Week 6 Sunday Night Football Single-Game NFL DFS: Top FanDuel & DraftKings Plays

Oct 14, 2023

Sunday Night Football Single-Game DFS: Giants vs. Bills

Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

Welcome to the Showdown Breakdown for Week 6 Sunday Night Football, a clash between the New York Giants and the Buffalo Bills. The Giants find themselves in a precarious situation, teetering on the edge of despair at 1-4 while on the other side, the Bills are caught in a tight divisional race with a 3-2 record, and looking to course-correct after a bad loss to the Jaguars in London in Week 5. To make matters worse for the floundering Giants, they'll be without Daniel Jones, so they're more than happy to welcome back their dynamic running back Saquon Barkley, who returns after a three-game absence. The Bills, despite losing key defensive players in Tredavious White and Matt Milano in past weeks, are marching forward, and are still favored heavily in this matchup. For DFS players, this game promises a spectrum of strategies to explore, so let's dig into the numbers and narratives that could shape 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.}

Giants (+15, 14.5) @ Bills (-15, 29.5); Over/Under 45

The betting lines have the Bills favored by a staggering 15 points in this game, with a strong implied total of 29.5 points. The Bills have generally favored the air attack with quarterback Josh Allen, but their pace of play doesn't reveal any sense of urgency—they're sitting at a shockingly low 30th in the league in pace of play. Allen, however, has shown a penchant for taking shots downfield which more than makes up for the lack of pace aggressiveness. He ranks 12th in targets of 20-plus air yards and is eighth in average depth of target (aDOT). However, if the Bills build a substantial lead, as the spread suggests, don't be surprised if they eventually switch gears to a ground-and-pound approach.

Meanwhile, the Giants' implied total stands at a paltry 14.5, putting the game's over/under at a mere 44.0. Traditionally, they've leaned more pass-heavy and faster in terms of pace of play than the league average. But those pace stats are all accumulated with Daniel Jones under center. With Tyrod Taylor taking snaps (and Saquon Barkley back on the field) we may be in for a game plan that's significantly more conservative. If, however, the scoreboard starts severely tilting in favor of Buffalo, the Giants will be forced to abandon that plan and air it out, which could lead to some truly disastrous results.

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.}

Josh Allen has been nothing short of spectacular this season. For a player maligned early in his career for being horribly inaccurate, he's more than just corrected course—in 2023 he's become the poster child for accuracy. He leads the NFL in both catchable target rate and completion percentage versus expectation while still playing as aggressively as ever. When he's operating from a clean pocket or using play-action, his completion percentage ranks among the top-five quarterbacks in the league. And that story is the exact same when he is in the red zone, a far cry from last year when he was extremely turnover-prone in that area of the field. Even his deep-ball accuracy places him in the top three quarterbacks, showcasing his all-around dominant play at this point in the season.

His per-drive and per-game metrics on the chart above are just as strong, as he ranks top four in Expected Points Added (EPA) per game and Expected Drive Success Rate. Despite seeing fewer red zone rushing attempts compared to previous seasons, Allen's numbers indicate he may be on his way to the most efficient season of his career. Now he faces a Giants' defense that sits at 17th in schedule-adjusted fantasy points allowed to opposing quarterbacks.

The Giants' offense, already struggling for consistency, now has to navigate this contest with a quarterback who hasn't started an NFL game in years. Tyrod Taylor has a mere 23 pass attempts since the 2021 season. When he was a starter for the Bills from 2015–2017, he was far from explosive as a passer and operated as more of a game manager. Taylor never averaged more than 216 passing yards in any of those seasons and broke the 300-yard barrier only once in 45 games. Essentially, we're looking at a quarterback who could offer a performance similar to that of Daniel Jones, who is highlighted on the chart above to show that it can't get much worse at quarterback for Giants' fans. Jones's per-drive and per-game efficiency have been decidedly terrible, and Taylor is expected to helm a similar offensive scheme with similar effectiveness. To Taylor's credit, in four games with 20-plus pass attempts in 2021, he managed to score 19 or more DraftKings points twice in that span, speaking to a small bit of upside even in a tough passing matchup.