The Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets are known for having ferocious defenses which make life incredibly hard on opposing quarterbacks. The men of the hour on Thursday Night Football for fantasy purposes are LeSean McCoy and Chris Ivory, a matchup which you'll find at BookMaker.eu.
You can find weekly head-to-head fantasy matchup odds at BookMaker.eu.
It's tough to make a case for supporting either one of these tailbacks right now just for the way both defenses are playing they're up against. The Jets have the top run defense in the league at 80.6 yards per game allowed. The Bills aren't far behind at 93.6 rushing yards per game conceded.
New York has conceded just one rushing touchdown to a running back thus far in 2015. Buffalo has allowed at least one score on the ground for opposing tailbacks in four straight games, but the sledding has been quite tough all the way through. Three teams this year failed to reach 50 rushing yards against these Bills on the ground.
Ivory has been in terrible form of late. In his last two games, he's run the ball 38 times for 43 yards, and the only thing that has saved his bacon was a pair of short rushing touchdowns against the porous Jags defense last week.
The good thing that you know about Ivory is that he's going to get the ball in his hands, simply because the Jets don't have any better options. Bilal Powell is dinged up with an ankle problem, and Zac Stacy has a total of just four carries in his last two games in spite of the fact that Ivory has been struggling so much.
You also pretty much know what you're getting out of Ivory. He's going to be on the field in the important goal line situations, and he's going to be used as a plow in the backfield. He'll get the ball at least 15 times per game, but he won't catch a lot of passes out of the backfield and is strictly going to rack up fantasy points based on his production as a runner.
Thus far this year, Ivory is good for 17.7 fantasy points per game, but again, the only reason he's managed to get that high is because of a pair of multi-touchdown games and two games against Miami and Washington in which he gashed holes in the defense. It's highly unlikely that the Bills are going to be giving up 10+ yard chunks to Ivory over and over again, especially knowing that he hasn't had a carry for more than nine yards since Week 6.
McCoy is a really tough play here. He's got a shoulder injury that he is downplaying as minor, but he didn't come back in the game in the second half against Miami last week. Karlos Williams is a solid second option, and even if McCoy does go, the rookie from Florida State is still pilfering a lot of carries.
That said, McCoy has that home run potential. He has touchdowns of 33 and 48 yards already this year, and he's coming off of his first 100+ yard game as a Bill last week against the Fins.
Shady is averaging just 13.6 fantasy points per NFL game, but he's a real boom or bust candidate.
Given the matchup here, we'd give the slight nod to Ivory, though it's really tough to have much in the way of confidence on a man who has averaged exactly 1.1 yards per carry in two consecutive games.
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