LATE EDIT
Well I totally missed the fact that Case Keenum is starting for the Bears tonight, not Tyson Bagent. It doesn’t change a whole lot from the below. It’s probably worse for the Bears. Maybe Keenum’s a better game manager as a more experienced guy, but his physical ability at this point has to be less than Bagent.
I don’t think I’d change anything I wrote below really. Less interested in Keenum than Bagent as a play because of the mobility. But the rest still applies. Sorry for the big mistake there!
I started on Thursday with a new approach to the Showdown previews. They were LAME before, and now they’re LESS LAME. We’re going to dig into the non-obvious plays and talk more about how to build lineups with upside rather than just ramming the optimal into stuff hoping to maybe double the money.
The main reason I write these posts, though, is just because it’s fun. Football is a great game to break down. There’s much more you can get into with one game compared to baseball. So let’s do this thing.
Game Environment
If you click the little “show betting line movement” button on the game preview on the app, you’ll see that movement:
Not the prettiest plot, but you’ll be fine. We can get through this.
The big story with this game is that Caleb Williams is out, leaving Tyson Bagent to start at QB. Bagent himself was questionable after a concussion last week, but he’s good to go. We haven’t seen much of Bagent in the regular season, but he’s regarded as a competent backup. He played a good bit in 2023, which was a very long time ago now, but he did fine, and he had a game with 70 rushing yards. The gameplan will be made simple for him and I’d expect a lot of running with Swift and Monangai while they can plus a good bit of quick hitters to Burden and Loveland. But that’s speculation on my part, and I’m not the best guy to be speculating about NFL teams because I only pay attention for half of the year.
The over/under being at 41.5 is low, but that’s what you’ll get with the Eagles and a backup QB on the other side.
Both teams rank near the bottom of the league so far in PROE. Chicago is 26th, Philly is 27th. So we have a run-heavy game while things are neutral.
The Bears have played fast (8th in pace), the Eagles play slow (21st).
This stuff doesn’t matter that much when it’s a one-game slate, but it’s a really good spot for the Eagles offense. Pace-up spot against a bad defense. If the Bears can score with Bagent, it pushes Hurts. If they can’t, it pushes Barkley. One way or the other, the Eagles are getting a boost in this game.
So that’s the “chalky” way to go - playing 4-5 pieces from the Eagles. The “contarian” approach would be to play Bagent with multiple Bears pieces, betting that Bagent can have a decent game and get these Bears skill players to decent results.
Book Based Projections
First thing I wanted to look at was what the books think about Bagent. I’ve said “Bagent” way too many times already, but he’s the key player on this “slate”. I don’t like when people call it a showdown “slate”, because doesn’t “slate” imply multiple games?
The book projection: 29 attempts, 174 yards, 0.9 INT, 1.15 TD, 18 rush yards
Not a very confident projection. But who knows, it’s really hard to do anything with a guy we haven’t seen play real volume in three years.
Here are the implied fantasy point totals from the books:
Eagles
They’ve thrown it 60% of the time this year, -9.5% below expectation.
QB Play
They prefer to take it easy on the Hurts pass attempts. He’s thrown it 25 and 37 times in two games, that’s largely dictated by game script. The most likely outcome is that the Bears don’t end up leading by a ton of points and it’s another pretty low volume game from Hurts. But he’s run it 12 times for 62 yards without a touchdown. But those are coming if they get down to the goal line and use the tush push.
Running Backs
Saquon Barkley has 23 opportunities in two games, Tank Bigsby has 16. Barkley played just ten snaps last week and left with a stinger, but he’s good to go for this one. In week one it was 37 snaps to Barkley and six for Bigsby. This isn’t a shared backfield. Playing Bigsby would be a bet on Barkley being limited or getting hurt again. It’s an awesome setup for Barkley. However, he ran just nine routes in week one, so that was not a ton of usage in the pass game. He’s seen four total targets. That could change, and I’m guessing it will come up, but he’s not a CMC type out there running 20+ routes and regularly seeing 5+ targets.
Pass Catchers
DeVonta Smith saw his slot route total come up last week. He ran 40 routes, 12 from the slot, and saw an elite 32.5% target per route last week in a big game. He’s the dude in this offense, and the matchup is soft.