The NFL kicks off Week 5 with a Thursday Night Football game featuring two regular NFC contenders. The Dallas Cowboys have started the season 2-2, while the Tampa Bay Buccaneers enter their trip to Dallas with an 0-4 record. The Cowboys are heavy 8.5-point favorites, and the over/under is 48.5 points.
Last week, the Cowboys bounced back from a tough loss to the Ravens in Rio, rallying late to defeat the Houston Texans. The Buccaneers played their first game of the season without Baker Mayfield (thumb) and lost a close 17-14 game to the Packers in Tampa. They’ll be desperately searching for their first win of the season at AT&T Stadium this Thursday, although the odds are not in their favor with Mayfield still sidelined.
Can the Cowboys get over .500 with a win to kick off Week 5, or will the Bucs break through on Thursday Night Football? 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.
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NFL DFS Stud Picks
Most of the fantasy studs in this contest are on the Cowboys’ side, especially with the spread heavily in their favor and an offense much more reliable than the Bucs’ without Mayfield. The top name on the board is CeeDee Lamb, who has the highest salary and the highest median, ceiling, and floor projections in the FantasyLabs Consensus projections.
Lamb is coming off a huge Week 4, when he was one of the top players of the entire week with 44.3 DraftKings points on 17 catches for 189 yards and the game-winning touchdown against the Texans. It was his third straight week exceeding salary-based expectations and his third straight week with over 100 receiving yards.
The star receiver has four touchdowns in four weeks, and his 31.9% target share is the second-highest in the NFL behind only Jaxon Smith-Njigba‘s with the Seahawks. Lamb has at least eight targets in every game and has caught at least seven passes in each of the last three weeks.
With such dominant production, it isn’t surprising that he’s the Captain’s Pick in the highest percentage of optimal lineups in our NFL SimLabs for this contest. He also has the highest ownership projection in that spot, since he is a fairly obvious option.
Dak Prescott has targeted Lamb early and often and has also gotten off to a strong start as a result. He actually has the highest Projected Plus/Minus of all players in a FLEX spot, just edging out Lamb because he is a little cheaper. He has the second-highest median, ceiling, and floor projections in the FantasyLabs Consensus projections, just behind his receiver.
Prescott has exceeded salary-based expectations in three straight games and finished last week’s win with 21.1 DraftKings points on 335 passing yards and a touchdown. He posted that solid game even though most of the team’s touchdowns came on the ground.
In our SimLabs, Prescott has the highest Optimal Lineup percentage in a FLEX spot among all players in the contest. He also has the top Optimal vs. Projected Ownership% in a FLEX spot. If you’re using Lamb as your Captain, it makes sense to have Prescott in a FLEX spot, since he’ll likely be throwing all the touchdowns Lamb catches, giving them strong correlation.
The third star in the Cowboys’ offense is running back Javonte Williams, who has the third-highest projections across the board. Williams is coming off a three-touchdown game against the Texans that earned him 31.3 DraftKings points. He now has five scores on the season while averaging 15.5 carries and 57.8 rushing yards per game. He’s involved as a receiver as well, averaging 19.2 receiving yards per game.
Williams is a strong option to consider even though the Bucs are usually not a great matchup for RBs. He’s being a little overlooked as a Captain’s Pick, according to our SimLabs, which give him the top Optimal vs. Projected Ownership% in the Captain’s spot by a wide margin. He is the Captain in the second-most Optimal Lineups in our sims but is not expected to get much ownership in that spot.
If the Cowboys play from ahead in this matchup, they could lean more heavily on Williams to grind out yards and burn clock on the ground. He’s a key piece to consider, especially with so much touchdown potential.
For the visitors, the projections are much less optimistic. Mayfield’s replacement is undrafted rookie Jalon Daniels from Kansas. Daniels is a dual-threat QB, and he’s the only Buccaneer in the top five in Optimal Lineup percentages in either a Captain or a FLEX spot for this matchup.
In his first NFL start, Daniels put up 13.4 DraftKings points, completing 19 of 27 passes for 148 yards, one touchdown, and two interceptions while rushing eight times for 55 yards. That rushing potential makes him intriguing, especially against a Cowboys defense that has struggled to contain QBs this season.
Dallas has allowed the third-most fantasy points in the NFL to quarterbacks this season. They have allowed 50+ rushing yards to the position in three of their four games and multiple passing touchdowns in each contest.
The potential is there for Daniels to post a big game. Whether he finds the end zone as a rusher or connects with his pass catchers for touchdowns, he has the most upside of any Buccaneer. He has the fourth-highest ceiling, median, and floor projections on the slate, behind only the top three options discussed above.
The Bucs spread the work around in both the rushing and receiving games, so Daniels is really the only reliable option in the offense. He brings a high floor and high ceiling because he will carry so much of the workload.
NFL DFS Midrange Picks
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