Fantasy football week 7: Exploitable inefficiencies

Fantasy football Week 7: Exploitable inefficiencies

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 more accurate fantasy predictions, sites like Football Outsiders, tease out as much variance as possible, in order to reveal the true story as we head towards Fantasy Football Week 7!
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 six weeks 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

Atlanta: 29th Overall (Pass: 31st, Run: 7th) and Los Angeles Rams: 11th Overall (Pass: 20th, Run: 5th)

This matchup is one of the rare instances in which both teams are severe, pass funnel defenses. Not only does this give us a good place to start when targeting players in DFS, but it also points to signs that this game could be played at a higher pace. The more passing in a game, leads to more clock stoppages, leads to more offensive possessions. This would make sense when looking at both team’s pace of play metrics. Atlanta ranks 10th in neutral situation sec/play. Los Angeles ranks 2nd in neutral situation sec/play.

I tend to like both of these offense for different reasons this week. The Rams offense was abysmal last week, and I was unfortunately on the wrong end of that game/prediction, however I’m assuming a sizeable ownership drop in DFS. Their team total is fairly high, but given the recency bias that is still prevalent, I think this may be a good, “buy low” spot for Rams DFS players.

Atlanta on the other hand, has all the weapons to exploit this Rams defense. The Rams pass defense ranks 20th, while the Atlanta passing game ranks 12th in offensive efficiency. Sure trading for Ramsey is a boost, but losing Talib should also be noted. We’ll have to wait to see if the Rams decide to use Ramsey in a shadow role against Julio, but even if they do, Atlanta has plenty of secondary weapons utilize. Austin Hooper is having a breakout year and if we do get word that Ramsey will be shadowing Julio, players like Hooper, Ridley, Freeman, and Sanu should be targeted in DFS this week.

Oakland: 19th Overall (Pass: 26th, Run: 6th)

Tampa Bay: 17th Overall (Pass: 25th, Run: 1st)

Philadelphia: 13th Overall (Pass: 19th, Run: 2nd)

Los Angeles Rams: 11th Overall (Pass: 20th, Run: 5th)

Defenses Struggling Against the Run and Stout Against the Pass

Jacksonville: 26th Overall (Pass: 16th, Run: 32nd)

Kansas City: 20th Overall (Pass: 11th, Run: 31st)

Green Bay: 7th Overall (Pass: 5th, Run: 26th)

Carolina: 4th Overall (Pass: 3rd, Run: 29th)

Buffalo: 3rd Overall (Pass: 4th, Run: 24th)

Inefficient Defenses:

Arizona 30th Overall (Pass: 29th, Run 25th)

New York will host the visiting Cardinals in a game in which the Giants are short, home favorites. Since the hot start in Tampa, the “Danny Dimes” hype has cooled over the last few weeks. While some may argue that he isn’t as good as the hype made him out to be, I would argue that his performances in the recent weeks were more a byproduct of the defenses that he’s faced. In the last two weeks, he’s faced Minnesota (ranked 6th in defensive efficiency) and New England (ranked 1st in defensive efficiency). Now bring in Arizona, ranking 30th in defensive efficiency and this will be the weakest defense he’s had to face this season.

Now to add context to the matchup, the Giants are looking as if they will be returning their three key skills position players, Evan Engram, Saquon Barkley, and Sterling Shepard. You’ll need to monitor Shepard and Saquon, but both appear as if they have a real shot to suit up. I would expect massive positive regression for the Giants offense and I’ll be targeting all of these skill position players.