On Sunday night, the 5-5 Los Angeles Rams will host the 8-2 Philadelphia Eagles at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif.
Ahead of this Sunday Night Football showdown, who are the best players to plug in your DFS lineup? Using DraftKings’ prices, let’s build a lineup that could win big on Sunday!
Week 12 SNF DFS Picks
- CAPTAIN: Puka Nacua, $13,800
- FLEX: Jalen Hurts, $10,800
- FLEX: Cooper Kupp, $9,600
- FLEX: Matthew Stafford, $9,000
- FLEX: Joshua Karty, $4,800
- FLEX: Colby Parkinson, $2,000
DFS Strategy: A Top-Heavy Matchup
When you’re trying to build a lineup for a single-game tournament in Showdown Captain Mode, some contests are easier than others. For this week’s Eagles-Rams game, it’s extremely difficult to build a well-rounded squad that you feel confident about.
While there are a lot of fantasy studs to choose from in this game, they are all expensive: Saquon Barkley ($11,200), Hurts ($10,800), A.J. Brown ($9,800), Kupp ($9,600), Kyren Williams ($9,400), Nacua ($9,200), and Stafford ($9,000).
Since this is a very top-heavy matchup, the options fall off a cliff after the players listed above. DeVonta Smith ($7,800) will miss this game with a hamstring injury, so the next-best options are Dallas Goedert ($6,400), Jake Elliott ($5,000), Karty ($4,800), Demarcus Robinson ($4,400), Eagles DST ($4,000), and Rams DST ($3,800).
Typically, you can assemble a nice mix of studs and fantasy-relevant role players, but there just aren’t many bargains to choose from for SNF. That’s why our lineup features a kicker (Karty) and a cheap tight-end flier (Parkinson) who hopefully scores a touchdown.
Also, while our lineup is very Rams-centric, that’s mostly a result of the pricing. The Eagles’ studs are just so expensive that building an appealing lineup around them was virtually impossible. There are some single-game tournaments where I’m super excited about the lineup I built and feel really good about my chances, but this isn’t one of those instances. With this disclaimer out of the way, let’s break down our specific picks.
Captain Puka Nacua Leads the Way
Nacua is perhaps the biggest bargain on the slate, as he costs just $13,800 as a captain and $9,200 as a Flex. He’s the sixth-most expensive player in this game, but he could easily post the most PPR points.
If you extend Nacua’s past five regular-season games in which he has been on the field for at least half the offensive snaps, his 17-game pace is 126 catches for 2,071 yards and seven scores.
Yes, he’s that good.
We saw it on the 38-yard catch-and-run on Los Angeles’ first drive last week, we saw it again on his sprawling 12-yard touchdown (somehow his first score of the season), and we see it seemingly every week from this second-year star.
That's a hell of a touchdown catch by Puka Nacua pic.twitter.com/gLocRtpLRO
— Ben Brown 🌻 (@BenBrownPL) November 17, 2024
We’ve seen four WR1s victimize the Eagles for 20+ PPR points (Jayden Reed, Chris Olave, Mike Evans, and Ja’Marr Chase). Nacua has seen his yards per route, target share, and red-zone target rate all improve from his historic rookie campaign.
While Kupp is great (and also in our lineup), Nacua is our captain because he is the top dog in this passing attack. He’s also somehow cheaper than Kupp.
Betting on Jalen Hurts’ Touchdowns
Hurts now has 11 rushing touchdowns. He has reached double-digit rushing touchdowns in four straight seasons and has 49 total scores on the ground over that span. To put that into context, Christian McCaffrey has only reached double-digit rushing touchdowns in two of his eight seasons. Jerome Bettis only did it twice across his 13-year NFL career.
How do you slow down a unique athlete like this? In theory, you keep him in the pocket, but Hurts has honed that aspect of his game.
In-pocket production, 2024:
- 75.2% completion percentage
- 40.5% first-down rate
- 9.2 yards per attempt
Hurts is the best goal-line player in the game while producing similarly from the pocket as Joe Burrow. The hope here is that Hurts continues his goal-line dominance while also throwing a touchdown or two to players who aren’t in many lineups.