Fantasy Football Exploitable Inefficiencies: Divisional Round

Fantasy Football Exploitable Inefficiencies Divisional Round

While it may be easy to find out how many points or yards a defense has allowed, it’s not necessarily the best predictor of future success. In order to get a more accurate Fantasy Football predictions, sites like Football Outsiders, tease out as much variance as possible, in order to reveal the true story.
Football Outsiders uses a method known as DVOA. DVOA is a method of evaluating teams, units, or players. It takes every single play during the NFL season and compares each one to a league-average baseline based on situation. Remember, were dealing with extremely small sample sizes in the NFL and Fantasy Football right now, but here are some exploitable match-ups you may want to consider this week.

Indianapolis: 10th Overall in Defensive efficiency, (Pass: 20th, Run 4th)

After a dominating performance against the Texans, the Colts will head to Arrowhead, to take on the Kansas City Chiefs. This is the largest game total of the weekend and should yield high ownership in DFS, but I think there will be a lot of good, and necessary, chalk in this game. As you’ll see with the Eagles below, Indianapolis is a “hot” team amongst the public and their defense has kept opposing scoring down, but have they faced any competition as tough as KC?

Since their bye (week 9), they’ve faced JAX (30th in offensive efficiency), TEN (22nd), MIA (26th), JAX (30th), HOU (21st), DAL (24th), NYG (13th *they gave up 27 points), TEN (22nd), and HOU (21st). Now they’re heading on the road, to take on the 1st ranked team in offensive efficiency, coming off of a bye…I think it spells trouble for the Colts defense. While Indy will have matchup advantages on offense as well, I think that Kansas City can hang a big number this week. I’ll be all over Mahomes, Kelce, Hill, Williams, and others.

Kansas City: 26th Overall in Defensive efficiency, (Pass: 12th, Run 32nd)

Dallas: 9th Overall in Defensive efficiency, (Pass: 16th, Run 5th)

Los Angeles (Rams): 19th Overall in Defensive efficiency, (Pass: 9th, Run 28th)

Los Angeles (Chargers): 8th Overall in Defensive efficiency, (Pass: 10th, Run 10th)

New England: 16th Overall in Defensive efficiency, (Pass: 14th, Run 19th)

Philadelphia: 15th Overall in Defensive efficiency, (Pass: 15th, Run 9th)

After one of the strangest endings to an NFL game last week in Chicago, Philadelphia will again be on the road, as they head to New Orleans, to take on the Saints. While the recent box scores would indicate that the Philly defense has improved, if we take a deeper look into the context of those scores, we find that the Saints may be set up better than most would think.

In week 16, they faced a Houston offense that ranks 21st in offensive efficiency and gave up 30 points. In week 17 they faced a Washington teams that ranks 28th in offensive efficiency and had Josh Johnson starting at quarterback. Last week, they face Chicago who ranks 20th in offensive efficiency and a quarterback who’s key asset of mobility was limited due to a leg injury early in the game. So while the defense has gotten back some important pieces late in the season, I think the combination of the public seeing the Saints offense stagnate down the stretch and seeing the Philadelphia defense suppress some opponents, will set up nicely for a Saints explosion in this spot.  I’ll be targeting, Brees, Kamara, Ginn, and Thomas in all formats.

New Orleans: 11th Overall in Defensive efficiency, (Pass: 22th, Run 3th)

Stay tuned to Fantasy CPR for all the latest NFL DFS and Fantasy Football news and analysis!