Thursday Night Showdown- Thoughts and Takes 11-14-2019
The Steelers are one of the best teams in the league in terms of YPA, meaning that teams aren't taking shots downfield on them, this stat makes me have a lot of interest in Kareem Hunt, who in his season debut last Sunday garnered nine targets, catching seven of them. If The Browns are going to throw the ball with any success, passes would be short and something along these lines can happen again
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Vance McDonald led the Steelers in snaps for skill position players last week with 97% snaps and for the season runs routes on over 90% of snaps. This game would be a great time for McDonald to have that two touchdown game that many have been waiting for all season.
Speaking of Tight Ends if Ricky Seals Jones suits up he is another interesting pass catcher for Cleveland. One of the best TE usages we can see just like McDonald. RSJ runs routes on over 90% of his snaps, the issue would be that he has only played a maximum of 68% of snaps when he was at his healthiest. If he does end up suiting up tonight I expect less than 50% snap count for RSJ here.
Both teams are in the top ten in the league in sacks. Pittsburgh has a very high interception rate compared to The Browns. This could be a spot where if you are playing Showdown tonight and mass multi entering GPPs, It may not be a bad idea to play both defenses.
The total has held strong at 41 which means we should err on the side of this being a low scoring affair. Make sure to keep that in mind with your builds. This more than likely will not be a ceiling game for any position player. At Captain I believe we will want one of those defenses or possibly Kareem Hunt or Jaylen Samuels. James Connor is returning for The Steelers tonight which will take a lot of the overall touches, but I would not surprised if we saw a ten target game in the cards for Samuels as he will now be able to concentrate solely on passing down work. There is also a possibility that Connor comes back and bellcows it but I see that being unlikely.
Jarvis Landry seems to have a safe target floor every week. I have been using him in standard format all season. Last couple of weeks he has seen some positive TD regression. More people should be on OBJ if you do play a Browns WR, I would go Landry. On the other side of that The Steelers played Diontae Johnson and Juju Smith Schuster right around 70% of snaps last week. I don't have a strong preference as to which one I would play more, Johnson though is priced lower so there's that.
So keep these things in mind when playing tonight, Make sure your correlation makes sense and you are not asking too much to happen. Good luck out there tonight!