NFL DFS Showdown Picks for Jaguars vs. Ravens on Thursday Night Football (November 5th)

Week 9 of the 2026 NFL season kicks off with an interesting Thursday Night Football matchup between a pair of AFC playoff hopefuls. The surging Jacksonville Jaguars travel to Charm City to face the injury-depleted Baltimore Ravens. The Jaguars are 10-point road favorites, and the over/under is 39.5 points.

The Jaguars returned from their Week 7 bye with a resounding 42-7 home win over the Colts last week to improve to 5-2 on the year. The Ravens, on the other hand, slid to 4-4 after losing their third straight game. Not only did they lose 36-10 to the Bills, but they also lost both Lamar Jackson (thumb) and Tyler Huntley (toe) to significant injuries. While they are acquiring Jacoby Brissett to fill in at quarterback, he will not play in this contest, meaning Joe Fagnano gets the start against the Jaguars on Thursday.

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

Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence has the top ceiling and median projections for Thursday’s game in the FantasyLabs Consensus Projections, and he also has the second-highest Projected Plus/Minus in a FLEX spot.

Lawrence has exceeded salary-based expectations in five of his seven games this season, including each of his last three. He only attempted 14 passes last week but still had 20.4 DraftKings points, completing 10 for 210 yards and three touchdowns while adding 10 rushing yards.

He has thrown multiple passing touchdowns in three straight games and has 17 touchdowns in seven games while throwing only four interceptions. The Ravens are a good matchup for QBs, and they have given up big games in the last two weeks to Joe Burrow and Josh Allen.

Lawrence has the highest Optimal% as a Captain in our NFL SimLabs for this contest by a very wide margin. In fact, he’s almost twice as likely to be the Captain in the optimal lineup as any other player on the slate. He also has the highest Optimal% of all players on the slate in a FLEX spot, and since he’s such a huge part of the Jaguars offense, there are not many scenarios where he isn’t in the optimal lineup in one spot or the other.

He does have high ownership projections, but his Optimal vs. Projected Ownership in both spots is positive. That makes him a chalky play worth considering since he’s so likely to hit.

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On the other side of the matchup, running back Derrick Henry is worth a look as a contrarian play. The Jaguars have been very good against the run, but if the Ravens feed Henry all game, the veteran has the potential to be a strong pivot play. He has the fourth-highest Optimal% in the Captain’s spot and the sixth-highest in a FLEX spot.

In the SimLabs, he has the second-highest Optimal vs. Projected Ownership in the Captain’s spot and is also positive in that category in a FLEX spot, indicating he could be under-owned as such an expensive play.

Henry got into the end zone in Week 8 against the Bills, even with multiple QB injuries, posting 14 DraftKings points on 11 carries for 53 yards and two catches for seven more yards. He had at least 16 carries in every other game this season and produced over 15 DraftKings points in five of those seven other games.

If the Ravens rely on Fagnano to manage the game and lean heavily on their running game, King Henry could get a huge workload and be a solid leverage option. You could include him alongside Lawrence, build a contrarian Ravens stack around him without Lawrence, or pair him with the Jaguars’ many solid offensive options in a blended lineup.

One reason the public is fading Henry is that he has a very tough matchup against the Jaguars. Jacksonville has allowed just three running back touchdowns all season, and no opposing running back has reached 100 rushing yards in a game against them this season. If Henry can flip that script, though, he’ll be a solid leverage play.

NFL DFS Midrange Picks