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The Pittsburgh Steelers and Minnesota Vikings will face off in a Madden sim Sunday at 8:00 p.m. ET. We break down the ideal Showdown lineup strategy for the DFS contest that will be played in the snow. You can set your lineup and play in the DraftKings contest before kickoff.
Captain’s Picks
Adam Thielen ($12,900)
Thielen has a mixed bag of results so far in sim land for the Vikings. Luckily, the majority of the scores in said bag are of the good variety. By good, I mean games with 20+ fantasy points, which is the sweet spot for most WRs in Madden sims. Thielen really just gives you everything you want in a Captain at an affordable price. It helps that Thielen has been a catch machine over the past four sims with at least 6 in three games.
Diontae Johnson ($7,500)
This may be the sucker’s play, but I’m going to try and capture lightning in a bottle a bit with Johnson. He’s coming off his best game in sim land with three catches for 105 yards and two TDs for 28.5 fantasy points. Sure, that was a pretty shocking outcome, one we may never see again. It’s also perfectly in the realm of possibility for Johnson to pop off again. The Vikings have an overrated secondary and I think this game will be high scoring.
FLEX Men
Vance McDonald ($6,600)
There’s a lot to like about Vance McDonald in these Showdown contests. There are very few games in which Vanny Mac leaves you hanging, leaves you sulking over your lineup. Does Vanny Mac work? No. Moving on, McDonald busted last game but before that he had six straight games in double-digit fantasy points. Toward the front of that streak he had four straight games with a TD. One of those games McDonald had 10 catches — this is very rare in these Madden sims.
Vikings D/ST ($3,200)
This may be the sneakiest play in all Madden simulation Showdowns. The Vikings D/ST! Believe it or not, defense don’t exactly thrive in the sim environment. It’s made for points. So we rarely see defenses go bonkers. Except the Vikings have sort of done that more than a few times. The Vikings D/ST is averaging almost 8.0 fantasy points per game and has seven games in double-digit FPTs. Two of those scores went for 20+ points. We don’t normally see a D/ST with that type of ceiling. At this price in the FLEX, we get a strong leverage play with one of the best combos of floor-ceiling at D/ST.