Bengals at Jets
The Bengals are currently 2.5-point road favorites versus the Jets in Week 1. This game has a total of 41.5 points, giving the Bengals an implied point total of 22.0. The Jets have an implied point total of 19.5; they are one of only seven teams with an implied point total of less than 20.
Bengals
Writer: Zach Rabinovitz
QB – Andy Dalton
Dalton is currently the 27th-rated quarterback on FanDuel in the Adam Levitan Model and is facing a Jets defense that ranked sixth last year, per Football Outsiders’ DVOA (Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average) metric.
He will also be without tight end Tyler Eifert in Week 1. In the last two years, we’ve seen a bigger drop-off in Dalton’s performance without Eifert than without A.J. Green (although the sample size without Green is admittedly small).
Dalton is in a tough spot, but a Dalton-A.J. Green stack is projected to be one of the lowest-owned stacks in Week 1 at near zero percent ownership. They’re certainly better than that.
RB – Jeremy Hill
Hill is listed here first because he is the primary back. Interestingly, while Hill’s role has remained unchanged, we’ve seen his price continue to drop since September of last year.
Hill amassed a little more than one goal-line run per game last year (fourth among all running backs) and is expected to maintain his role as the primary red-zone back.
RB – Giovani Bernard
Despite FanDuel’s half-PPR scoring, Gio rates much higher in our FD models due largely to his 97 percent Bargain Rating there. Gio’s lack of red-zone work caps his ceiling and he hasn’t been particularly efficient there, anyway: He posted a 5.9 percent red-zone TD rate last season.
WR – A.J. Green
A.J. Green has the highest-projected point total on his team at 18.9 DK points. While Darrelle Revis may spend less time shadowing Green than initially planned, the threat of Revis Island may still be enough to reduce Green’s ownership.
I built a trend to look at how top-tier wide receivers’ (salary of $6,500-plus) ownership compared against the Jets vs. the rest of the NFL last year. The results were interesting: They had the seventh-lowest average ownership (6.1 percent) although they exceeded salary-based expectations by +3.8 points. Both the public and DFS sites were too scared of the Jets last season versus top-tier WRs.
WR – Tyler Boyd
The Boyd public intrigue is mostly built on opportunity. In 2016, the Bengals will need to replace over 150 targets and nearly 100 receptions vacated by Mohamed Sanu and Marvin Jones.
Boyd is only $3,600 on DraftKings and has a 91 percent Bargain Rating there. The RotoViz Box Score Scout loves him; even if he’s a GPP-only flyer this week, he’s a player to monitor moving forward.
WR – Brandon LaFell
LaFell will start opposite A.J. Green and could end up seeing more of Revis if the Jets elect to not shadow Green.
LaFell had a disappointing 2015 season after grading high enough to be a high-end WR2 in 2014, according to PFF. LaFell did enough this offseason to hold off second-round draft pick Tyler Boyd, but he projects to score only 6.7 DK points in Week 1.
TE – Tyler Kroft
Kroft was a third-round draft pick in 2015 out of Rutgers. A former wide receiver in high school, Kroft is only $2,700 on DK this week. However, his impact in the passing game is expected to be minimal.
New York Jets
Writer: Joe Holka
QB – Ryan Fitzpatrick
Fitzpatrick posted career highs in passing yards (3,905) and touchdown passes (31) last season but has a much more difficult schedule in 2016. In Week 1 he faces a Bengals team that allowed the second-fewest passing points per attempt (.310) and points allowed per drive (1.31) in 2015. Cincinnati actually allowed less touchdowns (18) than passes they intercepted (21). Fitzpatrick was ninth in the league in red-zone attempts per game (4.8) and posted an absurd 5.5 percent touchdown rate (his previous best was 4.2 percent). However, the Bengals limited opponents to the fourth-lowest red-zone touchdown percentage last year. He currently has the fourth-worst rating among QBs in the DK Bales Player Model.
RB – Matt Forte
Finishing seventh in the league in points per game last season, Forte will look to dip into a large share of carries inside the five-yard line that were left behind by Chris Ivory‘s departure — an 85 percent market share, to be exact. In 2015, 59.6 percent of fantasy points from the Jets backfield came from targets in the passing game, which was the highest distribution in the league. The Bengals gave up 6.4 receptions per games to opposing running backs, which was tied for the fourth-most in the NFL last year. However, they gave up only 1,477 yards on the ground (the seventh-lowest total in the NFL).
RB – Bilal Powell
Powell was one of the most underrated players in DFS last year; he finished ninth in the league with 63 total targets (5.7 per game). He hit 2x and 3x value 72.73 percent of the time last season on DraftKings, and he also hit 4x and 5x value 45.45 percent and 27.27 percent, respectively. When priced between $3,000 to $3,600 on DK, Powell has produced a +1.65 Plus/Minus with 41.7 percent Consistency. Per our Trends tool, running backs targeted between four to six times per game have previously generated a +2.30 Plus/Minus. Again, the Bengals allowed the fourth-most receptions to running backs per game (6.4) last year.
ESPN’s Rich Cimini has recently reported that he expects the Jets backfield touches to be split more evenly than they were last season. He also expects Powell to handle most of the team’s third-down snaps.
WR – Brandon Marshall
Marshall showed that he has a lot left in the tank, posting a +7.6 Plus/Minus with 75.0 percent Consistency on DraftKings last year. He finished fifth in the league in catches (105), fourth in receiving yards (1,502), and tied for first in touchdowns (14) in 2015. He scored a touchdown once every 12.4 targets. Unfortunately, the Bengals allowed a touchdown once every 28.9 targets to wide receivers last season. According to our Matchups tool, Marshall will primarily line up opposite Adam Jones, PFF’s 12th-ranked coverage corner. If targeting Marshall, consider him on FD, where he currently holds the fourth-highest rating in the Bales Player Model and boasts a 98 percent Bargain Rating.
Marshall was limited in practice on Wednesday but practiced fully on Thursday. Head coach Todd Bowles has said that Marshall will be active in Week 1.
WR – Eric Decker
Decker scored a touchdown every 11 targets in 2015. He looked much more comfortable moving into the slot (he ran 68.1 percent of his routes there) and was targeted from inside the 10-yard line more than any other receiver. He topped 80 yards and/or scored a touchdown in all 15 games he played last year, and 70.0 percent of his receptions came off of slot routes. Decker was a force in the red zone, converting 10 of his league-leading 28 targets into touchdowns. He is $6,900 on FanDuel this week, and this is what he did last year on that platform when his salary was under $7,000:
WR – Quincy Enunwa
Decker and Marshall combined for 50.7 percent of the Jets’ targets last year. That obviously doesn’t leave much volume for players like Enunwa. He played 524 snaps last year and was targeted on only 8.2 percent of Fitzpatrick’s passes; that’s hardly a dent in Decker’s and Marshall’s target share. He’s a GPP dart throw at best.
TE – Kellen Davis
Davis led all Jets tight ends in snaps last year over 16 games. He was targeted just 11 times and scored one touchdown. The Bengals allowed the second-highest percentage of targets to TE of any team last year (24.7 percent), but Jets OC Chan Gailey just doesn’t use his tight end; Davis shouldn’t be on your radar this week.
