Fantasy Football Exploitable Inefficiencies: Conference Championships

Fantasy Football Exploitable Inefficiencies Conference Championships

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.

Los Angeles: 19th in Defensive Efficiency (Pass: 9th, Run 28th)

New Orleans: 11th in Defensive Efficiency (Pass: 22nd, Run: 3rd)

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

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

New England will head to Kansas City, to take on Mahomes and Chiefs for the second time this season. In their last meeting, back in October, we saw 73 points scored. While that number may be out of reach here, I do think that there are matchup advantages for both offenses in this spot. First off, if you’re scared off this game because of the “arctic blast”, then I have a bridge to sell you. With only two games to talk about, all you’ll hear about leading up to kickoff is how cold it will be and how it will affect the offense. Right now, the forecast is predicting temperatures in the mid 20’s with little to no wind.

If you saw the game up in Foxborough last week, you’ll understand why I’m so high on Sony Michel and James White this week. New England bullied the Chargers up front and both Michel and White had monster days. Similarly to Los Angeles, Kansas City’s defense is known for their pass rush and therefore being more efficient against the pass. Ranking dead last in defensive efficiency against the run, I would expect a very similar game plan coming from Belichick this week.

Kansas City allowed the fifth most PPR points above opponent average per game this year, to the running back position. Quite frankly, they simply don’t have the personnel to cover good pass catchers out of the backfield, and have been killed there, all year.

Now just because I think they’ll be running the ball more often, doesn’t necessarily mean that I think that this total will stay under. Even in the first matchup you saw a run heavy script early and that game went flying over. I think both teams can have success on the ground, and I expect this game to go over the predicted total. I’ll be targeting Michel, White, Edelman, Williams, Kelce, Watkins and Hill, in all formats.

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