Week 7 Monday Night Football Single-Game NFL DFS: Top FanDuel & DraftKings Plays

Oct 23, 2023

Monday Night Football Single-Game DFS: 49ers vs. Vikings

Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports

Welcome to the showdown breakdown for Week 7 Monday Night Football, where the 5-1 San Francisco 49ers head to Minnesota to take on the 2-4 Vikings. The 49ers are coming off their first loss of the season, a gut-wrenching defeat where a missed last-second field goal in Cleveland would have given them the victory. Meanwhile, Minnesota's Week 6 victory against the Chicago Bears was just their second win of what already may be a lost season. Both teams are dealing with several key injuries and while Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson remains on injured reserve, San Francisco’s top weapon Christian McCaffrey, will start despite an oblique injury knocking him out of last week’s loss and most of the week of practice. The good news stops there for San Francisco as WR Deebo Samuel and OT Trent Williams will both miss this contest and are each significant losses. With all that in mind, let’s delve into the DFS details and strategize the best ways to tackle this tricky single-game slate.

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Game Environment

^{This chart represents the general offensive strategies for each team when the game outcome is still in question (win probability between 20% and 80%). The final two minutes of each half are also excluded. We’ll include last year’s statistics through Week 4 of the regular season. Teams in the upper-right quadrant pass more often and play faster than the average NFL team in neutral game scripts, and conversely, teams in the lower-left quadrant play slower and run more often than the average NFL team.}

49ers (-7, 25) @ Vikings (+7, 18); Over/Under 43.0

The 49ers, despite their Week 6 hiccup against the league’s toughest defense, have been a juggernaut offensively. However, the pace and style with which they accomplish this is somewhat paradoxical to their success. They rank last in pass plays per game and are the slowest team in terms of overall pace of play. Yet, they are second in the NFL in offensive touchdowns scored per game. The absence of Deebo Samuel adds yet another layer of uncertainty to how exactly coach Kyle Shanahan will deploy his offensive weaponry. Despite the myriad injuries, the 49ers still have an implied team total of 25 points and are 7-point road favorites. Needless to say, the game script will most likely be in their favor and if that’s the case, one or more of these top-tier players likely produced a “had to have it” score.

The Vikings, by contrast, are a team that thrives on an aggressive playcalling scheme, ranking second in pass plays per game and maintaining the second-fastest pace of play this season. They have an implied team total of just 18 points, but at the very least, their style of play slightly increases the shootout potential of every game they play. They are top five in play rate during neutral game scripts and top three in pass rate during such scripts. The clash of styles, Minnesota's uptempo, pass-heavy approach versus San Francisco's slow, run-heavy methodology, is one of the more intriguing aspects of this matchup on paper.

Quarterback Analysis

^{While there may be 22 people on the field for every play, each play and game is heavily dictated by the performance of each team’s quarterback. While efficiency isn’t everything for quarterbacks, it is the best indicator of future performance, so we use a trio of metrics to suss out top performers at the position compared to lackluster ones. xDrive Success %, or True Drive Success Rate, is a measurement of a QB’s ability to turn drives into scores weighted by sample size. EPA or Expected Points Added, is a measurement of the QB’s contribution, both running and throwing, to the team’s scoring and production vs. the average NFL team. Completion % over Expected (CPOE)represents the accuracy and efficiency of a QB’s passes compared to league expectations.}

Coming off arguably the worst start of his impressive young career in Week 6, 49ers’ quarterback Brock Purdy has a good chance to rebound in a big way against Minnesota’s suspect defense. Despite throwing for an abysmal 125 yards and averaging a mere 4.6 yards per attempt against a formidable defense, Purdy's season-long metrics suggest that this performance was an outlier, as he’s topped 250 passing yards in three of his last four games. He’s hit the 300-yard bonus once this season (against the Giants in Week 3). From an efficiency standpoint, not many quarterbacks have been better this season. While he’s just 13th in fantasy points per game, Purdy ranks fourth in fantasy points per dropback, and second in adjusted yards per attempt. He’s top four in both per-drive and per-play efficiency, leading the 49ers to the second most offensive touchdowns per game. Used sparingly as a rusher, he’s still managed two rushing touchdowns this season, placing him sixth among quarterbacks in that category.

Vikings' signal-caller Kirk Cousins embodies the definition of NFL average. He ranks right at the league mean in per-pass, per-drive, and per-play efficiency metrics. This is all while he leads the league in passing touchdowns and ranks second in total pass yards. A lot of these inflated totals can be explained by the Vikings' immense amount of negative game scripts. And even with all those raw numbers, his weekly fantasy production has been fairly muted, ranking ninth among quarterbacks in fantasy points per game. Cousins' lack of rushing upside is a notable detriment, as he averages less than 1.5 yards per attempt on fewer than two rushes per game. While Cousins' sheer volume in a pass-heavy offense keeps him in the DFS conversation, especially in a game where the Vikings may need to air it out to keep pace, he doesn’t grade out all too well when considering his median projection vs. salary-based expectations.