NFL DFS Showdown Picks for Seahawks vs. Broncos on Thursday Night Football (October 15th)

The NFL kicks off Week 6 with a Thursday Night Football matchup from the Mile High City, where the Denver Broncos host the Seattle Seahawks in a Super Bowl XLVIII rematch. Each team has started the season 3-2 with some surprising losses and some good wins. The Seahawks are 2.5-point road favorites, and the over/under is 40.5 points.

Last week, the Seahawks lost a three-point game at home against the 49ers, while the Broncos went on the road and defeated the 0-5 Chargers in a divisional game. The Broncos are trying to keep pace with the undefeated Chiefs in the AFC West, while the Seahawks are looking up at the undefeated 49ers in their division.

One team will slip to .500 with a loss to kick off Week 6, while the other will be in a much better position at 4-2. Can Bo Nix and the Broncos’ offense overcome the strong Seahawks’ defense, or will Sam Darnold find his rhythm and help the defending Super Bowl Champs pick up a tough road win? Let’s take a closer look at this matchup from a DFS showdown perspective.

As news breaks throughout the week and we adjust our projections (powered by the award-winning expert ranker, Sean Koerner), player ratings in our Player Models will change as the projections change. For updates, visit the models directly.

And don’t forget about the tools that FantasyLabs has to offer, like our Lineup Optimizer to effortlessly create up to 300 lineups, or use our Lineup Builder if you like to hand-build your lineups.

Or you can just use our NFL DFS sims to effortlessly create advanced lineups.

Finally, make sure to check out all the projections available for purchase within the FantasyLabs Models. Subscribers now have the option to purchase Derek Carty’s THE BLITZ from our Marketplace.

You can also combine them to create your own aggregate projections:

NFL DFS Stud Picks

The biggest fantasy stud in this contest is Seahawks wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Smith-Njigba has the highest median, ceiling and floor projections in the FantasyLabs Consensus projections. In our NFL SimLabs for this contest, he has the highest ownership projection as a Captain’s Pick to go along with the highest optimal Captain rate.

JSN has been excellent all season, averaging 30.3 DraftKings points per game by racking up over 100 yards in four of his five games and finding the end zone seven times. He had a down game in Week 4’s win over the Chargers but bounced back last week with 102 yards and a touchdown on five catches.

Smith-Njigba is in a tough matchup against the Broncos’ strong secondary, which has allowed the fourth-fewest fantasy points to wide receivers, but he has the ability to dominate even in the toughest of matchups. He also catches them at a good time since CB Pat Surtain II is ruled out for Thursday with an ankle injury.

He has the largest target share in the NFL this season, and all that volume gives him both a high ceiling and a high floor on Thursday night.

The second-highest Optimal% in the Captain spot belongs to JSN’s teammate Emanuel Wilson. Wilson has stepped up as the Seahawks’ primary workhorse running back after rookie Jadarian Price (chest) landed on IR. Zach Charbonnet (knee) doesn’t seem far from a return, but he has been ruled out this week. His practice window was open on October 1, so the team will have to activate him by next Thursday, or he will miss the rest of the season by rule. Since the team does still expect Charbonnet to play this season, they’ll likely make that roster move next week, even if he still needs more time to recover.

For as long as Charbonnet is out, though, Wilson should be the featured running back. He has logged at least 20 carries in three of his last four games and has found the end zone three times in the last two. Two weeks ago against the Chargers, Wilson broke out with 81 rushing yards and a touchdown on the ground, and he added another touchdown and 39 yards as a receiver. The result was 27 DraftKings points. He followed that up with 14.2 DraftKings points against the 49ers, grinding out 61 yards and a touchdown on his 20 carries last week.

Wilson is in a much more favorable matchup than JSN this week, since the Broncos’ run defense has struggled. Opposing running backs have five touchdowns against Denver in five weeks, while averaging 111 rushing yards and 40 receiving yards.

That matchup helps Wilson to have the highest Optimal vs. Projected Ownership in our NFL SimLabs in the Captain spot. He’s much less chalky than JSN, and he makes sense in tournaments since his projected ownership is so much lower.

Seattle’s QB Sam Darnold has both the highest ownership projection and the highest chance of being in the Optimal lineup at a FLEX spot. That makes sense. If you have Smith-Njigba as your Captain, you’ll want to include Darnold for all the positive correlation.

Darnold has been solid but not spectacular the last two weeks, posting 14.3 and 10.3 DraftKings points against the Chargers and 49ers, respectively. He has struggled again with turnovers this season, throwing five interceptions in just three full games. He had two interceptions and just one touchdown last week against San Francisco, and he’ll look to bounce back with a much better outing this week, even though the Broncos do present a challenging matchup.

---

For the home team, the projections point to QB Bo Nix as the top fantasy option. He has the second-highest median, ceiling and floor projections on the entire slate, behind only JSN. Nix carries a huge workload in the Broncos’ offense, and when he is going well, they can compete in any matchup. When he struggles, though, the offense can look pretty shaky.

So far this season, Nix has only exceeded salary-based expectations in one of his five games. He had a huge game in prime time against the Rams with 25.1 DraftKings points in Week 3, but in Week 4, he only managed 13.6 DraftKings points. Last week, he struggled even more with only 8.9 DraftKings points.

Nix completed 16 of his 27 passes against the Chargers for only 123 passing yards, one touchdown and one fumble lost. He has thrown a touchdown in every game this season, but the offense hasn’t been great except for that game against the Rams.

The projections indicate a nice bounce-back week for Nix and the Broncos, and he has the second-highest optimal rate at FLEX and the third-highest optimal rate in the Captain spot.

One of the keys to Nix getting going will be for him to connect more regularly with his big offseason addition at wide receiver, Jaylen Waddle. Waddle has the fourth-highest optimal rate at Captain and the fifth-highest ceiling projection in the FantasyLabs Consensus projections.

Waddle only had two catches for 19 yards last week against the Chargers and has been held under 20 receiving yards with two catches or fewer in three of his five games this season. He still has the ability to go off for a huge game, which he showed in Week 2 against the Rams with 24.8 DraftKings points, but he has struggled to regularly get in sync with Nix, which has been the source of much of the team’s offensive issues.

In a tough matchup against Seattle’s secondary, which has allowed the fourth-fewest DraftKings points per game to wide receivers, Waddle will have a tall task on Thursday. Still, his ceiling is high enough to consider him as one of the studs on this slate based on his upside.

Waddle is high-risk, but he has the potential to go off with a big game if he’s at his best. He brings a very high ceiling that makes him worth a look, especially for GPP lineups where upside is more important than limiting risk.

NFL DFS Midrange Picks