This should be an excellent Monday Night Football game as we get two teams that need wins to stay in the thick of the NFC playoff picture. Like always, Boom Fantasy is running a bunch of excellent DFS contests for just tonight’s game that you can join and win in! Come play against the team here at Fantasy Alarm tonight! Let’s dive into this juicy slate!
Quarterbacks
Generally, we like Matt Ryan more when he’s at home and this situation is no different. The Seahawks secondary is depleted, yes, but Russell Wilson himself has a nice matchup against the Falcons defense. Wilson has been much better of late and has averaged 303.8 yards per game over his last five while Ryan’s averaged 252.6 over that same span. Give me Wilson at home all day in this matchup for question one.
Rushing
For Question two, there is one really obvious answer and then there are the rest. Tevin Coleman will draw the start in this one with Devonta Freeman ruled out with a concussion and he doesn’t really have much competition here. The second highest priced player in this question is Russell Wilson…the quarterback. Coleman toted the rock 20 times for 83 yards last week against a good rush defense in Dallas so we should expect him to find a little more running room in this matchup. Thomas Rawls and Terron Ward are also answers to this question but neither will see the volume needed to beat Coleman out here, most likely.
Receiving
For question three, we turn to the receiving side of things. The question asks us who will have the most yards between Paul Richardson, Austin Hooper, Tyler Lockett and Taylor Gabriel, but none of these guys are very enticing. Richardson has struggled in recent weeks receiving three or fewer targets. He has big play upside which could mitigate the low target rate, however. Hooper, unlike Richardson, has begun to see an uptick in volume seeing six or more targets in four of five contests. The issue is the most yards he’s had over that span is 49. Tyler Lockett is a player with huge play ability. Before last week in Arizona, he had three straight games of seven plus targets including a 121-yard contest mixed in. Taylor Gabriel is the wild card here for sure. I’ve already mentioned that both Richardson and Lockett have play potential but Gabriel has more than both of them. He has caught a 34-yard pass or better in two straight games and even played 58 snaps last time. He could go off for a big one here and win you a GPP because of it.
Question four seems like a two-headed race between Jimmy Graham and Mohamed Sanu. J.D. McKissic and Justin Hardy are also part of this question but do we really expect either of them to catch more passes than Sanu or Graham? Graham’s caught 24 balls over his last five games, just under five per contest while Sanu has caught 19 over that same span. Sanu has a juicy matchup against a Richard Sherman-less secondary, too.
Touchdowns
This game has a solid total of 46 implied points, so there will definitely be a few touchdowns scored. Jimmy Graham, the favorite here, has reached pay dirt six times in five games while nobody else on this list has more than four touchdowns (Tevin Coleman) spanning the entire season. Julio Jones and Doug Baldwin are obviously enticing because their elite talents, but with the extra day of game planning for both sides, the coaches could look to simply take each of them out of the game and make other players beat them.
NFL/NBA Hybrid
The hybrid question is always a hard one to gauge. Russell Wilson is actually the favorite here, followed by Kyrie Irving, Yogi Ferrell and Matt Ryan. We’re looking for touchdowns from our quarterbacks and made three-pointers from the ballers. The Seahawks are projected 22 points, which translates to three touchdowns. Seeing how Seattle running backs have just one rushing touchdown this season, it’s safe to say their points will come from the arm or even legs of Wilson. Irving has a decent matchup and is always a game away from scoring 50 actual points, but he’s in a grind it out, slow paced game that I don’t want much of.
Receiving Yards
We finish out our Boom Fantasy tournament questions with two receiving yards questions. First, we have Julio Jones who is in the nuts spot. If Pete Carroll hasn’t game planned how to take Jones out of this matchup, he could have his biggest game of the year. Pro Football Focus graded this the fifth best individual matchup versus an opposing quarter across the board in Week 11. Even if Carroll does try to game plan against him, nobody can actually stop Jones when he’s going good. He’s got a real good shot at going over 100 yards tonight.
Last but definitely not least, we get Doug Baldwin and he, like Julio Jones, also is in a fantastic spot. Brian Poole has no shot guarding Baldwin out of the slot and everyone knows it. In three of the last four games Baldwin’s accrued 92 yards or more, so like the Jones call, I think Baldwin tops 100 yards receiving in this one.