Fantasy football exploitable inefficiencies: NFL Week 2

Fantasy football exploitable inefficiencies: NFL Week 2

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 the situation. Remember, we’re 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.

*Note: With only one week of data, these efficiencies numbers are extremely skewed. As the season progress, they will become more predictive.

Defenses Struggling Against the Pass and Stout Against the Run

Philadelphia: 29th Overall in Defensive efficiency (Pass: 29th, Run: 3rd)

Philadelphia was able to survive an awful start last week, and will now head to Atlanta on Sunday night, to take on the Falcons. This is a classic bounce-back spot for the Atlanta offense that struggled last week in Minnesota. They’ll now return home, for a primetime matchup with a porous Eagles’ secondary. It was the story all last year, and it remains this year, that the weakest part of the Philadelphia defense is it’s secondary. After last weeks game, they graded out as 29th against the pass and 3rd against the run (in DVOA). The key matchup to watch for this game is the Atlanta offensive line vs. the pass rush of Philadelphia. If Philly can’t get much pressure, you could see Matt Ryan shredding this secondary. All of the Atlanta pass catchers should be fairly under-owned in DFS, given the recency bias. Note that Philly will be without the services of Malik Jackson on the defensive line, as he’s out for the season.

Arizona: 18th Overall in Defensive efficiency (Pass: 23rd, Run: 9th)

Chicago: 6th Overall in Defensive efficiency (Pass: 15th, Run: 4th)

Defenses Struggling Against the Run and Stout Against the Pass

Indianapolis: 21st Overall in Defensive efficiency (Pass: 19th, Run: 30th)

Carolina: 16th Overall in Defensive efficiency (Pass: 11th, Run: 29th)

Los Angeles Rams: 14th Overall in Defensive efficiency (Pass: 5th, Run: 28th)

Tennessee: 4th Overall in Defensive efficiency (Pass: 2nd, Run: 17th)

San Francisco: 1st Overall in Defensive efficiency (Pass: 1st, Run: 21st)

After a fairly impressive showing up in Seattle, Cincinnati will return home to take on the visiting San Francisco 49ers. After week one, San Francisco ranks 1st against the pass and 21st against the run. Now I would argue that facing Jameis is a big factor in their passing grade, but if you watched last week, you would have noticed how effective Tampa was at running the ball. The Bucs trailed for most of the game, but their running backs tallied 108 rushing yards on just 21 combined carries. You be hard-pressed to find many people touting the running game for the Bucs, so this number stands out to me.

I tend to believe that Cincinnati will have some success on the offensive, and specifically, running the ball. It would appear as the market tends to agree, as there has already been a four-point correction. The 49ers opened as -2 favorites, but money has driven that number to flip, and now the Bengals are -2 point favorites. The key injury to monitor here is Joe Mixon. It’s unclear, as of now, how this ankle sprain will affect him. If for some reason he can’t go, Giovani Bernard will obviously offer immense value in DFS this week.

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