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The daily fantasy football outlook for the Week 7 opener between the Cleveland Browns and Denver Broncos is bleak at best.
The regular fantasy contributors in the Cleveland offense are either out of the game or significantly affected by the long injury report.
Case Keenum is starting at quarterback, and D’Ernest Johnson and Demetric Felton expected to split the duties in the Cleveland backfield with Nick Chubb and Kareen Hunt hurt. Odell Beckham Jr. is also listed as questionable after he suffered a shoulder injury in the Week 6 loss to the Arizona Cardinals.
Denver comes into FirstEnergy Stadium off three consecutive losses in which its offense did not look stellar with Teddy Bridgewater at the helm. The Broncos have the safer DFS options for Thursday’s game, but their impact could be negated by Cleveland’s pass rush.
No matter which way you put it, you are going to have to use players who typically would not be the focal point of DFS lineups to land in the money spots.
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Cleveland’s tight end group is the only one of the team’s positional units on offense to trust Thursday.
Johnson and Felton have not been in featured roles in the backfield before, so there is a chance they are ineffective in support of Keenum.
The same could be said about Donovan Peoples-Jones at wide receiver if Beckham is unable to go. The wide receiver is officially listed as questionable with his shoulder injury, per the team’s injury report.
If Peoples-Jones is the No. 1 target, he will have more attention from Denver’s secondary. He thrived in Week 6 with the Arizona Cardinals defensive backs shadowing Beckham.
That leaves David Njoku, Harrison Bryant and Austin Hooper as the most reliable pass-catchers in the Cleveland offense.
Njoku is the team’s leading receiver with 266 yards. He and Hooper have a touchdown reception apiece. Bryant has six catches on 10 targets for 69 yards. Njoku is the best option of the three, followed by Hooper and Bryant in that order.
In most weeks, Denver’s low concessions against opposing tight ends would be concerning for this matchup. The Broncos have allowed 222 receiving yards and no touchdowns to tight ends through six weeks. But on Thursday, the tight ends will be the best targets for Keenum to call on. They should let him gain confidence with short passes and could be vital to red-zone success.
If Beckham is out, it might be worth adding two of Cleveland’s tight ends in a lineup stack because the options will be slim at wide receiver.
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Courtland Sutton has been the most consistent player in the Denver offense.
Even during the Broncos’ recent struggles, Sutton made a fantasy impact with a touchdown against the Pittsburgh Steelers and Las Vegas Raiders. Sutton hauled in 15 of his 25 targets from Bridgewater to make the best of a rough offensive situation.
Denver’s No. 1 wide receiver has turned in a pair of 100-yard games and another 94-yard output from Week 6 to begin his season.
Tim Patrick and Noah Fant have performed well at times, but Sutton has been the one constant target in the Denver offense.
With so many top players out, Sutton will have a high roster percentage for Thursday night DFS contests, but he is worth a slot because of how often he should see the ball.
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Jack Dempsey/Associated Press
The outlook is not great for either running back tandem Thursday night.
Cleveland’s Johnson-Felton duo is as inexperienced as they come in starting roles, and Denver’s fourth-best rushing defense will make life difficult on them.
Denver built a nice pairing between Melvin Gordon III and Javonte Williams, but they are going up against the NFL’s sixth-best rushing defense.
Cleveland and Denver both give up under four yards per carry, and each unit allowed five rushing touchdowns in the first six games.
If you add Denver’s near-even rushing splits to Cleveland’s inexperienced backfield, you have a potential recipe for disaster at running back.
The strong rushing defenses could even take away red-zone scores for the quartet of running backs.
If you had to choose one pairing, Denver would get the edge because of their experience. But if both defenses play like they have in the first six weeks, that might not matter much, if at all.
Statistics obtained from Pro Football Reference.
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