Wild Card Saturday Single-Game NFL DFS Snapshot: Browns and Texans Top FanDuel & DraftKings Plays

Jan 12, 2024

Saturday Single-Game DFS: Browns at Texans

Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports

Welcome to the showdown snapshot for the Wild Card Saturday afternoon matchup, an exciting battle between the Browns and Texans. The Browns, boasting a strong 11-6 finish, good for second in the AFC North, travel to Houston to take on the AFC South champion Texans, despite their 10-7 finish. The Browns, who secured their playoff positioning in Week 17 and rested their starters in Week 18, are surging on offense at just the right time, on the back of Joe Flacco's remarkable production. They’ve tallied 30 points in three of their last four games with Flacco at the helm.

The Texans found their stride late in the season as well, winning seven of their last 10 games, though they fell to the Browns in Week 16, a game where they sorely missed quarterback C.J. Stroud. This time around, Cleveland is still favored on the road, but the stage is set for a tightly contested battle.

Both teams face challenges with key players—the Texans are without wide receiver Noah Brown and have concerns about star pass rusher Will Anderson, while the Browns expect contributions from slightly hampered stars like Amari Cooper, David Njoku, and Myles Garrett, alongside the return of safety Grant Delpit. Let’s check out the data and dig into the key plays and top strategies for this 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.

Browns (23.5) @ Texans (21); Over/Under 44.5

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.