Somehow we only have football on Sunday this week? Is that right?
There’s only three games left in the NFL season and two take place this weekend. The upstart Commanders will take on the Eagles in the NFC Championship Game, while the reigning Champion Chiefs will once again welcome the Bills to Kansas City in the AFC side of the bracket.
Obviously, everyone’s going to want to stuff Saquon Barkley ($8,600) in their DFS lineups, but if you’re looking to pivot off the Pro Bowler and save some salary, here are a couple value RB options on DraftKings.
Set your DraftKings NFL DFS lineups here: NFL $3M Fantasy Football Millionaire [$1M to 1st]
Kareem Hunt ($5,400)
It finally happened.
After weeks of me pointing out that Hunt was still the lead back of the Chiefs two-headed committee despite his lower price tag, the veteran is actually more expensive than Isiah Pacheco ($5,200) this Sunday. It feels good to be right, though whether that’s worth paying a little extra for Hunt’s services is unclear.
Here’s what I wrote last week on the Hunt/Pacheco split:
“It’s been so long since the Chiefs starters have played that I think I need to refresh people’s memory on the team’s backfield duo. Isiah Pacheco returned from a lengthy injury absence back in Week 13 against the Raiders. No one was expecting the RB to immediately take on a bell cow workload, yet there was a belief that, at some point, Pacheco would re-gain the role that saw him rack up 41 touches in Kansas City’s first two games of the season. To be blunt, that has not been the case.
In fact, Pacheco has seen his involvement decrease as we’ve gotten closer to the playoffs. In Week 16 and Week 17, Pacheco was out-snapped by Kareem Hunt 62-to-46. Even more concerning for Pacheco owners was where these snaps were coming, as Hunt saw five red zone carries to Pacheco’s zero in those two contests. Not surprisingly, Hunt found the end zone twice and handily outscored Pacheco by fantasy points in both weeks.”
Guess what? It played out exactly the same way in Saturday’s win over the Texans. Hunt logged 24 offensive snaps to Pacheco’s 16, finishing with eight carries for 44 yards and a touchdown. He should continue to get a majority of the work in the AFC Championship Game versus the Bills, which is also a sneaky good matchup. Buffalo surrendered 4.6 opponent yards per rushing attempt during the regular season and the ninth-most FPTS per game to opposing RBs.
Austin Ekeler ($5,300)
Austin Ekeler was the only Commanders running back to not find the end zone last week, in the team’s 45-point offensive explosion against the Lions. Still, I think we’re going to see a little bit of a different script this coming Sunday.
First and foremost, Washington is currently a six-point underdog in the NFC Championship Game versus the Eagles. That’s not quite as a big a spread as we saw last weekend in Detroit, so maybe take this with a grain of salt, but I do not expect the Commanders to have a similar level of success moving the football in Philadelphia. The Eagles are far healthier on the defensive side of the ball than the Lions were and they are used to playing with the lead. That’s why opponents only ran the ball on 40.9% of snaps against Philadelphia during the regular season.
If that trend continues this week, I’d expect we see a lot more of Ekeler as a pass-catching threat than we did in the Divisional Round. Though, it should be noted, the veteran caught all four of his targets in the victory over Detroit, racking up 88 yards and 12.8 FPTS on just 10 touches. It should also be noted that Ekeler was a massive element of the Commanders’ aerial attack the last time these two teams squared off in Philly. In Week 11, Ekeler hauled-in eight of his nine targets for 89 yards in a 26-18 loss. I’m not saying we’re in for a repeat performance of quite that volume, but the usage could be similar if Washington gets in a hole early.
