By Will Helms
Week 4’s Monday Night Football NFL game presents us with a unique situation. Neither the Giants nor the Cowboys (seemingly) have a particularly strong quarterback and there isn’t an obvious captain in the game. Nevertheless, it presents an opportunity to gain a leg up on the competition.
FanDuel
Captain Options
I have my eyes on two potential captain options Monday night and one may surprise you. My first choice is probably Cooper Rush ($14,000). The Giants haven’t given up much through the air this year, but that’s just as much a result of playing Baker Mayfield and Ryan Tannehill as it is the pass defense being particularly strong.
Rush looked surprisingly solid in his first start last week against Cincinnati as the offense moved efficiently and effectively. This week, I’d expect Kellen Moore to throw the ball down the field more than last week as Rush proved last week he could run the offense.
Rush offers upside and saves just a bit of money here.
The other option would be Saquon Barkley ($14,500) who is already seeing a sort of career resurgence this season. Barkley makes up for a lack of weapons on offense for the Giants and could get a heavy workload.
My hesitancy here is that Barkley is still the same boom or bust player he’s always been. He’s going to get most of his yardage on a few of his carries and if he doesn’t hit a few longer runs, he’s not going to put up jaw-dropping numbers.
I lean towards Rush, but if you believe in Barkley’s comeback, then he’s a great start too.
Value Plays
Since these are two teams without much quality depth, the value plays are slim pickings. In fact, I only counted two players below $8000 that even receive regular snaps. So with that being said, I have one player I’m rostering in almost every lineup.
Backup quarterbacks often have a backup receiver they’ve developed a solid rapport with. That player for Rush is Noah Brown ($8000). Brown has more yards than CeeDee Lamb in each of the first two games and made a nice move to get open on Rush’s lone touchdown pass last week. Brown is essentially a must-play unless you’re willing to take a major risk on Kenny Golladay ($7500) or Jalen Tolbert ($6000) who is very unlikely to even play.
Rounding it out
In my opinion, you’ll want to captain one of Rush or Barkley and play the other. If you play Brown as well, that means you’ll have $23,500 to spend on your final two. That could look something like Lamb ($13,000) and Tony Pollard ($10,000) or Sterling Shepard ($11,500) and Ezekiel Elliott ($12,000). You could even pay for Daniel Jones ($15,000) and find another value play. Experiment with it, especially in your lower buy-in lineups.
DraftKings
Captain Options
For the first time all season, I took a very different approach on DraftKings than FanDuel. Driven by very different salary numbers for some of the top players, I’m actually captaining a guy on DraftKings that I hardly played on FanDuel.
Without many low-budget options to consider, we have to save money any way we can. That means I captained Daniel Jones, who at only $14,100 as a captain saves us a substantial amount of money for the rest of our team. Jones is the fourth-most expensive player, saving over $3500 as a captain over Barkley.
Jones has actually fared decently well as a fantasy option this season, averaging 15.6 points per game across the first two. Barkley exploded in Week 1 but was held in check in Week 2. The consistency Jones offers here as well as the attractive salary make him our best option.
Value Plays
Here, we’re going to have to play two value players. I like rostering kickers on DK due to their low salaries and consistent production. Because of that, I started Graham Gano ($4000) as the Giants’ kicker has been largely consistent over the last few seasons.
I combined Gano with Giants receiver Richie James Jr. ($5400) to give me money to work with for the rest of the roster. James has five receptions in each of the last two games and seems to have secured more playing time than guys like Galloday and Kadarius Toney as long as Toney is banged up.
I’m expecting somewhere between 6 and 10 points each from these value plays. If I can get that, the rest of my roster should put my team over the edge.
Rounding It Out
The question you want to ask is whether or not you’re willing to leave Barkley unrostered. If the answer is yes, you can have some talent on the rest of your roster such as Lamb ($10,200), Pollard ($8200) and Shepard ($7600).
If you’re unwilling to leave Barkley out, you may have to play another value play such as David Sills ($5000) or a defense. I actually lean towards the former, preferring to have a strong team top to bottom than a weak team plus Barkley. If the Cowboys defense plays like it did last week, Barkley may struggle to find running room and your gamble will pay off.
