NFL DFS Picks & Week 11 TNF DraftKings & FanDuel Showdown Lineups

Welcome to the NFL Showdown Matchups Showdown Highlights for Week 11 Thursday Night Football. Here we will provide a quick overview of the game’s key storylines and highlight some of the key insights from Awesemo’s world-class suite of tools to find the best NFL DFS picks for DraftKings and FanDuel Showdown lineups. Let’s dive into the NFL DFS picks today for the Week 11 Patriots vs. Falcons Thursday Night Football matchup.

Week 11 Thursday Night Football NFL DFS Picks

The New England Patriots are one of the hottest teams in football right now. They have won four in a row and five of their last six, averaging a blistering 37.5 points per game during their current win streak. After last week’s shellacking of the Browns, the Patriots head south to Atlanta to take on the cellar-dwelling Falcons in a rematch of Super Bowl LI. The Falcons have been volatile all season and are the only team in the surprisingly competitive NFC South with a negative point differential. Unfortunately for the Falcons, that negative-85 point differential is the second worst in the entire conference. With Atlanta’s paltry defense facing New England’s suddenly competent offense, this game has a bit of blowout potential. But most likely this should be a competitive matchup from two fairly balanced offensive teams, providing a large amount of lineup combinations to work with in this single-game slate.

Mac Jones (10,600 DraftKings/15,000 FanDuel) looks like a strong play in both cash games and tournaments. The Patriots have done an excellent job of giving Jones time to operate, as the team ranks seventh in protection rate, and Jones has responded with a moderately efficient rookie season. Though his 7.2 yards per pass attempt rank 17th among quarterbacks this season, he has bumped that number to over 8.1 yards per attempt over his last six starts. In Awesemo’s Top Stacks Tool, Jones appears in the optimal lineup on DraftKings two-thirds of simulations, and even more often on FanDuel.

It was hard to believe the Matt Ryan (10,800 DraftKings/15,500 FanDuel) that got benched in Week 10 was the same player that threw for over 11 yards per attempt in a win against the second-place Saints the week prior. Ryan was abysmal last Sunday, recording just 117 yards and two interceptions. Ryan has not passed for more than two touchdowns in any game since Week 4, and while he is always a candidate to reach the 300-yard passing bonus on DraftKings, he is popping as a Flex player rather than an optimal Captain or MVP play.

Ryan was popping as a strong option for Captain and MVP in our NFL DFS lineup optimizer. Check out all of Awesemo’s free NFL DFS Showdown picks today with the DraftKings NFL cheat sheet and FanDuel NFL cheat sheet.

Rhamondre Stevenson ($8,800 DraftKings, $13,000 FanDuel) was the star of the Week 10 main slate, stepping into a bell-cow role against the Browns and earning a career-high 25 total opportunities. Stevenson not only saw six of his 20 carries from inside the 20, but he was also targeted on 45% of his 11 routes, indicating he is capable of being a dual-threat weapon within the New England short-area passing attack. He will not always score two touchdowns as he did last week, and Damien Harris ($8,800 DraftKings, $13,500 FanDuel) will likely be back in the fold, but Stevenson has carved out a permanent role and can be played in lineups accordingly.

Jacobi Meyers ($8,000 DraftKings/$10,500 FanDuel) is the only Patriots passing game player worth considering in cash games, but he is not a must-play option on DraftKings or FanDuel. Meyers finally (mercifully) found the end zone last weekend and ranks 21st in the NFL in share of team targets, but at just 0.35 fantasy points per route run (62nd among wideouts), Meyers looks like a low-floor, low-ceiling play. That said, the Falcons have been bottom 12 in the NFL schedule-adjusted fantasy points allowed to opposing wide receivers.

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Cordarrelle Patterson ($10,200 DraftKings/$14,000 FanDuel) and Kyle Pitts ($9600 DraftKings/$12,000 FanDuel) are both solid options, but expect Pitts to get the classic Bill Belichick treatment and be locked up by multiple defenders in most obvious passing situations. Pitts has seen seven targets or more in five of his last six starts, and his median projection is solid compared to salary-based expectations, but his chances of hitting his ceiling score are diminished in this spot, with the Patriots rising to 13th in PFF’s team defensive grade. Patterson is equally iffy, nursing an ankle injury that left his status questionable coming into the week. If Patterson were to be ruled inactive, there would likely be an ugly 50/50 split between Mike Davis ($5,800 DraftKings/$7,500 FanDuel) and Wayne Gallman ($8,400 DraftKings/$6,500 FanDuel), who got more work than Davis in the loss to Dallas a week ago. In the absence of Patterson, both would be long-shot, large-field tournament plays only.

Fellow Awesemo NFL expert Eric MacPherson has even more on the Falcons’ running back situation, and breaks down some of the best ways to parse out this backfield in his Week 11 NFL DFS Showdown Spotlight.

Brandon Bolden ($4,800 DraftKings/$8,000 FanDuel) is not the worst tournament play either despite seeing just six opportunities last weekend in the Patriots’ blowout victory. Bolden ran 10 routes to Stevenson’s 11. He averaged an impressive 11.7 yards per touch last week and 9.4 yards per touch over his last two games. He is the slightly preferred auxiliary option to weekly touchdown catcher Hunter Henry ($7,000 DraftKings/$11,000 FanDuel), who is averaging under 3.5 targets per game over his last five starts.

The Bottom Line

New England has been on a tear of late, in large part due to the teams they have faced. The Falcons have a sad excuse for a rush defense, ranking bottom 10 in yards allowed per carry, and they have not improved as the season has progressed either. New England likely is not the juggernaut that they have shown flashes of being in most games, but they should not have a problem winning the race to 25 points tonight, which should be all it takes to beat the Falcons.

Week 11 Thursday Night Football Prediction: Patriots 27, Falcons 20

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Author

Matt Savoca

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].