Week 8:
Baltimore Ravens @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Tampa -1/45.5
Welcome back to the Thursday Night rollercoaster that is the NFL on a short week! We’ve seen good games and bad games, good teams and bad teams, quality football and DREADFUL football through the first 7 Thursday night games. Last Thursday night ended up being a 42-34 shootout between 2 teams that were desperate for a win as both the Saints and Cardinals went into the game with a 2-4 record. The Ravens and Bucs both enter week 8 with a better record (4-3, 3-4 respectively) however, for a whole bunch of reasons both of these teams will be looking at this game as close to a must win that a week 8 game can potentially be.
The Bucs haven’t looked right offensively or defensively since week 1 and failing the eye test culminated in what will end up being one of the biggest regular season upsets of the year as the Panthers dominated the Bucs last week 21-3. The Ravens are coming off of a come from behind, emotional 23-20 victory over division rival Cleveland. However, their whole season so far has been win one, lose one so it’s safe to say that Baltimore will be trying to build some real momentum for the first time this season.
From a fantasy perspective, Lamar Jackson started the year with 3 games that put him on pace to break every fantasy scoring record you could make up. But since week 3, he hasn’t put up a 20 point week and has become a complete head scratcher when contemplating whether to spend the money for Lamar from a DFS perspective. From my perspective, Lamar’s potential weekly ceiling is really 30+ if we are talking about him rushing for close to 100 yards each week. So despite the slow few weeks, it’s hard to resist him, especially in just a single game contest. If Lamar goes off and you don’t play him you’ve got no chance of cashing in on those contests. It’s been another season where the Ravens can’t keep a running back healthy… Gus Edwards went for 2 TDs last week and all of a sudden has the clear starting RB role for the Ravens. Though I don’t expect Gus to have too many 100 yard games, I do expect him to be a touchdown whore in this offense, so it will be important to not sleep on Gus throughout the year from a DFS perspective and take advantage of his cheaper salary when applicable. That being said, we are going to fade Edwards this week due to the fact that he is banged up and questionable as of Wednesday night and historically, including earlier this season, the Tampa run defense has been stingy. Mark Andrews, Rashod Bateman and kicker extraordinaire Justin Tucker are the other Ravens I will be willing to play this week.
Once you get over Tampa’s 3 point performance against Carolina last week… Well can you really get over a Tom Brady offense being held to 3 points by the worst team in the NFL??? If you can then I’m looking at rebound weeks from Leonard Fournette as well as the WR duo of Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. I think up and coming RB Rachaad White could also be a potentially sneaky cheap play at $4,800 due to the snaps, carries, and targets he has been getting the last few weeks. I’m absolutely fading Tom Brady and we all know one week he will have one of his 4 TD games. However, at this point, I need to see it happen before I spend my hard earned DFS salary dollars on the GOAT. I’m also leaning Godwin over Evans this week due to Godwin being $2,000 cheaper and getting the same if not more targets from TB12.
Buckle up because we got 2 extremely unpredictable and inconsistent teams going to battle tomorrow night… I consider the game to be a coin flip but do expect both offenses to look a little better then they have over the past few weeks. So I will leave y’all with 2 Draft King’s single game contest line ups:
Captain – TE Mark Andrews $13,809
Flex – QB Lamar Jackson $11,800
Flex – WR Chris Godwin $9,000
Flex – WR Rashad Bateman $7,000
Flex- TE Cade Otton $5,000
Flex- Def Tampa Bay $3,400
Captain- RB Leonard Fournette
Flex- QB Lamar Jackson $11,800
Flex- TE Mark Andrews $9,200
Flex- WR Rashad Bateman $7,000
Flex- RB Rachaad White $4,800
Flex- K Justin Tucker $4,000
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