First off, Black Friday is not a holiday and celebrating it with an NFL game on a Friday night is just wrong, but I like football, so here we go! For this season’s one Friday night game, we get the Chicago Bears taking on the Eagles in Philadelphia. The Eagles are 7-point favorites, but haven’t been their Super Bowl champion selves of late. The Bears keep winning, but make things look really tough against not great teams.
The Eagles still look to be the superior team and will play at home, so the 7-point spread makes sense, but there is no reason to believe the Eagles have this one wrapped up before setting cleats to field.
The Bears defense is hurting and hasn’t played well this season. They’ve allowed 26.5 points per game to rank 26th in the league, while the Eagles have allowed 20.5 points per game to rank 8th. Both teams have allowed more than the average amount of yards per play, with the Bears ranked 30th at 6.1 ypp, while the Eagles rank 17th at 5.4 yards per play. But overall, the Eagles aren’t allowing much in the way of fantasy points to their opponents, while the Bears are.
The Eagles concentrate their touches very narrowly between Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley, A.J. Brown, Devonta Smith, and sometimes Dallas Goedert. The Bears spread things out more, as Caleb Williams, D’Andre Swift, Kyle Monangai, Rome Odunze, DJ Moore, Luther Burden, and Colston Loveland all have enough fantasy upside to be useful for your pretend teams.
Below we will take a look at the best DFS plays for this Black Friday showdown.
Jalen Hurts, QB, Eagles (FLEX $13,000, CPT $19,500)
With Saquon Barkley in a bit of a funk (i.e. his offensive line isn’t as good as it was last year), Hurts sometimes needs to take over as a runner. We saw that last week as he rushed for two touchdowns against the Cowboys. Since he’s not helping other players score, his rushing touchdowns coupled with whatever he can get through the air, make him a useful captain’s pick most weeks.
Caleb Williams, QB, Bears (FLEX $12,600, CPT $18,900)
I usually don’t love using quarterbacks who aren’t consistently putting up good rushing touchdowns in the captain’s slot, but Williams does have a lot of rushing upside, including three touchdowns, and the Eagles have had trouble with rushing quarterbacks this season, allowing the third-most rushing touchdowns to quarterbacks this season.
AJ Brown, WR, Eagles (FLEX $11,600, CPT $17,400)
Picking between AJ Brown and Smith is always tough. Brown has been seeing a bunch of work after he complained about his usage, while Smith is a little banged up. Both have great upside and I could see playing both if you can make it work. Brown does lead the team in redzone targets and probably has the higher upside due to that fact.
Luther Burden, WR, Bears (FLEX $4,200, CPT $6,300)
Burden has seen a good uptick in usage over the last two games, but his price to roster him on FanDuel is still pretty low. I expect he’ll be rostered at a big percentage due to the lack of cheap plays in this matchup, but he’s someone with such good upside coupled by price and recent increase in snaps, that I think you have to play him.
Colston Loveland, TE, Bears (FLEX $5,800, CPT $8,700)
Loveland, like Burden, has seen his usage increase of late and he’s turned that increased work into fantasy points. The Eagles have been stout against tight ends, but again, this game has very few value plays and Loveland has wide receiver ability that makes him tougher to cover than your normal tight end.
Dallas Goedert, TE, Eagles (FLEX $7,000, CPT $10,500)
Goedert hasn’t had a red zone target over his last three games, but he’s been a touchdown machine prior. The Bears have been weak against tight ends this season, ranking seventh-worst in schedule adjusted fantasy points allowed to the position. I think he gets back on the touchdown train this week.
