MVP, if he's favored is about 16%. If he's an underdog, it's about 12%. So it's not a huge gap, but anyone who plays a lot of single game will take four points of leverage anywhere they can get. So that speaks to Joe Nixon as well. And if anyone's wondering, hey, Joe Nixon sounds great, but he's an underdog and should be wary of that. If you break out the MVPs, again, in incomparable games to this one, based on spread and over under, those 43 that I've referenced, 18.6% of those had an underdog running back as the MVP. By comparison, it was 26% for a favored running back and 23% for a favored receiver. Again, both of those are better than the quarterback. So you then also have to apply that to a particular game, because how many of these games had a running back with Joe Nixon's workload on the other side as an underdog, it doesn't, I'm not digging that deep into adjusting for pregame projections, but this speaks to Joe Nixon as well, because we're looking at a situation where Joe Nixon is, there's like sort of Joe Nixon fatigue, but the total here is not like sky high. And that's one thing that really draws me toward running backs and would draw me toward the Rams running backs if we had a featured back entering this game, which we don't. So I don't wanna get to that point with the Rams running backs, but speaking of Nixon, great red zone role. We know he's gonna be on the field. We might question the third down role a little bit with some IJP Ryan being able to take a target or two and his touchdown, I know is gonna stick in a lot of people's minds. We should take advantage of that. And I think that Joe Nixon is the best differentiation play at MVP, so I'm in total agreement with you with Nixon. And if we're talking single entry, I think that Nixon is going to be my MVP of choice in a single entry lineup. Okay, so let's talk to the other guys here as far as MVP considerations, because not everyone will be swayed by the Nixon argument, which is fair, totally fine. I get that. We have Cooper Cup, Matthew Stafford, Joe Burrow, Jamar Chase. For me, I think those are the only non-mix and guys I wanna use. T. Higgins, I'm not as high on looking back at the Bengals games this year. I omitted week 18 when Joe Burrow sat and T. Higgins sat too. If we look at the other games they played this year, I did include the games where Higgins sat, whatever. Anyway, in those eight, the other games where everyone's played, Jim Nixon has been the highest scoring player on the Bengals six times. Jamar Chase has also been the MVP of their team six times. Burrow four times, then Higgins, Boyd and Yuzama once a piece. If we look at just the wins, because we're assuming if we put the guy at MVP that his team will win for the most part. In the wins, it's Nixon and Chase at four, Burrow at three, Yuzama won, Boyd won, Higgins zero. So Higgins could be the highest scoring guy, but I'm not gonna have 1600 lineups. So I need to like cut down my MVP course somewhere. And I feel like the best way to do so is via having not as much, you know, probably no T. Higgins at MVP. So to me, that's my consideration said. Do you wanna make a pitch on putting Higgins at MVP or no? It's honestly a leverage play. It's the fact that in the playoffs, he actually has a higher ariard share than Jamar Chase, although it's not substantially, I mean, they're both 35 plus percent. I mean, this offense, this passing offense flows through those two all the time. And Jamar Chase has a better catch rate over expected in the playoffs, 6.6 points over expected, 3.3 for Higgins. So they're both over expectation, which you would anticipate because they're both good receivers. 6.6 is a bit high. And look, I've tried to study what leads to, like what lead in information we can use to anticipate big games from receivers. And there's really nothing. It's a matter of did this guy have an abnormally high catch rate in yards per target and touchdown rate in that game when he got volume that he's typically getting in weeks before. That's all it comes down to. So I'm not saying Jamar Chase is a bad MVP play because he's been overperforming. That's not it. It's that he's been overperforming a little bit more than Higgins, whose role is not substantially different than what Jamar Chase does. Now, Jamar Chase also has run after a catch ability that Higgins doesn't really have. But if you're looking for a way to go chalky with your full lineup, but differentiate in a way that makes sense, I think Higgins at MVP can get you there. Okay. That is one way to think about how you would play. Because if you play Cooper Cup, you're gonna want to play, so let's say you play Cooper Cup at MVP, you're gonna want to play Matthew Stafford because that's what the data says. Historically, you want to play an opposing receiver because you're playing that sort of shootout role in this game. So you have Cup Stafford Chase, you have 82-50 left. If you do stuff like that, you're gonna have to dig pretty deep into the player pool. And if you want to avoid taking chances, because you say it's the Super Bowl, there's really not gonna be like a hero this week. I think that maybe you'll be back and you don't want to play Kendall Blanton. I think Van Jefferson's hurt. I don't want to do that. You can build a more balanced lineup and put to Higgins at MVP. So that's one option. And as much as I want to say, that's the play. I'm just trying to throw out ideas because I don't know what's gonna happen on Sunday. I can tell you what's gonna happen statistically over 10,000 Sundays, which puts Cooper Cup into the MVP slot at a 28% rate, followed by Matthew Stafford at 25%, Burrow at 17%, Mixon 12% and Chase at 10%. So again, Cup is the chalk at MVP. I think you can still play him. You don't have to go away from Cooper Cup. But if you do that, just again, think about that you're probably playing more of an over angle than you are with an under offer. Looking at the Rams side of things, talked about how often each guy was the highest scoring player on their team throughout the Bengals on the Rams side. It has only been Cup or Stafford in 18 out of their 20 games. Cup has done it nine times, Stafford nine times, Bobby Trees, Missy Buddy, he's won. Sonya Michelle won. If we look at their wins, it's seven for Cooper Cup, six for Matthew Stafford, one for Woods, one for Michelle. If we look just since they're by, so taking out Bobby Trees, again, shadow, Bobby Trees, and adding in Odell Beckham, it's five for Cup, four for Stafford, one for Michelle. The reason I wanna look at that specifically was because has Odell Beckham cut into Cooper Cup's role enough where I might wanna lower Cup at MVP? And the answer is a pretty resounding no. If we look in just the playoffs, so where Odell Beckham's Odell Beckham, I don't know why I was tripping on the deep. Odell Beckham's role has been a lot better. In the playoffs, Cooper Cup has a 33% target share, Beckham at 24%. Cup leads the team with a 29% deep target share, and he has 50% of the red zone targets. So his role has not gotten worse. In fact, it's potentially gotten better, which is bananas. So even if I try to talk myself out of Cup at MVP, I can't. So I think it makes sense. I think that what I wanna do is get a read on what the MVP allocation of Cup relative to Stafford is. Cup's the highest salary guy. Your simulations say he is the most likely. If I get the read that Cup will be more popular at MVP than Stafford, then I'm okay pivoting to Stafford. Because I think that it's pretty even between those two guys. Just tough because I know the baseline baseline baseline is quarterback at MVP. I feel like that will still be the case. So I wouldn't be shocked if Cup is less popular than Stafford, but it's very hard for me personally to get a read on that situation. I've often found that my slate simulations and the MVP odds are pretty decent with predicting MVP roster rates. I think that you're gonna get some leverage going to Stafford from Cup, but not substantially so, just to kind of throw that out there. And if you're playing Stafford then at MVP, my follow-up is, are you gonna try to fade Cup because you think that he's, because you're obviously anticipating a big game from Stafford if he's gonna be the highest scoring player. Are you trying to fade Cup and play him with Van and Odell? Or are you still gonna play Cup in those lineups? I know you'd play Cup in some lineups, but like let's say you're voting a single entry with Stafford, do you think you would go so far as to say, I'm just gonna avoid Cup. If he has a bad game, he has 60 yards, no touchdowns and Stafford, one thing I wanna talk about is Stafford's goal line roll. The Rams have been the, they've had the highest rate all season, or in the regular season of percentage of touchdowns from inside the 10 coming from the pass, which says that Matthew Stafford should not score rushing touchdowns, but he's had two in the playoffs. But inside the three in the playoffs, they've had one pass play and six rushes. Stafford has three of those. He's tied for the NFL lead and goal line rushes in the playoffs. He's getting those rushes because he's terrible at them and he gets like three per crack because he just can't, he's the worst sneaker on the planet. I'm just saying like it's the Super Bowl, it's the playoffs, Stafford might just be going for it. So, you know, you could be playing the angle. Stafford's gonna rush for one, he's gonna throw one to O'Dell, one to Van or something like that. And it's not gonna be Cup. So again, single entry lineup, you're playing Stafford at MVP. Do you think you'll play Cup with him? I answer your question with another question. What are your thoughts on? What are your thoughts on Cup at MVP but no Stafford? Because if you use Cooper Cup and O'Dell Beckham in the same lineup without Matthew Stafford, you're effectively getting exposure to a healthy, healthy, healthy portion of Stafford's production without using Stafford. I think that I might be more interested in that. I'm not sure if the data says that this is the stupidest thing I've ever brought up in my entire life, but I think that that thought process of absorbing their production without using them to me at least is pretty interesting. So I think that I'm getting more thought to that than having Stafford without Cup. I think that what you're asking is valid because you're just kind of assuming that Cup doesn't go nuclear, which is like if he has six catches 100 yards and no touchdowns, that's a very good game, but he can still not be in the optimal lineup in that situation. Yeah. So again, we can talk about playoff usages and things like that, but when it comes to single game, it's a time to talk about game theory. So we're talking about what kind of game script are you selling yourself if you have Cup and Odell in your lineup and not Stafford. What you're really saying is like, Cup's probably gonna break 100 yards, have a touchdown. Odell probably scores, has like 70, 60, 70 yards, but Stafford himself, those are his only two passing touchdowns, he throws for like 250. That's what you're saying. And it's like, can that happen? Yeah, absolutely. That's not like a strange game script. So that makes sense. So I think that every time you're building a lineup, I know it's fun to go through an optimizer and just like max the 150 in a single game and just be like, I'm gonna get hit the right combo, but you wanna make sure that you're looking at your lineup and saying, does this even make sense? And I think in that specific instance, it makes sense. Like you can have a receiver at MVP, you can have another receiver and not the quarterback. I'll try to look up the numbers here on the fly and let you know what that looks like, but it's not that egregious in that specific instance because you're not looking, this is different than a main slate where you wouldn't really play two receivers on the same team without the quarterback, but we're looking at one game. So we're looking at, we're trying to cherry pick the five best per salary dollar options within a single game. So I think there's credence there. And I think that's an interesting route to go because if you don't play Stafford, presumably you'll still play burrow in that lineup, but if you fade both quarterbacks, which is that would be if you want to get unique fading both quarterbacks in a lineup is probably going to get you a very, very unique, not totally unique because unique means literally unique, but you won't be having as many duplicates if you don't, if you don't have quarterbacks in your lineup. The big game bowl on Fannie Dool has $3.3 million in total prizes. I want to check up total number of entries. 792,858. The odds you get a unique there are very low. The odds you get a unique that is not idiotic, very, very low. So keep that in mind. For sure. Okay. So I'm with Joe Burrow, you brought him up. Where does he grade out for you considering roster rates at MVP compared to Cup and Stafford? So he's going to be behind the Rams because this is one thing we haven't really talked about. And I wanted to cover is like, what are our expectations for the game? For me, it's that the Rams win and that it plays a little bit under but not drastically so plays close to what the total is now, which isn't going to give me that different unless I build a different lineup. Yeah. Look, I love Joe Burrow. I'm rooting for Joe Burrow. But if you look at a lot of information, like one thing that jumped out to me is the Bengals receivers and catch rate over expectation in the playoffs, they're all like overperforming. We've seen the Bengals get off to slow starts. It's something I wrote about on Number Fire. They get off, they're really bad in the first quarter on early drives and then Burrow kind of has to take over a game. That's not really a recipe I want to bank on. And because perception seems to be like the hype train is out of control with Joe Burrow, which again, I'm all for but I'm going to probably play against that this week and not really be heavy on Joe Burrow unless I am playing Mixon because Mixon running backs are often paired with their quarterbacks because you're just getting passing efficiency and then red zone chances which lead to running back touchdowns. But I'm really not going to approach this with an angle of any Joe Burrow MVP lineups. I think I'm going to play Mixon cup and potentially Stafford at MVP. That's the, those are probably my big three. Yeah. Which I am going to fear but I have my reasons for Burrow and I think it's because the early game tendencies being suboptimal and being forced into throwing which the Rams are a little bit scarier than some of these other defenses he's faced in the playoffs. I think a little bit higher on him than you are. And I think I'm higher on him than Stafford personally because after I consider roster rates I think Stafford would be more popular. I agree with you in the way of the way the game will play out my baseline because like my numbers have it as Rams minus 4.2 total. Minus 4.4, yeah. I do not have a total model. I should build that for next year. But like looking at the projected efficiency numbers it seems pretty appropriate the total right now. So I do think the Rams win. However, when I account for the fact that I think the other guys would be more popular that helps also I kind of want to come at this from the angle and this may be antithetical to my mix and love. I want to come at this from the angle that the Bengals are more passive than expectation because they've been more passive than expectation recently in these high leverage games. If you look at their past five games with Joe Burrow their early down first half pass rate is 66%. They have been above 70% in three out of those five games. So if I come at it from the angle of okay the Bengals getting pooped on by Tony Romo for six and a half hours last year or two weeks ago for being too conservative that sticks in people's minds maybe I want to take the angle of their aggressive. Now that doesn't mean that is not actually antithetical to the mix and love because like you said passing breeds red zone chances, breeds touchdowns, breeds points, mix and benefits from that. And he is involved in the passing game. Like again, five targets per game during the playoffs are Joe Nixon. So that's not antithetical but that's why I want to be high on Burrow. Whereas the Stafford, if I'm thinking about this from the Bengals perspective I wouldn't be shocked if they take the same game plan they had against the Chiefs where they're dropping eight into coverage to make sure they're not letting Cup, Beckham, Van beat them deep. Maybe that encourages the Rams to run more maybe it encourages more dump boss, et cetera, et cetera. So I think there are a couple of like things in my head that lead me to think the Bengals may be the more aggressive team here, which feels weird. And when I do that in my head that leads me to Burrow over Stafford. So I think I'm higher on Burrow than you are and higher on him than Stafford. Again, for tournaments, tournaments, tournaments for if we're not talking tournaments I'm not caring about roster rates. Sure, go Stafford. But if I'm trying to think about, you know things well to de-rosterate, I kind of like Joe Burrow. Yeah. And I mean, again, our baseline is that for both of us is that the Rams are that the line's pretty efficient. We lean on the Rams, but don't have a strong take. It's not like we're saying Rams by 20. It's not like we're saying Bengals by 10 or anything like that. So we're kind of in consensus. You have to figure out how to go from there. And again, I think that you and I both have mixed in as our single game. Like if we could build one lineup this weekend I think mixing would be our MVP. Despite the fact that our baseline is that the Rams win. If I didn't care about roster rates and game theory I would play Cooper Cup at MVP. Correct. And not worry. So like that's kind of the trouble of talking about a single game slate because you have to measure what you think is most likely versus where you think you can gain the most leverage. Yeah. Speaking of the aggression stuff it's funny that you say that because I know you look at the data. I would, it feels like people would assume that the Bengals are the much more aggressive like downfield passing team. But that's really not the case. The Rams throw downfield more often in terms of volume and in terms of percentage of plays. Stafford has a higher ADOT than Burrow as well. I would love to see what happens if the Bengals just play off because Matthew Stafford leads the NFL in EPA per dropback when not pressured. And he falls to about league average when pressured. Which is roughly the same for Joe Burrow. This is something I covered on Number Fire in a big analytical preview is like a lot of people talking about the Joe Burrow under pressure, the Rams have all these pass rushers but the Rams pass like their pressure rate's not that good but both quarterbacks play very good from a clean pocket and about league average when pressured. So if the Bengals do drop off I feel pretty good with Stafford being able to throw underneath to Cooper Cup who can generate yards after the catch. Otto Beckham still has some of that. Last week, I mean Van Jefferson's ADOT was crazy so they're still probably take some shots downfield or at least be able to stretch the field with man and open things up. So I think if you play, if you try to get to Stafford that's the real goal which should, I think that should be their goal. Which you want, you want DGAS Stafford or like mistake pro and Stafford, yeah. But if they play, if they don't try to pressure if they don't bring the Blitz, their Blitz rates actually down since they got Vaughn Miller because they don't need to. Right, but they're also not getting to the quarterback at a higher rate which was already league average before that split. So if they're, let's take the baseline here just for argument, they're not gonna get to Stafford very often. He's probably gonna find Cup in the short and intermediate game or spread the field with Van Jefferson. So I have a hard time going away from Stafford for Borough. And if I'm playing the Bengals heavy lineups I'm still gonna play Mixon or probably at that rate, Jamar Chase and hope that Chase has like, you know, 70 yard touchdown and just heavy volume because, you know, watching this, I've been railing a little bit on the Bengals early game data, but they kind of, I wouldn't be surprised if Jamar Chase has like five first quarter targets and throw it to him the first three plays the game. Yeah. So this is like the issue with having just one game to look at is you can kind of find stuff to like- Everything. Yeah. And like, if you go to next-gen stats and filter by what guys have done against three or fewer rushers. So like kind of exactly the Bengals are doing against the Chiefs. Stafford in that split has 83 drop backs including the playoffs or sorry, pass attempts including the playoffs. His CPOE, the completion percentage of our expectation is minus 6.2. His EPA per drop back is 0.07. So he's above average in that split, but like not usually so where's Joe Burroughs at 0.47. Also touched on Trevor Simeon 0.46 on nine attempts. So go cats. Some of your viewers, yeah, that's a small sample. It's 83 pass attempts, but that is exactly the Bengals did and against Patrick Mahomes in the second half. So it sticks in my mind. It's enough where I am not out on Stafford, but I think I can justify going to Burrough there. Let's open things up here and go beyond the MVP conversation and talk about other things influencing the lineups. Let's talk about this Rand's backfield because to me that is a very interesting component here because we went through the entire MVP discussion and did not bring up cam makers despite the fact that in the divisional round he had an 80% snap rate. The reason we did not bring up cam makers is because his conference championship role was due to. Even before his injury, he was being taken off the field on third downs for Sony Michelle. And the broadcast said that was because the team thought Michelle was the better pass blocker. So to me that says we can probably assume Sony Michelle be out there on third downs again this week. Overall for that conference championship game, Michelle is out there for 14 out of 18 third down snaps. Again, acres missed time due to shoulder injury, acres out there for three third down snaps. That also took place toward the goal line. So from 12 yards and in the Rams ran six plays and none of those occurred in the second quarter when acres without that shoulder injury. On the six plays Michelle played four snaps, acres played two. So to me, everything here lines up to say cam makers is gonna lose high leverage work, whether it be in the passing game or at the goal line he's probably gonna lose those opportunities we need to really have a huge DFS day. His salary is 10,000. I think that's like really appropriate. I was expecting to be higher and to be like super turned off. I think that's fair. But I think the takeaway to me is that Michelle at $7,500 is on the map. He's on the table for that salary. If he's gonna get some passing game work, maybe some goal line work. I think that's why I'm pretty low in acres and interested in Michelle as a value play. What are you doing with the Rams backfield? So they're gonna be definitely not core plays by any sense. They're gonna be rotational pieces at best for me. One thing that is in that just if we kind of combine what we were just talking about with pressure rate and the quarterbacks and Sonya Michelle being out there to pass block. Cincinnati actually is top seven in pressure rate. So that's an angle that could lead to more work for Sonya Michelle or more snaps, maybe not necessarily more work. But if you are building a running back committee that would be preferable for DFS players, you'd say just give me one guy who gets goal line work and pass catching work. And we're kind of getting that right now. And he's at the lower salary with Sonya Michelle. I'm not saying that Sonya Michelle is a slam dunk play. I don't know what Daryl Henderson is gonna do because it sounds like he's gonna return. Probably not gonna be heavily involved, but we don't know. And you and I talk all the time about you can make assumptions, but don't assume that you know what's gonna happen. You have to in a single game slate. So it's a little bit less important or it's a little bit more forgivable to say, Daryl Henderson is actually gonna have a big role. None of them are, they're all gonna play 33% of the snaps. I'm not touching any of them. Like that's fine. If it was a main slate, I think you'd just stay away from this anyway. But I would definitely rate Michelle over KMakers at the salary. And even if they were the same salary, I would go with Sonya Michelle. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I think if you were to toss in expected roster rates than I would, which is what we had to do because we're talking tournaments here because Akers, like based on the betting markets, people still think KMakers is a good role and I don't think he really does. Like his rushing plus receiving yardage prop is four yards lower than Nixon's. I don't know why that's the case. His rushing yards pop is 64 and a half. I think that one's fair because like, again, if the Bengals are gonna drop eight, I can see the Rams being more run heavy, trying to take advantage of the soft coverages, et cetera, et cetera. So the yardage number, the rushing yardage number I get the rushing plus receiving, I think people are gonna be a bit higher on him than I want to be personally. So we talk about using optimizers. If I were using an optimizer, I would use one that allows me to alter their projections or use my own. I would go in and manually lower Akers third down work and rushing touchdown share as a result of the way I expect his role to pan out. I would manually change those things in order to get their allocations to reflect the role I expect them to play for this game. I will still use Akers because maybe he's- The salary's not that bad. The salary's fine, yeah, for sure, absolutely. So like the salary's fine. So I can totally be okay with him, but I wanna make sure I'm heavier on Michelle relative to the field. I looked at some projected roster rates. They are projecting Akers to be pretty popular. Michelle, not as much. I get it. Yeah, and when I pulled numbers yesterday, I had Kam Akers at minus 105 in any time touchdown. He's now minus 110, which isn't massive, but it, again, is trending toward Kam Akers being a little bit more involved. Sonya Michelle, though, I did have it plus 300. I now see him on Fando Sportsbook at plus 240. Yeah. So not a whole lot of help there. If you go to like, I'm pretty sure at BetRivers, you can bet to not score a touchdown. I might check out Kam Akers in that market. So if he's minus 110 to score, he'd probably be given the way they choose. His market's probably like minus 130 to not score. I'd have some interest in that, I would say. If it comes minus 165 to score. I can't even like, I can't talk rest of that, it's fine. Yeah, it makes sense. Like he's just absurd. Mixon was the best value, he was plus 115 and the value's gone. So, sad day, pouring out for old Joe over there. And we got a question on YouTube from GeekHippy asking if Akers and the doghouse, those two fumbles. Yes, I think that's 100% what we saw in the conference championship game. That's why Michelle was in there on the goal line because Akers lost those high leverage touches, those high leverage fumbles. And I think that's why he's out for pass blocking too. So yes, I think that's pretty directly why we saw that role change again before his injury during the conference championship game. Okay, so that's Ram's backfield. Let's talk here about the non-MVP wide receivers, Odell Beckham and T. Higgins. Looking at these two guys over on Fandle, we have Odell checking in at $10,500. T. Higgins, $10,500. Also came Akers at $10,000. So, who's your pick between those three? These are kind of similar. I'm expecting Odell to be pretty popular based on Twitter sentiments, based on media hype. I'm expecting Odell to catch a lot of popularity. I'm probably higher on T, though. What about you? Yeah, I think that for me, it's gonna be T. Higgins because I can justify and this is not perfect. And the salary for Jamar Chase at $12,000 is really not substantially hard to get to. But you're gonna be voting lineups where you don't have $12,000 and you have $10,500 or $11,500 and you're like, for how good T. Higgins' role is and for how kind of he's underperformed a bit relative to some expectation, like I'm okay going with T. Higgins and assuming a pretty decent portion of Jamar Chase's workload. I'm not doing that with Odell Beckham and saying he can kind of replicate and replace Cooper Cup. Like, it's gonna take a very specific down game for Cup to be outscored by Odell Beckham. It's gonna take a T. Higgins game, you know, to outscore Jamar Chase. Like, that's much more realistic. Which we saw last week, two weeks ago. So, I think that T. Higgins is the best play out of those three by a pretty solid margin. Especially, I don't have the workload concerns with Kim Akers and I don't have like the yard. I still have some yardage upside concerns with Odell. His role is getting really good. So, I don't wanna downplay that, but I would lean T. Higgins as an underdog. And I think he fits with mix and lineups because he can have yardage upside without scoring. But he also fits with whenever I'm going with Cooper Cup because you almost always wanna run that back with opposing pass catchers. Yeah. T. helps offset that salary from Cooper Cup or with Matthew Stafford. So, I think he kind of fits with all three MVPs that I'm considering playing. Yeah, with T, the reason I like him more is just downfield work. He has a 46% deep target share in the playoffs. That Jamar Chase is also 46% because it's just those two guys who get deep work for this team. Whereas Odell is at 24%. That's actually tied to Van Jefferson for second on the team behind Cooper Cup. I think, I know, like you said, I agree with you. You kind of alluded to this, but like I'm still skeptical of the yardage upside for Beckham, despite the fact he was awesome during the conference championship. I still have some worries there, especially because like the way you wanna attack this Bengals team is in the middle of the field because that's where they're weakest. And that's a Cooper Cup situation more so than it is a Odell Beckham thing. Whereas with the Bengals versus the Rams, you kind of wanna just go whoever's not on, wherever Jaylen Ramsey's not. And like he can't cover both guys. I would expect him to play more outside corner than he did during the regular season. He had a 34% slot snap rate during the regular season. They did use into shadow Mike Evans for the most part. 69% of Evans' routes were against Ramsey in that game. I wouldn't be shocked to be shadows. Chase, I'm not assuming he does. A, that would not scare me off of Chase because Mike Evans still toasted him. And like Jamar Chase is pretty freaking good. So it would not scare me off of Chase, but it may shovel a little bit extra volume over to T. So between Odell, T and Akers, I have T number one personally. Yeah, the reports I've seen are that Jaylen Ramsey is like sort of advocating to shadow Jamar Chase, but that he'll do whatever the coaches ask of him. So there might be something to that. There might not. So again, one of the spots where we can present the information, but historically I'm not like that means he's shadowing. And like they haven't done it all this, like it's been twice. I think two total games they've used him in that fashion. The peace I read said that he actually didn't shadow anyone. So it depends on how you define it. I think he had DK and then Evans during the postseason because they had no one else. Like T Higgins is better than Scotty Miller. Again, no shade of Scotty Miller. You know, no shots and Tyler Johnson, no shots. T Higgins is pretty freaking good. So I think it's a different situation than that was, but I do think that's worth noting from my perspective. Okay, let's move down to the values here. We've got, I mean, the kickers are whatever. You know, if you like the Bengals to win the game, if you think it's lower scoring, McPherson makes sense. Same thing on the reverse for Matt Gay. Let's talk about the value plays. Tyler Boyd on down, Boyd $8,500. Darryl Henderson is 8,000. Probably not going to get there despite the fact I think he'll work in. I would just expect him more to nullify acres and Michelle of it. Although it's weird that he's higher salary than Michelle. Kind of strange, but anyway. Kendall Blanton, 8,000. Higby 8,000 he plays Michelle, 75. Usama 75 if he plays. Van is 7,000 and then things drop off from there. What is your view of the value plays? Anyone stand out to you? Just general read on that tier. So it's strange because I'm leaning toward the Rams to win this game. So that's going to sort of constitute the majority of my lineups. Although from being honest with myself I bet against myself a lot when I build single game lineups based on what I expect and what I think. Cause I assume most people will expect that the Rams as four point favorites, four and a half point favorites depending that they're going to be the better plays. I think that's the case, but I also know enough in terms of volatility that I'm okay going against my instinct here and trying to gain leverage which is why we're talking about mixing an MVP. I think Tyler Boyd is very interesting because if you want to look at like, I don't get a whole lot of like, Jim's going to tear me apart for this, but like I don't have like an emotional connection to sports very often. But when I think about the Super Bowl I think about like the X factor and like who can step up and make like three plays for his team who's not like a key primary player. I think Tyler Boyd is really interesting because he from the slot could sort of get forgotten about here. This is not, I hate like total yardage stats, but if you remove tight ends, Boyd ranks behind only Cooper cup and yards from the slot across the full season including playoffs. So again, it's volume based, but like he has some like, he has a role with his team. His average route depth from the slot was 11 yards according to next gen stats, which was fifth best among pass catchers with at least 50 slot targets. He can be bucketed into like this. He's just a slot guy, but like he's not just a slot guy. He has like we've seen him break some plays. I think that he could get overlooked and for his salary, he's someone who I'm trying to be definitely overweight on against the field. So have a little bit more Tyler Boyd because that also goes right against the Jamar Chase lineups, right against the T Higgins lineups. It's nothing against those guys. Again, this is how it's impossible to talk about a single game and say I like Tyler Boyd because that obviously means in that particular lineup, I'm going against Jamar Chase. It's not anything against Jamar Chase, but I think Tyler Boyd is pretty appealing to me at a salary of 8,500, which is lower than both kickers. Would you say he is the best value play? 8,500 dollars or lower? Let me sort here real fast, but I think so. I think he is too. I think it's pretty, yeah. I think by a decent margin, if I assume Higby is not fully healthy. Well, I'm also assuming CJ Uzama is not fully healthy. And that bumps up Boyd's target projection. Target projection, middle of the field usage. Again, CJ Uzama, he said he wants to play. He's probably going to be out there. I don't know if he'll be super effective. Yeah, I don't think he'll be. Like, I think he'll play. I don't think he'll play well. Like, he also might not play. I love CJ Uzama, he's awesome. Yeah, and he might not play as usual snap rate run as usual number of routes. So I think it's like two samples not taking targets from Tyler Boyd, Jamar Chase, T Higgins. Right. So I think Tyler Boyd is going to be a key piece for me. And I feel pretty solid in that. And now the, we'll have to see how the Jalen Ramsey stuff shakes out because their slot data is like. I don't think he'll be there. Right. So like, I don't know what their non Ramsey slot numbers look like. But I think Tyler Boyd in the middle of the field could have like a five catch ADR game. And that could be enough. If this game does end up being a little bit lower scoring in the total. Yeah, Boyd during the playoffs, 14% target share but 29% of the red zone targets. I believe that's across seven total targets. So he means he has two. No, it'd be three. Wait, no, it can't be seven. Anyway, whatever. I don't know math. Let me see if I have the number in here actually. It's not a 14. He has four out of 14 red zone targets. I actually have the number in the Excel data. Four out of 14 red zone targets for Tyler Boyd. He doesn't have any deep targets but like that touchdown from Borough where they had like the fake whistle against the Raiders. That was like a downfield throw. You know, if it wasn't like a quote unquote deep target because it wasn't 16 plus area. So he can get some downfield work. I think he's awesome for this slate. And I am very on board there. The other guy I like down here I mentioned Michelle before I'm okay with him but Van Jefferson is $7,000. I like, when I first opened up this tab I had to like record a value play segment. I was like, okay, I'll talk up Kendall Bland because he's gonna run a lot of routes. No Higbee saw the plan was 8,000 while Van was like a 7,000 and said nope and immediately erasing from my sheet because I don't get that. Van's role has sucked during the playoffs. He's at a 10% or 9% target share. It's been bad, but he's been hurt. And Tyler Higbee probably not gonna be fully healthy if he plays Van. We've seen this year that he can get downfield work and even during the playoffs he's tied with Odell for a second on the team in deep targets at 24%. He can convert on that. I think that Van behind Boyd is number two followed by Michelle, followed by then probably Blanton among the like lower salary guys. Again, if we assume Higbee does not go the downfield work is good. Making a target bump I would know Higbee two weeks to rest up that knee and his shoulder as well. I think Van is number two behind Boyd for me despite the fact that his floor is not existed. Yeah, I mean, that's what you're looking at for players down at this salary range. But if you tell me like I could play some on JPR or Van Jefferson, I'm just gonna roll the dice on Van Jefferson who gets plenty of downfield work for what his role is. I think his eight I was like 24 yards last week. I knew I was gonna say last week. There's like five targets too. Like it wasn't one target, he had five targets. Two weeks ago last game, but Cincinnati, their league average in passing eight odd allowed so that they don't necessarily allow a lot of downfield passing or deny it, but on downfield passes, they're 25th in yards per target allowed. And again, it goes back to something I talked about a while ago. You can't really predict big games from receivers because you can't predict things like catch rate. If Van catches three, if he gets three downfield targets, catches two of them, maybe all three of them. Like that is not, that's not a crazy thing you have to set yourself on. You're still banking on low volume, but you're saying, hey, this team has given up a high yards per target number a lot on downfield passes. I think there are four. Van is gonna run out there. He's gonna get his two or three downfield targets, maybe something else. That for us, and I say this all the time, just one is not enough on a main slate. Like it's not on a single game slate, it can be. And I think that Van probably has like one or two deep shots at the minimum here. So I think Van is very much in play. I would still have to rank Tyler Boyd above him because Boyd's gonna have a better role. He still has, I think, some downfield work and he has a path, honestly, to like a weird volume-based good role. Cause again- He has a volume-based ceiling, I would say. Yeah, that's true. So I'm gonna rank Boyd over Van and then it would be Sony. And I probably won't take a whole lot of stabs. So if this is like your first time, I don't know, I'll see if you have any thoughts and then I'll kind of round up the rest of the value plays. So there was a tweet today from Cameron De Silva saying that Daryl Henderson Jr. will play and they're expected to ride the hot hand based on how the game unfolds. I think that that is bad for acres, primarily. But also maybe I should use some Henderson a little bit, maybe be a bit lower on the shell. But I think that's at least we're bringing up here. That was the case. I think with Van, other thing too to consider is they're indoors. We typically bump up the odds, the deep shot hits when they're playing indoors because there's no wind to contend with. We talked about high eight out receivers at home indoors and he checks those boxes. We talked about that for a full slate. This is a single game slate. So I think Van at 7,000, like we talked about one lineup. You get one tournament lineup. I have Nixon and MVP and Van might be the second guy I put in just because the salary is so good. Maybe I don't have to actually. Yeah, because Nixon's salary is pretty reasonable. Anyway, I might be able to go with just Boyd there, but I think the Van would be, if I couldn't get to Boyd, I think Van would be the number two. Consideration for that slot. Okay, let's open things up here on the lower end. We were talking, I mean like, I think my first reaction brand when opening up the player pool was that salaries were relaxed. His way I would phrase it. Where I don't think I need to be like, oh yeah, this is the Chris Evans game where he turns his one targeted to a 60R touchdown, which I'll probably do now. Oh man, Drew Sample, second round pick. Heck yeah, man, let's go. Ben Scurronic, he almost kind of touchdown, almost being the operative phrase there. I don't see the value in taking a lot of shots. I would prefer to be more balanced and keep Van as kind of like my floor. Because like other thing too is this is not a super low scoring slate where a touchdown from a Rando is going to get them in the top five in the optimal lineup. You need a bit more juice. So to me, I think I want to keep my floor in van and not go totally crazy. You can be different without dipping down there. You don't have to get stupid to be different. So I think that's my perspective on this. Do you have any different takes there? No, that's one thing I was going to say. If this is like your first single game slate on Fandall, historically yeah, if a low salary play scores a touchdown or has like a long catch, that can be enough then to unlock a heavy like Cup Stafford Chase stack and you just play a Ben Scurronic or a Kendall Blanton and these guys score have a big play again. Like it's possible, but across the lineups in my sample, if you look at the entire sample of players and then you look at how many of those had a salary of 6,500 or lower, it's about 8.5%, which is not negligible. It's not, I guess closer to 9%, but it's not negligible, but one out of 10 players in a perfect are going to be that low salaried. Ask yourself, is this the type of game for it? Yeah, like how many of those $6,500 or lower guys had actual roles? For this game, the answer is zero. Right, and there's other ones they may have. And there's a difference between an optimal lineup, that's a big flaw with optimal lineups is you could take someone who's not really in consideration, who maybe gets a role because of an injury or something like that with like a Kendall Blanton that we saw with Tyler Habie leaving first thing. But again, it's not like you can never justify players with a salary this low. Probably don't have to unless you see something that we don't and I really don't see the case for any of these guys because as you mentioned, you know, the salaries are pretty reasonable for Michelle, a Daryl Henderson, a Tyler Boyd, a Van. So like, I'm not going to be digging down here. I don't feel fearful in not having some options down there because... Trent Taylor is not making me shake my boots at night. Right, so the only reason to do that is you say, look, it's going to be Stafford Burrow going back and forth and they're going to be throwing only to Cooper Cup and Jamar Chase. And if I want all them, I can't even do that. But like, you know, point being is like, unless you're saying only the top three guys are going to have anything worthwhile and nobody else is going to have any production of merit, how about as well just burn the salary and roster Ben Scurronic? That does not seem reasonable for this week. Yeah, I'd agree that as well. Okay, any final thoughts for you, Brandon, for Super Bowl 56 that you want to get off your chest before we send off the good people to fill out their lineups? I think I covered everything. Kickers are in optimals in comparable games about the same rate, about 35%. It's about 34% for the full sample. So I think they're fine plays. They're value plays we didn't really talk about. So about 35% likely to have a kicker in a lineup. I think it's reasonable. And in that case, probably just go with whoever you think is going to win the game. But I try to avoid kickers mostly whenever I think there are going to be any number of points scored. Yeah, and that'll probably happen here on Sunday. All right, that is all that we have here for today and for this year on the NFL side of things over on the heat check fantasy podcast. But the beat rolls on because we have our PGA podcast every Tuesday, 10 a.m. on the Fandall YouTube page and up on the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast. We did that NASCAR back next week with the duels at Daytona and the Daytona 500. That should be a lot of fun. Of course, Tom Becchio has you covered for NBA and NHL, DFS every weekday and Austin Swain is on the UFC side of things. So make sure you are subscribed to the Number Fire Daily Fantasy podcast feed. Wherever you get your podcast and if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. Brandon, if you have any questions for yourself, if people have any questions for you, where can they find you on Twitter? Well, I do tweet questions at myself a lot. I've realized that that's like a writing flaw that I have is like setting up myself with a question. I realized I need to cut that out. It's really, it annoys me. Like a straw man question. Not really. It's just like, am I writing? Sorry. You probably read this. It's the last show of the year that people are like. They log down. They know where to find you on Twitter. Should we omit cam acres from our lineups? No. But should we be lower on the field than if? Yes, like that structure, I use that structure too much and I'm trying really hard to cut it out because it's super annoying. I think it has its place. It has its place, but if it's too many places, it gets annoying. So I'm trying to trim it down a little bit. I can see that. Anyway, Twitter. About Acadol 13, G-D-U-L-A-1-3. And I'm at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-N-N-E-S. You can also follow the FanDuel Podcast Network at FanDuel Podcast. Big thank you to everyone for tuning in for today and this year, good luck to you. In Super Bowl 56, we'll talk to you once again soon for some PGA and NASCAR coverage. This has been the E-Check Fantasy Podcast powered by Number Fire.