🏈 The Fantasy Game of Week 5

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It's The Touchdown Press Newsletter. Your #1 source for all things fantasy football, DFS, and sports betting, along with 10,000+ fellow degenerates.

Today in 5 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

• Player injury and inactive news 📰 

• Full Chiefs-Vikings Breakdown 🙌 

• Plenty of fantasy and DFS support 🏆

• Projections for Prime Time ⌚

When you finish reading, I’m live on YouTube every Sunday morning from 9:00-11:00am EST. Come join us!

🏴‍☠️ Davante Adams Listed as Questionable for Week 5

🦁 Even FEWER snaps?! Lions’ Gibbs Doubtful

🧲 Not So Fast, JT! Colts Star to Ease Back In

🐅 Higgins to Sit for Bengals vs. Arizona

🦅 No Penny for Thoughts? RB Suffering Illness

🦬 Bills Defense gets Scarier for Halloween with Miller

☕️ Snap Count for Kupp? McVay’s Take

🧀 Will Aaron Jones Get More Reps in Week 5?

🙌 Stage set for Lions’ Williams’ Debut

💨 Drake Elevated to Active Roster for Ravens

🩼 Musgrave Good to Go: Packers’ TE Making Splash

🤕 Rhamondre to Play for Pats on Sunday

⚜ Juwan Johnson, Others Injured for Saints

🚑 Hip Flexor the Issue for Javonte Williams

🐴 McLaughlin to Get Larger Role for Broncos

😱 Sun God doubtful for Week 5

😊 Cardinals Activate Veteran RB to Roster

🤠 Dawdle Good to Go for Sunday Night Tilt

🤕 Raiders’ QB Jimmy G. Out of Protocol

Kansas City Chiefs at Minnesota Vikings (+4.5)

There are some interesting things to talk about in this one (besides Taylor Swift, of course). The O/U is a robust 53. We have questions about how each defensive coordinator will approach the talent on the other side. There’s the trend that the Vikings’ pass volume explodes whenever they face a playoff team.

Don’t forget to check out Fantasy Life’s game hub for this one. They have full breakdowns of what to expect, fantasy analysis, betting lines, and more.

Rich Hribar (@LordReebs) and I broke down this game from a fantasy standpoint on YouTube. Here are all the players we discussed and what you need to know going in.

QB: Kirk Cousins (MIN)

People are mad because Kirk threw just 19 passes in Week 4, gaining just 129 yards and coughing up 2 picks. It was a disappointing total.

The good news is that the passing should rise back up this week in a game with a much better pace expected. Every other QB aside from Justin Fields has thrown the ball 35+ times when they face the Chiefs.

That should be true for Kirk as well.

WR: Justin Jefferson (MIN)

To say that Jefferson is a good player is an obvious understatement at this point. He’s good vs. all types of coverage.

However, it will be interesting to see if the Chiefs and Steve Spagnuolo play their usual aggressive, man-based scheme. They’re 10th in the NFL in man-coverage rate. When J.J. faces man, he’s an absolute monster:

• 4.9 yards per route run

• Targeted on 40% of routes

Kirk Cousins trusts his star, as he should. I expect big potential.

TE: T.J. Hockenson (MIN)

Hock sort of disappeared last Sunday when he caught just 2 balls on 3 targets. That was a result of the game flow. But his inefficiency problems tend to go away when the Vikings are in one of these situations against a strong offensive opponent. Passing numbers rise and Hock’s rise with them.

The Chiefs defense has been especially soft on TEs this season:

• 31st in catch rate allowed (85%)

• 28th in yards per target allowed (8.5)

So watch for a nice rebound game from Hockenson.

TE: Travis Kelce (KC)

Romeo leads all TEs in target share, and is worth jamming into your DraftKings lineup this week. He’s got:

• 25% of team targets

• 31% target rate per route run (1st)

The yardage and the multi-TD games haven’t quite been there, but that may have to do with the quad injury he was dealing with to start the year. It was encouraging to see that last week he ran a route on a season-high 86% of Chiefs drop backs.

RB: Isiah Pacheco (KC)

Coming off a career-high 158 total yards last week, Pacheco is starting to emerge as the KC bell-cow. He had 23 of the 30 Chiefs’ backfield touches and has over 60% of them in 3 of the 4 games.

What’s more encouraging is his passing game usage. He’s got 10 catches for 90 yards this year, which isn’t a TON, but considering he only had 13 catches last year, this is a big bump.

From a DFS standpoint, if you’re stacking this game, Pacheco provides the price and the ownership projections for a really nice contrarian pick.

Looking for a cheaper or low-owned contrarian play to differentiate your stack for this game?

Click HERE to check out my pivot play for KC-MIN

Who will produce on Sunday and Monday Night Football? Here are some of my favorite PrizePicks projections from those two matchups.

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• Tony Pollard MORE THAN 21.5 receiving yards: He’s RB4 in weighted opportunities, but San Francisco is terrific against the run. Dallas coaches should draw up some passing work for him.

   

• Brandon Aiyuk MORE THAN 61.5 recieivng yards: The Cowboys run a lot of man, against which Aiyuk has a 39% air yard share. Expect him to go off.

• Jordan Love MORE THAN 250.5 pass+rush yards: The Raiders defense ranks poorly against QBs. Love’s 13th-ranked rushing yards will come into play and put him over this total.

• Josh Jacobs MORE THAN 72.5 rush yards: If Davante Adams isn’t 100%, Jacobs is the star of the offense. He has a super high volume rate and should get work against Green Bay.

• Dak Prescott MORE THAN 34.5 pass attempts: Against the strong 49ers, I expect Dallas to need to keep pace, and Dak will be throwing.

It’s as simple as that! Don’t forget to check out 💥 My favorite PrizePicks & Bets this week.

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