Patriots vs. Seahawks Showdown Breakdown (Episode 1020 with Adam Levitan, Cody Main, and Sam Brott)

Adam Levitan (0:13)

Hello, and welcome to the 2026 NFL season. My name is Adam Levitan, and we are gathered here today to talk about actual, real life, NFL, regular season football, Patriots at Seahawks Super Bowl rematch is tomorrow night, and of course, tons of action in the DFS Showdown Streets for that game. Joining me today are two of the most dedicated NFL DFS Showdown Virgins you will ever meet, Showdown Specialist and King of the Size slash Mass Streets, Cody Main. How's it going today?

Cody, I can't hear you.

Cody Main (0:58)

Tech Lord difficulties to kick off the season. It wouldn't be an ETR show without that. It feels good to be back. It feels good to be back. It's almost time to put the pencils down. It's almost time to start the damn games. I'm feeling good.

Adam Levitan (1:08)

Indeed. It's enough already.

We need to start the games like two weeks ago. It's ridiculous. Anyways, Lord of the Simbrows from our data site and NFL teams, Sam Brott, how's it going today?

Sam Brott (1:20)

It's going great. I'm with you guys. You know, we needed to start the games a long time ago. Preseason was great, but this lull we've had with the extended training camps and everything this year, like September 9th is way too late to get started.

Adam Levitan (1:32)

Yeah. And like every player, not every player, but most of the players who had injury scares, you know, Alec Pearce, Jeremiah Love, Ashton Genti, I Could Keep Going, Luther Burden, Tyler Warren, Breece Hall, all these guys that were quote unquote hurt. Seems like they're all going to be OK for week one or at least play here in week one. So, yeah, there was so much FUD out there. Hope you guys had a great drafting season. It is now time, though, to play the greatest game there is, DFS. On today's show, we are going to talk all things Patriots, Seahawks, from a DFS showdown perspective. We'll go position by position. We'll give a flag plant at the end. Reminder, most of these shows will be part of our NFL in-season product through the season. In other words, not free here on YouTube. Part of the in-season product. That means our showdown shows Establish The Show with myself, Sylvan Wiggins, Establish The Million with Dink and Leone, Weekly Man Vs Machine, Silva Vs Leone, Weekly Projections Contact Show, Survivor Show with Cody, tons more. All of those shows are part of our in-season product, along with projections, Silvas matchups, ton more there. So head to establishtherun.com and check out the in-season product. And if you have DraftKit and you want to upgrade to bundle, shoot a note to support at establishtherun.com and we'll take care of your upgrade there. So again, if you have DraftKit, you want to upgrade to bundle, shoot a note to support at establishtherun.com.

All right.

There's some stuff changing here in the NFL and in the showdown streets here, Cody. I think a big thing was kicker stuff, any quick thoughts on changes for this year that you see that are important for the showdown streets.

Cody Main (3:21)

I felt really good to go back through the last couple of years worth of data from a couple of different angles seeing what the field has been doing, seeing what DraftKings has been doing from a pricing perspective, and then to actually look at what's been happening on the field. We know that there's been rule changes to kickoffs, we know that there's been rule changes to the k-balls that the kickers can actually use. I think all of those things are really important to try to analyze. This is probably the biggest format where kickers matter the most is DFS and his showdown. I think looking through those three angles helps to get a picture of what we should be doing with kickers. I think it's probably one of the biggest changes the format has had over the last couple of years since the early days and I think from an on-field perspective it's really tough to deny that kickers have become more valuable components to showdown slates. We can see that in 2025, for example, they scored 10 plus points 38.4% of the time compared to 33.7% of the time in 2021

They went north of 15 points, 10.3% of the time in 2025 compared to 7% of the time in 2021 So you can see the trend of kickers simply getting better. It's not really a trend. It's just simply a benefactor of the rule changes over the last couple of years. I think that's important, but I think the component that gets lost when watching how well these kickers are performing on primetime showdown slates is that, A, they've become more popular, the field has become aware of these things and they're more owned in 2025 than they were in 2021 and B, they've become more expensive. It feels natural to gravitate towards kickers more often than we have in the past because of how well they're performing on the field. You have to factor in those other components. It's something I want to keep an eye on this season. Both Andy Borgalis and Jason Meyers who are on this slate tonight are pretty expensive, coming up are pretty expensive and I expect the field to want to own them. We'll see where ownership ultimately lands, but the kicker analysis is up on the site. I think it's a worthwhile read as you try to figure out how to handle these guys, but the general consensus that I came to after going through this process was that the way that they project now, the way that they're performing now has kind of been caught up with by the DraftKings pricing algorithm and the rest of the field.