Super Bowl Dfs: Jaxon Smith-njigba, Hunter Henry, George Holani Among Top Draftkings Plays

My best advice for those building DraftKings lineups for this Sunday's Super Bowl would be to start with a narrative-based approach.

Make sure your lineups tell a story, especially if you’re entering said lineup in a DraftKings contest with tens or hundreds of thousands of entries. Piece together a lineup as if you are correct. Don’t hedge.

Asking yourself some simple questions is a good place to start. If this quarterback and his two primary pass catchers go off, who on the other offense is likely to at least get a chance to go off? If a running back goes ballistic and a team is ultra run-heavy, that probably means the team’s QB and pass catchers won’t get there for DFS purposes.

Do you think this Super Bowl matchup will be a defensive rock fight? A back-and-forth affair? Something in between? These are key questions to ask oneself while making Draftkings showdown lineups.

Think narratively in your lineup construction and I think you’ll make the sort of high variance lineups that either tank or explode in large-field DraftKings contests. Below are some thoughts on how New England and Seattle matchup against each other and who is likely to benefit the most.

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▶ Patriots

I’m going to start with a bold assertion, perhaps too bold: Drake Maye’s matchup against the Seahawks is not a good one. I said it. Sue me (please don’t).

But does it matter? It’s a real question I have after swimming in the matchup data over the past couple days as Patrick Daugherty and I podcast from Super Bowl Radio Row in San Francisco, which is teeming with NFL players and coaches. Even kickers are here. It’s a party.

Back to Maye: He’s facing a Seattle defense that plays one of the highest rates of zone coverage. That should be a plus for Maye, who has wrecked zone looks all year. He’s third in adjusted yards per attempt against zone; he’s first in completion rate over expected when facing zone; and third in quarterback rating, trailing only Josh Allen and Matthew Stafford.

Let’s dig a little deeper. Seattle’s defense this season has used cover-6 zone schemes at an 18 percent clip, the third highest in the NFL. So how has Maye fared against cover-6 looks? Well, he ranks 19th out of 34 qualifying QBs in adjusted yards per attempt vs. cover-6, alongside C.J. Stroud and Bo Nix (and Patrick Mahomes). Maye, however, has a top-10 completion rate over expected against cover-6 looks this year. He’s not necessarily bad against these coverages, but he doesn’t excel either.

I don’t think we can expect anything close to the rushing production Maye had in the AFC title game against the Broncos, when he went for 65 yards on ten rushes. Denver’s defense plays one of the league’s highest rates of man coverage, which is usually conducive to inflated QB scrambles because defenders often have their backs to the passer. Quarterbacks facing the zone-heavy Seahawks defense this season have averaged 3.5 rushes per game, the fourth lowest mark.

My theory for now is that a big game for Maye will come through the air. That would mean you would need to stack Maye with at least two pass catchers, including one (both?) of his deep threats, Mack Hollins and Kayshon Boutte. Maye in 2025 threw deep against zone looks more than almost any other QB in the league. In the Super Bowl he will face off against a Seahawks secondary allowing the third lowest yards per attempt on deep attempts.

If you (reasonably) think the Seahawks’ excellence against downfield throws will force Maye to dump it off to his short-area guys, you’re going to stack him with Hunter Henry and Stefon Diggs and possibly Rhamondre Stevenson, who over the Patriots’ past four games has logged 69 routes to just 21 for TreyVeon Henderson. Henry, meanwhile, faces a Seattle defense allowing fifth-most tight end targets and receptions per game. Pairing Maye with at least two of these pass catchers could very well be a viable DFS strategy against a Seahawks defense seeing the NFL’s highest rate of checkdown passes (12 percent).

▶ Seahawks

Analyzing the Seahawks offense and how it matches up against New England isn’t quite as interesting as looking powerfully into the Pats offense. That’s because the entire Seattle offense funnels through Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who has taken in one-third of the team’s targets and half of the team’s air yards this season.

Wonky game script is probably the only thing that can shut down JSN here. The Seahawks offense is predicated on getting him open and creating easy throws for Sam Darnold to one of the game’s most explosive pass catchers. If Seattle’s defense dominates in the Super Bowl and allows Darnold and the Seattle offense to take the air out of the ball, JSN will (likely) prove to be a suboptimal DFS option. Otherwise, he’s going to cook. Don’t get too cute here.

Kenneth Walker III in the NFC title game against the Rams saw 19 of the team’s 22 rushing attempts, with George Holani getting the other three. Here’s where it gets interesting: Holani logged 17 pass routes to 16 for Walker and both backs saw four targets. I think there is a chance to get weird and unique in large-field tournaments this Sunday by playing both Walker and Holani, especially if you think the Hawks will lean toward the run against the run-funnel New England defense. Plenty of DFS players will have one back or the other in their lineups; very few will deploy both guys.

AJ Barner will have some interest if you build your DFS lineups based on the idea of an unusually pass-heavy Seattle offense. Barner has run 77 percent of the team’s routes in the postseason, though he’s been targeted on an abysmal 7 percent of those routes.

Cooper Kupp has seen a strange resurgence in two postseason games. He’s being targeted on 26 percent of his routes, far higher than his season-long rate of 17 percent. Seemingly healthy and getting open as opposing secondaries focus on stopping JSN, Kupp becomes a must-play if you’re intent on using Darnold in your lineups. The Patriots, I would guess, would be perfectly fine with a bunch of short Kupp receptions over the downfield JSN back breakers we’ve seen all season.