Fantasy Football Matchups Breakdown: Week 7 Dallas Cowboys vs. Washington Football Team

The Dallas Cowboys are scrambling after a mess of a game in week 6, their first with backup Andy Dalton at the helm. Washington has been scrambling to save the season since the moment it started. Which team can stop their downward spiral in week 7? For the 2020 NFL season, Matt Savoca will be providing his weekly NFL DFS and NFL Daily Fantasy Football Matchups Breakdown column, going through every single game and offensive and defensive matchup, every week of the season. For your viewing convenience, we have broken up the matchups breakdown into several single columns, each one covering a single game. You can find links to every game right here. We have 11 games on tap for Week 7 NFL DFS and NFL Daily Fantasy Football, so let’s dive in. The entire matchups article will be available in podcast form, every Friday afternoon on the Awesemo Podcast Network. Let’s get into Cowboys – Washington NFL DFS picks for your daily fantasy football lineups.

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NFL Daily Fantasy Football + NFL DFS Matchups Column for Week 7

Dallas Cowboys (22.75) at Washington Football Team (23.25) – 1:00 p.m. ET

Dallas Passing Game

The high-flying, fast-paced, pass-happy, aggressive, downfield-focused offense we saw to begin the 2020 season from the Cowboys was nowhere to be found with Andy Dalton at the helm. He didn’t get any favors from the backfield (see Dallas Rushing Game below), but from Dalton’s first pass of the game, which should have been an easy interception, it was evident that Dalton would not be able to do anything close to what Dak Prescott had been doing. Dalton finished his first full start as a Cowboy with 266 yards on 54 attempts and threw for an egregious 4.9 yards per attempt. Worse for Dalton, with the Dallas offensive line in shambles (now likely without Zack Martin and Brandon Knight, the latter of whom was already a backup), the Cowboys rank 31st in the league in team protection rate. With a pressured completion percentage of just 37%, this could be a disastrous matchup against a Washington team whose strength lies in their defense.

Washington currently ranks eight in expected points allowed per drive, fourth in PFF’s team coverage grade and first net expected points subtracted per play. This is a solid defensive squad who could be getting healthier with the return of Chase Young, who is practicing on a limited basis this week as he works his way back from a groin injury. It’s possible that the Washington defense, as they were against Philadelphia in week 1, is the dominating force of this game. If that’s the case, the Washington DST, priced as the 16th-highest-salary defense on the main slate, could be a phenomenal option for fantasy gamers this weekend. With the amount the Dallas offense tends to pass (including games with Prescott, the Cowboys rank first in team pass plays per game), the volume could still be there for Dalton, but it’s hard to trust the passing game in any capacity in this matchup.

Even worse for fantasy gamers, the likelihood that Dalton is able to support two, let alone three wide receivers on a weekly basis is a farce. That means only one of Amari Cooper, CeeDee Lamb and Michael Gallup are likely to be solid plays at their salary on any given (unless we see a massive salary reduction in the weeks ahead). Because both Lamb and Cooper still have salaries that suggest their ceilings are as high as they were with Prescott at the helm (they’re both inside the top 12 of highest salary wide receivers on the slate), the clear choice from a salary consideration perspective is Gallup, who’s only the 37th-highest-salary wide receiver this weekend. Even with all the negativity swirling around this suddenly inept offense, Awesemo’s projection for Gallup is better than his salary-based expectation.

Dallas Rushing Game

Yes, Ezekiel Elliott’s fumbles are a point of concern. Turnovers derail drives, and in week 6, Elliott’s multi-fumble evening put Dallas irreparable behind and earned him a brief but obvious benching in the first half. In fact, Elliott’s 58% snap share is by far the lowest he’s seen in 2020, as he previously had been on the field for at least 84% of the Cowboys’ plays prior to last Monday. But from a usage standpoint, it hardly mattered, as Dalton continually chose Elliott as his checkdown option in the passing game. Elliott finished with 11 targets on top of 12 rushes for 80 total yards, all while the public perception was that he was playing terribly. Despite their solid advanced metrics, Washington is right at league average in yards allowed per play and in the bottom 10 in points allowed per play, an indicator that the Cowboys, led by Elliott, could still move the ball effectively enough to win this game. If so, Elliott is a steal as the third-highest-salary running back on the slate (and fourth-highest projected ownership.). The Awesemo projections are sneakily very high on Elliott this weekend relative to his salary.

Washington Passing Game

New Washington quarterback Kyle Allen was mildly efficient, though unspectacular, in his first complete game of the season, completing 74% of his passes for 280 yards on 42 attempt with two touchdowns against a Giants defense that ranks seventh worst in PFF’s coverage grade, but in the top-half of the league in overall defense. It may not have been enough for a win, but it was more efficient on a per-play basis than the quarterback play Washington has endured thus far with a combination of Dwayne Haskins, Allen and Alex Smith.  To his credit, Allen is making plays when they’re available to him, and he’s kept upright. In his limited sample size, he has an 84% clean pocket completion percentage, which would be the top mark among all quarterbacks in that metric.

The Cowboys are typically a team fantasy gamers should be excited to exploit, as they rank dead last in PFF’s team defensive rating and in points allowed per play. They even rank among the worst five teams in the NFL in schedule-adjusted fantasy points allowed to wide receivers. Typically we’d look at any team playing the Cowboys (as we have in previous weeks with Dallas on the main slate) as prime players, but the same simply cannot be assumed for the inept Washington offense, that ranks 31st (only to the Jets) in team points per play, and dead last in yards per play. It’s not exactly new analysis, but it’s really hard to trust Washington players to produce with any kind of consistency, because none exists at the quarterback position.

At the very least, Allen is utilizing his top two weapons in the receiving game, tight end Logan Thomas and Terry McLaurin, at a fantastically high rate so far. With Allen as quarterback, Washington has consolidated more than 50% of their true weighted opportunity share around their two playmakers, and they both paid off with touchdowns against the Giants’ equally poor pass defense in week 6. Against Dallas, the upside is still there, of course, but as has been said in previous paragraphs, the difficulty is in trusting the ball to be delivered accurately and whether Washington can actually sustain drives, not whether talents like Thomas (who commanded 25% of the team’s red zone targets a a week ago) or McLaurin (30% of the team’s total targets) will get open. There’s little doubt they’ll win their individual matchups against the Dallas secondary. It likely just won’t matter.

Washington Rushing Game

After seeing 59% and 92% of the team’s rushes in weeks 4 and 5, Antonio Gibson inexplicably saw his workload diminished in week 6 in favor of increased touches for Peyton Barber, who saw 18% of Washington’s rushes a week ago. Even J.D. McKissic, who’d previously only been used in the receiving game, went from an 8.7% rush share to a 36% rushing share. This is a troubling sign for Gibson, who had been trending toward becoming another workhorse back in fantasy football through the first five weeks of the season. Though it’s possible we will see a reversal back in Gibson’s favor without a significant share of the rushes and continuing to lose touches to the aforementioned McKissic in the passing game, the path to a ceiling game for Gibson is essentially only through home run plays or multiple touchdowns, not exactly things you can bet on typically, especially from Washington. The one positive for Gibson this weekend is his salary on the main slate, as he’s been moved down to the 25th-highest salary, giving him a bit of margin for error compared to previous weeks. He’s still the most talented back on the roster, and Awesemo’s projections are bullish on Gibson relative to his salary based expectations.

Prediction: Cowboys 21, Washington 17

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Author
A middling athlete who was offered his first sports analytics position at age 14, I've been working on NFL and fantasy football data science since 2017. With a particular passion for data visualization and dashboard building, I love to make data accessible by using graphs and charts to communicate ideas that are difficult to explain with words alone. You can contact me by e-mailing [email protected].

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