Did you watch the Patriots and Bucs game on Sunday night? Even if you don’t care about either team, you probably watched some or at least tuned in for the intros. But if you did watch it all, you probably saw a very composed Mac Jones dissecting the Bucs defense. With pressure in his face, he routinely got the ball out quick, to the right place, for a nice gain, even if it was only a few yards. It naturally left people making comparisons to Brady. So, what about Brady?
On the other side of the ball, Brady was overthrowing receivers and generally didn’t seem as sharp as he normally does. Perhaps he was amped up, perhaps it was the rain, but he looked like a visiting QB coming into a bad-weather Foxborough game.
Mac Jones wasn’t playing like Brady, he was Brady. At least for this one game, this one night, if you took the names off the jerseys, you would’ve thought Brady was still playing for the Patriots. Now, don’t get me wrong, Jones looked good, but it was just one night. And that’s the point… it’s the NFL. Anything can happen on any given Sunday (night).
When playing showdown slates, ownership tends to be very predictable around certain players. QBs and RBs have heavy ownership overall and heavy ownership in the Captain/MVP spots. Get the right QB or RB in the captain spot and you might win, along with thousands of other people. But if the right captain is a WR, and you get that right, you might win along with a much, much smaller number of people, meaning more money for you. That’s generally the best showdown strategy – find a contrarian lineup construction or a contrarian game scenario to build around. We talked about this in our single-game slate overview.
But, on some nights, this advantage is even greater than normal. For example, every time Tom Brady goes back to New England for the first time, you can expect he’ll be somewhere around 80% owned and maybe even 70% at the captain spot. Obviously, we won’t see that scenario again, but we’ve seen similar numbers. Christian McCaffrey on an absolute tear, playing, ironically, Tampa Bay in a showdown slate. I think his captain number was somewhere around 80% if not higher. Guess what? He was a giant bust.
In these situations, it should be a requirement for you – a smart showdown player – to make, at minimum one lineup that completely fades Brady or McCaffrey or whoever it is. What are the chances McCaffrey is a bust against Tampa’s run defense? Pretty good. What are the chances rookie Mac Jones performs as well, or outperforms, Brady? Maybe 50/50? Even if it’s less than that, it’s not just a 20% chance as the ownership levels would indicate.
The benefit you get by doing this is [Donald Trump voice] huuuuge. Play Brady and win a few dollars along with the crowd. Or play Jones and win a bunch of money by yourself. Always go for the maximum profit play on showdown slates.