NFL – Week 1 Showdown (Thursday) – DAL v TB

NFL DFS Showdown – Week 1 (Thursday) – DAL v TB

The NFL season kicks off on Thursday night with the defending Super Bowl Champion Buccaneers at home against the Cowboys. I will produce some free Showdown articles occasionally again this season at DailyOverlay that focus on Cash games and Single-Entry GPP Showdown slates at DraftKings. Let’s see who the Core of our DFS lineup on Thursday night should be.

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Note: DVOA referenced in this article stands for Defense-adjusted Value Over Average which is a metric from FootballOutsiders.com.

Dallas Cowboys @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Captain

• CeeDee Lamb / Antonio Brown – The Captain slot in Cash games comes down to Lamb and Brown. Both should gobble up significant targets working out of the slot for their respective teams and both could have breakout seasons that start in the opener on Thursday night. Lamb’s price tag is a little more restrictive on who you can get on the backend of your lineup but I do still give him a slight edge. Whichever one isn’t your Captain should be the first name to click into a Flex spot.

Cash Core

• Dak Prescott – The Bucs are not going to give up much on the ground to Ezekiel Elliott and the Cowboys as they feature a stout run defense that ranked 5th in DVOA last season. Coupled with the Bucs at home as more than a touchdown favorite, we should get to see Prescott forced to air it out as he did at the beginning of last season before his injury.
• Tom Brady – Brady spreads the ball around in the passing game which makes it difficult to use multiple Bucs WRs instead of just going with Brady himself. The Cowboys pass defense ranked 23rd DVOA last season and allowed a high rate of passing TDs which matches what Brady likes to do in the red zone.
• Giovani Bernard – With Elliott in a tough matchup and the Leonard Fournette/Ronald Jones combo eating into each other’s workload, my focus at RB is on the pass-catching back Bernard who has already carved out a significant role in the Bucs offense and is dirt cheap for a guy who should get a handful of targets.

GPP

I find it difficult to veer too much from my Cash game read on this matchup when building a single-entry GPP lineup. So, I’ll likely use many of the same players listed above and maybe just pivot to whichever Captain I didn’t use in my Cash lineup as my Captain for my GPP roster while also being more inclined to leave some salary on the table to try to get a little more unique with my lineup.

Best Bet

Bucs -8

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