FanDuel Daily Fantasy Football Helper: Thanksgiving Slate

If you've never played daily fantasy football on FanDuel before, it's time to start. Unlike traditional leagues, you're able to select the players you want on that specific day only, giving you a different squad to root for each and every week.

Here at numberFire we offer great tools for premium members. The analysis below is meant to help you understand why some of these players are top picks in our tools and projections because we don't want you going into the weekend completely blind. We want to help you. Keep in mind, however, that things can change drastically if an injury is announced, so make sure you're double checking the tools and projections as close as possible to kickoff.

This is for the Thursday-only slate, which features three games.

Let's get to it!

Minnesota at Detroit

Because game theory is even more vital on a three-game slate than a bigger slate (you probably won't win if you go with the most obvious lineup construction), I'm going to to game-by-game rather than position by position for the Thanksgiving slate.

Starting us off, we have the Minnesota Vikings at the Detroit Lions, a game with an over/under of 44.5. Minnesota is a 3.0-point road favorite, giving us implied totals of 23.75 and 20.75 for the Vikings and Lions, respectively. In Week 4, the Lions won 14-7 in Minnesota, and the Vikings finished with a time of possession of just 23:33, running only 54 plays.

The Vikings, since Week 6, rank third in Adjusted Passing Net Expected Points (NEP) per play but just 23rd on the ground by that same measure. Detroit has ranked 14th since Week 6 against the pass but 31st against the rush. That split coincides with losing Haloti Ngata to injured reserve. Again, Minnesota is favored, and Detroit can't stop the rush lately. The question then becomes: Latavius Murray or Jerick McKinnon?

Over the past five games, McKinnon has accounted for 27.8% of the team's carries and targets. Murray has seen 25.7% of the chances. As far as the carries go, Murray is winning that battle 36.1% to 30.5%, so it's close. McKinnon did outsnap Murray 45 to 33 in the last game, as well. The last time Murray outsnapped McKinnon was in, coincidentally, Week 4, when Dalvin Cook got injured.