FanDuel Daily Fantasy Football Helper: Week 9 Sunday Night (Bills at Bengals)

The potential for a high-scoring matchup for tonight's Sunday Night Football matchup makes for an entertaining single-game slate.

The Buffalo Bills are traveling to face the Bengals. The total is 50.5, and the Cincinnati Bengals are narrow 1.5-point home favorites, according to the NFL odds at FanDuel Sportsbook.

Before we dig in more, don't forget to brush up on some single-game daily fantasy football strategy.

And just a reminder: numberFire has daily fantasy football projections for this slate specifically to help you with your lineup decisions.

Bills/Bengals Single-Game DFS Breakdown

A tight spread and a high total makes for a QB-friendly MVP type of slate, historically, so we need to think long and hard about both Josh Allen ($17,000) and Joe Burrow ($15,000) in the MVP slot.

Allen is projected by numberFire's model for a slate-high 21.9 FanDuel points, but Burrow's close by at 21.3. The salary gap of $2,000 is very notable as a result. My simulation model has Allen with 31.5% odds to be the top-scorer on the slate with Burrow at 26.8%. Given the salary discrepancy, both are very viable MVP candidates.

We've also got two standout WRs on the board: Ja'Marr Chase ($16,000) and Stefon Diggs ($14,500). That's noteworthy because WRs tend to be the perfect lineup MVP in similar game environments at a higher rate than the full-sample average, according to my database.

Chase has a 33.5% target share (12.1 targets per game) and is averaging 93.7 yards per game. Diggs' numbers are very similar: 32.8% target share, 11.3 targets per game, and 93.5 yards per game.

The easiest way to differentiate at MVP this week is with Burrow because Allen is the presumptive favorite. But Chase and Diggs are great process MVP plays to stack with their QB when we choose to take a stand in certain lineups about which team will click better offensively.

My simulations have Chase at 14.0% likely to lead the slate in FanDuel points; Diggs' odds are 12.7%.

Let's move to the home team more specifically.

In four games with Chase, Tee Higgins ($10,000), and Tyler Boyd ($9,500) all playing at least 60% of the snaps, Chase's target share is still strong: 29.7%. Higgins' is 23.0%, and Boyd's is 15.5%.

Higgins is averaging more air yards (107.7) in that split than Chase (87.8). Boyd's air yards average is only 37.5, so he's best paired in lineups where we think he's stealing touchdowns or that the game is lower-scoring.

Joe Mixon ($12,500) in these games has a 10.1% target share and an average of 15.3 carries and 3.8 targets for 87.0 total yards per game. Notably, Mixon has a 91.7% red zone rushing share in these four matchups -- plus a 43.8% overall red zone rushing share.

Mixon makes sense at MVP as a pivot in case the touchdowns trend his way and people shy away because of his questionable tag. His 7.0% odds to be the MVP, per my simulations, are the only other odds better than 2.5% along with the two QBs and the WR1s.

Let's look at the Bills.

They played without Dawson Knox last week, and in that game, both Diggs and Gabriel Davis ($11,500) saw 12 targets and caught 9 of them. Diggs put up 70 yards on his catches; Davis had 87 and a score.

Tight end Dalton Kincaid ($8,000) ran 76.2% of the team's routes and saw 7 targets of his own: 5 catches for 65 yards and a touchdown. The other noteworthy piece in the passing offense is Khalil Shakir ($7,000), who had a 73.8% route rate and 6 targets (6 catches for 92 yards and a healthier average target depth than his teamates). These two gives us plenty of value to get to Allen lineups.

James Cook ($10,500) was involved as a route-runner last week (54.8%) despite seeing just one target. He still out-carried Latavius Murray ($8,000) 14 to 5 and had more red zone carries (3 to 2), as well.

Notably, slates with totals of 48.5 or higher and spreads of 3.5 or tighter are not particularly defense- or kicker-friendly relative to a full sample of games. That's not to say that you can't go that route, but the trends say it's a less likely game environment for kickers and defenses to make it into the perfect lineup.

Final Thoughts

Perhaps the most interesting trend about games that fit a profile like this is that a 2QB lineup (i.e. playing both Allen and Burrow) is a more common stipulation than over the full sample in my database. It's hard -- at first -- to look at a 2QB lineup and love it, but value with Kincaid and Shakir make it feasible. Starting a lineup with Allen and Burrow leaves you $9,333, on average, for three more players.

When aiming to move away from the QBs in the MVP slot, my simulation odds put the emphasis on either Chase or Diggs, which isn't surprising. With that said, pivoting away from Allen and Burrow make it pretty easy to pivot to an alpha WR1 as your MVP choice, so we probably don't need to overthink it as a baseline strategy.

Mixon and Cook are also justifiable pivots (Mixon much more so), but with these two teams, the market shares flow primarily through certain players, thus making five players (Allen, Burrow, Chase, Diggs, and Mixon) take up 92.0% of MVP outputs across 10,000 slate simulations in my model.

Interested in playing NFL DFS? Head over to FanDuel’s daily fantasy football lobby to see all the offerings for this week's slates.

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The above author is a FanDuel employee and is not eligible to compete in public daily fantasy contests or place sports betting wagers on FanDuel. The advice provided by the author does not necessarily represent the views of FanDuel. Taking the author's advice will not guarantee a successful outcome. You should use your own judgment when participating in daily fantasy contests or placing sports wagers.