Monday Night Football has a 41.5 projected total as the Cleveland Browns (3-8) head to the Mile High City to take on the much improved Broncos, who are 5.5-point home favorites. The thin total and relatively close spread for this Week 13 showdown demands sharp NFL DFS decisions. In this breakdown, we’ll explore the key NFL DFS ownership projections and player projections for DraftKings and FanDuel, helping you build standout lineups for the MNF slate.
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NFL DFS Picks: Browns-Broncos Monday Night Football Week 13
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NFL DFS Picks for Browns-Broncos Monday Night Football Week 13: Jameis Winston
Jameis Winston
DFS Salary
DraftKings: $9,600
FanDuel: $15,000
Fantasy Points
DraftKings: 14.77
FanDuel: 14.16
This season in his four starts, Jameis Winston has averaged 295.8 yards per game, throwing six total touchdowns and four interceptions. He has been sacked a dozen times, which is a similar rate as Deshaun Watson. Winston already has more fantasy production than Watson in three fewer starts.
It is going to be cold in Denver but nothing like what we saw in Buffalo last night or Green Bay last week. The wind is negligible, and temperatures will be sliding from the low-40s into the upper-30s through the game.
Denver once again has a top-notch defense and the only quarterbacks to put up 238-plus yards have been Lamar Jackson (280 yards, three touchdowns and zero interceptions) in Week 9 and Patrick Mahomes (266/1/0) in Week 10. Bryce Young (224/2/2) has been the only opposing signal-caller to have a multi-touchdown game, outside of Jackson.
Winston is a long shot for the multiplier slot, but he has the swagger and confidence to play like there is no tomorrow. Well, technically, he is playing for his next gig, which could be a starting slot for one of the desperate teams in the league. It will be tougher considering he doesn’t have Amari Cooper, and now surprise WR1 Cedric Tillman is out with a concussion. Famous Jameis is going to keep throwing, which means fantasy points for either the Browns offense or the Denver defense.
Cleveland Browns Positional Preview
Running Back | Browns-Broncos NFL DFS Picks for Monday Night Football Week 13
Nick Chubb played on 66% of the snaps last week, but it has been a meandering path that saw him return to action in Week 7, with snap shares of 36%, 61%, 35% and 30%. Chubb has seven targets in his five games, which is around where his traditional rates have been. He did get two touchdowns against Pittsburgh in Week 12 and one in his return against Cincinnati. Derrick Henry had two rushing touchdowns in Week 9, which are the only running back rushing touchdowns allowed by Denver in the last six games.
Jerome Ford is the clear backup, with Pierre Strong Jr. seeing his snaps fall from 12 to seven to none last week. If Denver is able to get ahead by double digits, Ford will likely supplant Chubb on at least half of the snaps since he is the far better receiver and still a capable runner.
Wide Receiver | Browns-Broncos NFL DFS Picks for Monday Night Football Week 13
Former Bronco Jerry Jeudy is likely to garner the attention of Patrick Surtain II, though there is always the chance that Denver has their second-generation cover man just locking down his half of the field, come what may. Jeudy also works out of the slot, so he should at least see some chances away from Surtain.
Elijah Moore has seen his targets decline in the four games with Winston from 12 to nine to eight and then five last week. Of course, this workload is still a solid baseline, and it shouldn’t take much to see him back around eight on Monday Night Football. The second-round selection by the New York Jets in the 2021 NFL Draft has flashed upside, but then he disappears for weeks at a time. Essentially, he is a replacement-level option but with a touch of upside given the missing options that began the season with him.
Rookie Jamari Thrash or journeyman Jaelon Darden are the most likely options to fill out three-wideout sets, with Thrash having the tentative edge. Kadarius Toney (wait, he is on the Browns?!) is still lurking, though he is pretty much out of chances at this point in time. He should at least be elevated from the practice squad, where he has languished since early September. Toney was on the field for six snaps in Week 11, getting one carry for a 7-yard loss. Of course, that does not tarnish the two Super Bowl rings he earned with Kansas City, but dang — this is a rough way to go out.
Tight End | Browns-Broncos NFL DFS Picks for Monday Night Football Week 13
David Njoku performed well last year with Joe Flacco under center, had good games in Weeks 6 and 7 (21 combined targets) with Watson, but his best work since last year has been with Winston. Njoku has seven, seven, nine and five targets, and he has strong prospects for seven or more tonight. Denver has been strong against tight ends, as Travis Kelce (eight catches for 64 yards and a touchdown) and Brock Bowers (8/97/1) in Week 5 are the only players with more than 50 yards and account for two of the three touchdowns. The Broncos contained Bowers in Week 11 to just 4/38/0 on 10 targets.
Geoff Swaim is likely to miss a second game with a concussion, which should give Blake Whiteheart his second game with offensive snaps on the season. Jordan Akins is the TE2 but an underrated single-game-format option, as he has seven games of three or more targets.
Kicker | Browns-Broncos NFL DFS Picks for Monday Night Football Week 13
Dustin Hopkins is pretty much a real-life version of a video game create-a-player. He has been in the league for a decade, seeing action for three different franchises while being pretty much average at every aspect of his job. OK, he does not have the consistent range of younger kickers, though while he is 27 of 46 (59%) for his career from 50-plus yards and 4 of 8 this year, he nailed all eight from that distance last season.
Defense | Browns-Broncos NFL DFS Picks for Monday Night Football Week 13
The Browns defense ranks in the bottom 2 of the league with just eight takeaways, including only two interceptions. Meanwhile, Denver is in the top third of the league in avoiding giveaways, and Bo Nix is on a heater of protecting the football — we will get to that shortly.
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NFL DFS Picks for Browns-Broncos Monday Night Football Week 13: Bo Nix
Bo Nix
DFS Salary
DraftKings: $10,000
FanDuel: $16,500
Fantasy Points
DraftKings: 17.86
FanDuel: 17.71
Rookie Bo Nix continues to see improvement each week, which, of course, is key. It should be no surprise he struggled in his first four games, three of which were on the road. In this timeframe, he topped 140 passing yards twice, tossing one touchdown against four interceptions.
The team still managed to go 2-2 with a strong defense, and Nix did rush for a pair of touchdowns and 110 yards.
Beginning in Week 5, he has authored six games with at least two passing touchdowns and two more total rushing scores. Even more impressive, he has a 14-2 touchdown-to-interception ratio. Denver’s only losses in this span have been to the Chargers and on the road to the Ravens and Chiefs, all likely playoff teams.
Six different quarterbacks have thrown for two scores against Cleveland this season, though only Jalen Hurts (264/2/0), Lamar Jackson (289/2/0), Justin Herbert (282/2/0) and Russell Wilson (270/1/0) have topped 250 yards. The Browns’ bend-but-don’t-break model has kept the team in games, but this unit has only one interception, and that was all the way back in Week 5 against rookie Jayden Daniels.
Denver Broncos Positional Preview
Running Back | Browns-Broncos NFL DFS Picks for Monday Night Football Week 13
For as promising as the quarterback picture has been, the Broncos have been a disaster at running back. Javonte Williams is one more year removed from his knee injury; however, he has not been particularly exciting, and frankly, he has been barely above average.
The team thought enough of Jaleel McLaughlin and rookie Audric Estime that it was willing to release veteran Samaje Perine in the final preseason cuts. McLaughlin continues to see some work in the passing game, though it has been Williams leading this group with 48 targets to the 18 of McLaughlin. All three of Estime’s targets were in Week 11, and he seems like more of a two-down back.
On the rushing front, Williams has 120 carries for 445 yards and a trio of touchdowns, but that is barely ahead of McLaughlin, who has 66/283/1. Estime has 38/179/0, and it appears he is going to need an injury or more garbage time to break out of his miniscule role.
Nix is second on the team with 300 rushing yards and four touchdowns, but overall the team is averaging 111.6 rushing yards per game, which is league average. Last but not least, fullback Michael Burton has seven targets this season but just five carries for 4 yards.
Wide Receiver | Browns-Broncos NFL DFS Picks for Monday Night Football Week 13
Courtland Sutton has benefited from Jeudy moving on, and the second-round selection of the 2018 NFL Draft has meshed well with Nix. He has at least eight targets in eight games and 10-plus in five matchups. This gives him double the looks of pretty much everyone else on the team, as his 95 targets are well above runner-up Williams (48).
Lil’Jordan Humphrey is a favorite of coach Sean Payton, and he has at least three targets in each of the last six games while averaging four per tilt during this period. Devaughn Vele has passed fellow rookie Troy Franklin (Nix’s teammate at Oregon) and second-year enigma Marvin Mims Jr.
Since Week 6, Vele has averaged nearly five targets per game, and he trails only Sutton with 14 opportunities over the last two games. The DraftKings algorithm has noted this trend and has doubled Vele’s salary cap figure when compared to the other non-Sutton wideouts.
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Tight End | Browns-Broncos NFL DFS Picks for Monday Night Football Week 13
The tight end position has pretty much been relegated to blocking duties, with only eight targets over the last four games. Greg Dulcich played the first four games prior to being banished to the shadow realm, though his 12 targets are still aligned with Adam Trautman (15) and Lucas Krull (14).
Trautman, like Humphrey, was also a player under Payton with New Orleans. He is a competent blocker, but pass catching was never his primary purpose. Nate Adkins is not as good of a blocker, but he is still an NFL-caliber option who is slightly better than average as a receiver. Still, it is hard to tell with this dearth of volume. Krull is the most promising receiver, but the second-year UDFA out of Pittsburgh is perpetually skating on thin ice.
Kicker | Browns-Broncos NFL DFS Picks for Monday Night Football Week 13
Wil Lutz has made the transition from calling the climate-controlled Superdome home for six seasons to kicking in the thin Denver air. While he never was really one for long distance kicks, four of his seven misses have been from 50-plus yards since changing venues. It will be cold in Denver on Sunday night, though not frigid — well, as compared to Green Bay on Thursday and Buffalo last night.
Defense | Browns-Broncos NFL DFS Picks for Monday Night Football Week 13
Though this unit is not quite as dominant as the Orange Crush defense of the 70s, the 2024 iteration is leading the league with 44 sacks while also being in the top 10 teams for takeaways.
NFL DFS Picks for Browns-Broncos Monday Night Football Week 13: Rankings
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Now, let’s dive into the final rankings for the Browns-Broncos Monday Night Football slate.
Top 10 NFL DFS Showdown Picks for Browns-Broncos
- Bo Nix: Captain, My Captain.
- Courtland Sutton: Tops the DraftKings salary sheet, falling behind the quarterbacks on FanDuel with the half-PPR scoring format.
- Jameis Winston: Face it, the league is more fun with him as a starter.
- David Njoku: Not elite but absolutely in the second tier.
- Jerry Jeudy: Get ready for a “Remember Me?!” touchdown.
- Devaughn Vele: Drop him three spots on FanDuel.
- Broncos D/ST: Winston is always down to facilitate a pick-6 or scoop-and-score, along with a handful of sacks.
- Wil Lutz: Solid salary saver, second season in Denver after being a Payton guy in New Orleans. Has acceptable results now that he is an outdoor kicker.
- Nick Chubb: The lack of pass-catching upside, lofty salary and turning 29 years old later this month make for a tough combination to offset his RB1 salary. The biggest worry is that he reprises his last game with two touchdowns.
- Elijah Moore: Should elevate with Tillman sidelined.
Secondary Options
- Javonte Williams: Priced appropriately for having the largest piece of a very shared pie.
- Dustin Hopkins: Hard to trust, but we have seen kickers come off the street and luck into a handful of field goals out of nowhere in this fickle game.
- Jerome Ford: Will get a half dozen opportunities; anything more will need a catalyst of Cleveland playing from behind or something befalling Chubb in-game.
- Jaleel McLaughlin: Similar prospects as Ford, though Williams is a fine receiver, relegating McLaughlin to change of pace.
- Lil’ Jordan Humphrey: Legitimately in play for what could be a low-scoring game.
Lottery Tickets
- Cleveland D/ST: Lack of takeaways is alarming, plus Nix has been pretty good on that front himself.
- Marvin Mims Jr. and Troy Franklin: Mims can always get lucky with a long catch or a kick return; Franklin has the college connection.
- Jordan Akins, Blake Whiteheart and Jamari Thrash: Anything can happen with Winston at quarterback, though this trio projects for 3.1 combined targets.
- Audric Estime, Lucas Krull, Adam Trautman and Nate Adkins: Playing for a touchdown; not impossible but very improbable.
- Kadarius Toney, Pierre Strong Jr., Jaelon Darden, James Proche II and Michael Burton: Strong and Darden handle kickoff returns, with Darden and Proche getting punt returns. If Toney is active, it will be at the expense of Darden or Proche.
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