After a win on the final day of the 2025 regular season, the Los Angeles Rams finished the season with a 12-5 record, and they could wind up with two major award winners if MVP candidate Matthew Stafford ($16,200 CP) and Offensive Player of the Year candidate Puka Nacua ($19,200 CP) both take home their respective awards. It’s an immensely successful season by almost any standard, but because the Seattle Seahawks finished 14-3, the Rams will have to begin their playoff campaign on the road with a game against the NFC South-winning Carolina Panthers, who went just 8-9.
The two teams will kick off this Wild Card Weekend slate on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. ET in Charlotte. It’ll be the Panthers’ first home playoff game since January 24, 2016, when they blew out the Arizona Cardinals to reach Super Bowl 50, which they ultimately lost to the Denver Broncos. Los Angeles, meanwhile, has made five of the last six postseasons and has played at least one road game in each of them.
The Rams are 10.5-point favorites at DraftKings Sportsbook, with the point total set to 46.5. Los Angeles is -600 on the Moneyline, and Carolina is +440.
DraftKings is offering a Showdown contest for each of the playoff games this weekend. Below, I’ve laid out my strategy, with two Captain’s Picks, two FLEX options, and one fade.
Set your DraftKings fantasy football lineups here: NFL $300K Showdown Special [$100K to 1st] (LAR @ CAR).
SHOWDOWN STRATEGY
Captain’s Picks
Matthew Stafford ($16,200 CP) – As much as I might have wanted to pick Nacua, who led all wideouts in FPTS and catches and is the all-time career leader in receiving yards per game, picking him as Captain would use up 38.4% of the allotted $50,000, and that’s just too much. Instead, I’ll save 6% of the budget and go with the league’s leader in passing touchdowns and passing yards, who finished third in FPTS behind only the Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen and the New England Patriots’ Drake Maye. Stafford has surpassed Nacua’s season average of 24.6 FPTS per game eight times, including thrice in the past four weeks, and by FPTS per dollar, he’s clearly the better choice (0.0013 vs. Nacua’s 0.0012).
The Panthers’ defense hasn’t necessarily made quarterbacks’ jobs easy, allowing the seventh-fewest FPTS per game, but that’s in part because they’ve been excellent against mobile quarterbacks, of which Stafford is not one. Carolina also plays in a division with relatively weak quarterbacks. It’s worth noting, of course, that Stafford had one of the worst games of his season the first time these two teams played, when the Panthers emerged with a 31-28 upset, but one of Stafford’s two picks wasn’t his fault and he moved the ball well otherwise. Carolina gets pressure at the league’s second-lowest rate, and Stafford posted the best passing grade with a clean pocket. The Panthers also operate almost exclusively in zone defense, and Stafford has been better at throwing (to Nacua, at least) against zone.
Tetairoa McMillan ($13,200 CP) – I picked McMillan as captain during the Week 18 battle for the NFC South against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and while he didn’t have the absolute greatest game (11.5 FPTS), it was hardly his worst, either, with four catches for 85 yards. The 22-year-old has clearly earned Bryce Young ($13,500 CP)‘s trust, as he had nearly twice as many targets as Carolina’s second-leading receiver, and he became only the second Panthers rookie wideout in history to reach 1,000 receiving yards in the regular season. Advanced stats paint a lofty picture of McMillan: he finished 23rd among 134 qualified receivers by Pro Football Focus’ standards.
Meanwhile, the Rams’ secondary can be beaten on volume. In fact, Los Angeles allowed the ninth-most FPTS to opposing wideouts this season despite posting easily the highest PFF coverage grades, in part because it saw the sixth-most targets. It also allowed the 12th-most touchdowns to the position. Plus, the Rams defenders with the highest coverage grades were mostly safeties and linebackers, with the top-graded outside cornerback being Cobie Durant, who finished with merely the 33rd-best coverage grades of the 114 eligible corners. Like Carolina, Los Angeles operates almost exclusively in zone coverage, and Young had a significantly higher passer rating when throwing to McMillan in zone coverage than man.
FLEX Plays
Jalen Coker ($6,400) – Instead of going with either Nacua or Davante Adams ($9,800), I’ve selected a couple of budget options with my FLEX plays (though, if you select McMillan as Captain, you’ll have plenty of room for either of the Rams’ star wideouts). Coker, who broke out late last season after a productive collegiate career at Holy Cross, sustained a quad strain in training camp and didn’t make his season debut until Week 7. He’s been stellar in his limited role, though, ranking not far behind McMillan by PFF’s standards and finishing sixth in the league in receiving success rate. He also received a progressively higher snap share as the season went on, finishing with a six-catch, 47-yard, one-score (16.7-FPT) effort in the season finale against Tampa Bay.
Unlike McMillan, Coker did dash the Rams in the teams’ first matchup, catching four passes for 74 yards and a score (17.4 FPTS), and in that game, he made each of Durant and Emmanuel Forbes look silly, racking up two catches for 48 yards and a score against Forbes alone. Los Angeles does have a pretty good slot corner in Roger McCreary, but McCreary’s sample size of success is small: he was among the league’s worst coverage corners with the Tennessee Titans before being traded to the Rams midway through the season and posting two solid games with Los Angeles. All in all, he’s allowed a passer rating north of 100 in coverage in three of his four seasons.
Tyler Higbee ($3,600) – Higbee only recently returned to action after missing six games with an ankle injury, but he hardly missed a beat in the Rams’ season finale, catching five passes for 91 yards and a score (20.1 FPTS) despite ranking just third among the team’s tight ends in snap share. To be fair, that game came against the Arizona Cardinals, who don’t exactly have the strongest defense, and expecting 20-plus-FPTS again might be a stretch, but given that he’s one of the few players remaining from the 2022 Super Bowl-winning team, it’s clear that Stafford trusts him in a playoff environment. He had at least five catches in each of the team’s playoff games in 2025.
Compared to their performance against opposing receivers, the Panthers have been mediocre against opposing tight ends. Their pass defense is really carried by one man, outside corner Mike Jackson, who should see time guarding — and shutting down — both Nacua and Adams. After that, their defensive pecking order is much less clear. Higbee could see some snaps against Nick Scott — PFF’s 31st-graded coverage safety, slot corner Chau Smith-Wade (73rd of 111 cornerbacks), or middle linebacker Trevin Wallace (28th of 79 linebackers). Either way, Carolina has allowed the 17th-most FPTS per game to opposing tight ends, the fifth-worst mark among the 14 playoff teams.
Fades
Rico Dowdle ($8,000) – Dowdle had a few tremendous games early in the season, when he recorded 35.4 and 36.9 FPTS in his first two starts of the season, but since then, he’s slowed down mightily, totaling just 10 yards on seven carries (4 FPTS) in the season finale against the Buccaneers. Dowdle is still clearly a talented back capable of being an NFL bell-cow, and he rightfully earned the starting role over Chuba Hubbard ($4,000), but it was Hubbard who had the better performance in the teams’ Week 13 clash. In that game, Hubbard recorded 124 total yards and one touchdown (20.4 FPTS), while Dowdle only had 79 total yards (9.9 FPTS).
If he splits time at all with Hubbard, Los Angeles’ run defense is simply too good for him to be worth his fantasy salary. This season, the Rams allowed the 12th-fewest FPTS per game to opposing running backs, including the third-fewest rushing touchdowns. They were much more gettable through the air, but receiving has never been the strength of Dowdle’s game, as he had 10 or fewer receiving yards in eight of his 17 games this season. Plus, part of Dowdle’s appeal is his ability to cause missed tackles, and Los Angeles missed the league’s sixth-fewest tackles this season.
THE OUTCOME
The most simple way of analyzing this matchup would be to look at the teams’ Week 13 matchup, see that the Panthers won 31-28, and move on. But the playoffs are a different beast than the regular season, and while Young has no postseason experience, Stafford has led his team to a Super Bowl title. Plus, the Rams were missing both Higbee and safety Quentin Lake in that game. They re-activated Lake, one of their team captains, to the active roster in advance of Wild Card Weekend.
With Lake back in the defense and Nacua playing at as high of a level as he is, Los Angeles should have enough firepower to win this game easily. Carolina’s postseason effectively started in Week 18 against Tampa Bay, and it came out flat in a 16-14 loss and required help from the Atlanta Falcons just to make the playoffs. The young Panthers’ development and late playoff push has been a nice story, but the final chapter will be written on Saturday night.
