Thursday Night Football kicks off Week 5 with a lopsided matchup on paper: the Dallas Cowboys (2-2) host the winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers (0-4) at AT&T Stadium, with kickoff set for 8:15 p.m. ET on Prime Video. Dallas enters as the far more explosive offense, averaging 30.5 points per game, while Tampa Bay is still adjusting on the fly with rookie Jalon Daniels under center in place of the injured Baker Mayfield. That gap in offensive firepower, combined with one of the league’s worst defenses on the Dallas side, sets up a game script that should favor shootout-friendly DFS builds and is already reflected in the NFL odds for tonight’s game.

Since this is a two-team, single-game slate, roster construction comes down to concentrating value on the players most likely to touch the ball a ton rather than spreading exposure across 32 teams. Below are five plays worth building around for both DraftKings and FanDuel lineups tonight.

CeeDee Lamb, WR — Dallas Cowboys (DraftKings: $11,800 | FanDuel: $12,600)

Lamb is coming off one of the best single games by a wide receiver in recent NFL history. In last Sunday’s 34-30 win over Houston, he caught a career-high 17 of 21 targets for 189 yards and the game-winning touchdown with 40 seconds left — the fourth time in NFL history a player has hit 17-plus catches, 180-plus yards and a touchdown in the same game. Through four weeks, Lamb has piled up 37 catches for 498 yards and four touchdowns on 46 targets, averaging 28.0 PPR points per game and finishing as a top-12 receiver in three of four weeks.

He now draws a Buccaneers defense that’s been without starting safety Antoine Winfield Jr. (rib, ruled out) and cornerback Benjamin Morrison (quad, also out), thinning a secondary that already has to account for Dak Prescott throwing early and often in his direction. Prescott targeted Lamb 21 times last week alone, and with Dallas’s run game humming behind Javonte Williams, there’s no reason to expect the target share to shrink. At a salary near the top of the slate, Lamb still represents a strong points-per-dollar anchor given his target volume and the game script working in his favor.

Dak Prescott, QB — Dallas Cowboys (DraftKings: $10,400 | FanDuel: $11,800)

Prescott has been one of the most efficient quarterbacks in football through four games, completing 70 percent of his passes for 1,065 yards with eight touchdowns against just one interception. His 335-yard, one-touchdown outing last week against Houston was a season high, and Next Gen Stats show he was lethal against the blitz specifically — 5-of-7 for 116 yards and 16.6 yards per attempt when Houston brought extra rushers.

Tampa Bay’s defense has had its own injury issues up front and in the back end, and Dallas’s offense ranks second in the league in scoring at 30.5 points per game. With Lamb drawing heavy volume and George Pickens also in the mix, Prescott has multiple avenues to rack up yardage even if the Bucs manage to slow any one weapon. His 8:1 touchdown-to-interception ratio on the season gives him a strong floor, and the matchup against a Tampa Bay defense playing from behind most nights gives him real ceiling upside as a value relative to some other slates’ top quarterbacks.

Javonte Williams, RB — Dallas Cowboys (DraftKings: $10,800 | FanDuel: $10,400)

Williams has been the unsung engine of the Dallas offense, scoring six total touchdowns (five rushing, one receiving) through four games. Last week he turned 19 carries into 62 yards and three touchdowns against Houston, taking over in the second half as Dallas erased a 16-6 deficit, and he caught all five of his targets for 21 more yards. For the season, he’s up to 231 rushing yards and 77 receiving yards with legitimate goal-line equity that’s produced touchdowns in three of four games.

Tampa Bay’s run defense is a clear soft spot — the Buccaneers have already been without multiple starters on the back seven, including linebacker SirVocea Dennis (out) and safety Antoine Winfield Jr. (out), and Dallas’s offensive line has created enough room for Williams to average a touchdown-heavy workload even on modest yards-per-carry nights. With the Cowboys favored at home and likely to lean on their ground game to protect second-half leads, Williams offers a strong combination of volume and scoring opportunity in what should be a run-funnel-friendly matchup. Bettors building same-game parlays around this script have leaned on the DraftKings promo to get involved before kickoff.

Jalon Daniels, QB — Tampa Bay Buccaneers (DraftKings: $8,600 | FanDuel: $10,800)

With Baker Mayfield sidelined by a thumb injury expected to keep him out multiple weeks, undrafted rookie Jalon Daniels gets his second career start tonight. His debut against Green Bay was a mixed bag on paper — 19-of-27 for 148 yards, one touchdown and two interceptions — but the rushing production stood out: Daniels ran eight times for 55 yards, setting a Buccaneers franchise rookie quarterback rushing record. He also led a fourth-quarter comeback bid before Tampa Bay ultimately fell 17-14.

What makes Daniels viable as a DFS value play on a slate like this is his rushing floor. Dual-threat quarterbacks facing a bad defense carry extra equity because they can produce fantasy points even when the passing game sputters, and Dallas’s defense ranks near the bottom of the league — 28th in points allowed (28.0 per game), 24th in passing yards allowed and 31st in rushing yards allowed. Daniels doesn’t need a clean passing performance to hit value at this price; his legs alone give him a workable floor, and garbage-time passing volume as a clear underdog adds some ceiling on top of that.

Bucky Irving, RB — Tampa Bay Buccaneers (DraftKings: $8,400 | FanDuel: $11,200)

Irving remains the clear lead back in Tampa Bay’s rotation despite a crowded backfield that also includes Kenny Gainwell and Sean Tucker. He’s played 159 snaps across four games compared to 108 for Gainwell, and he started and played 37 of 63 offensive snaps last week against Green Bay, finishing with 61 yards on 16 carries. For the season he has 241 rushing yards and 13 catches for 61 yards, though he’s still searching for his first 90-yard rushing game of the year.

The appeal here is less about Irving’s per-game ceiling and more about his workload security as a pass-catching back on a team that figures to be playing from behind often tonight. Facing Dallas’s 31st-ranked rush defense, Irving should see his usual 35-plus percent of the offensive snaps, and trailing game scripts tend to funnel extra targets to the receiving back. At his FanDuel price in particular, his dual-threat role gives him a reasonable floor even in a tough spot on the road.

Building Your Lineup

On a two-team slate like this, stacking is the name of the game. Pairing Prescott with Lamb captures the bulk of Dallas’s passing-game equity in one swing, and rostering Williams alongside that pair lets you build around the Cowboys’ side of a potential blowout without paying for every Dallas skill player at once. If you want to fade the chalk a bit, pivoting off Lamb and onto George Pickens at a lower salary frees up cap space for a second Buccaneers piece.

On the Tampa Bay side, Daniels and Irving give you access to garbage-time production at a discount relative to the Cowboys’ stars, and rostering both together hedges against needing to guess exactly how the Bucs’ lone touchdown drives unfold. With Dallas’s defense this leaky and Tampa Bay replacing its starting quarterback, expect public DFS builds to lean heavily into the Cowboys’ top three options — differentiating with Daniels or a correlated Tampa Bay piece could be the separator in tournament-style contests tonight.