Fantasy football week 9: Exploitable inefficiencies

Find out which players you should be considering when entering your NFL DFS lineups this week.

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 9!

Football Outsiders uses a method known as DVOA, 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.

Defenses struggling against the pass and stout against the run:

Oakland: 28th Overall (Pass: 29th, Run: 9th)

New York Giants: 26th Overall (Pass: 28th, Run: 12th)

Houston: 20th Overall (Pass: 23rd, Run: 5th)

Tampa Bay: 15th Overall (Pass: 26th, Run: 1st)

Tennessee: 12th Overall (Pass: 20th, Run: 2nd)

New York Jets: 11th Overall (Pass: 21st, Run: 3rd)

Defenses struggling against the run and stout against the pass:

Kansas City: 17th Overall (Pass: 4th, Run: 30th)

Buffalo: 16th Overall (Pass: 6th, Run: 28th)

Jacksonville: 14th Overall (Pass: 7th, Run: 25th)

Green Bay: 13th Overall (Pass: 8th, Run: 22nd)

Inefficiencies overall

Los Angeles Chargers: 27th Overall (Pass: 25th, Run: 24th)

Green Bay will head to the west coast to take on the Los Angeles Chargers, in a game in which the Packers are a -3.5 point favorites. After an impressive, primetime, win over the Chiefs, the Green Bay offense looks to be finding their stride. After facing a tough slate of opposing defenses for the first four weeks, they’ve been able to score an average of 32.5 points over the most recent four games. They’ll now take on one of the easier defenses that they will face all season — the Chargers currently rank 27th in overall defensive efficiency.

One injury to monitor here is Devante Adams. He’s practiced on a limited basis all week, indicating that he should be suiting up, but he will be considered a game-time decision. If he does end up playing, he will most likely be shadowed by Casey Hayward.

The unfortunate part of this matchup, from a DFS perspective, is how evenly disturbed the target share is amongst Packers’ pass catchers. Throwing darts at Green Bay wide receivers may be worth it in tournaments, but I’ll be targeting Aaron Rodgers, and Aaron Jones, primarily.

Seattle: 22nd Overall (Pass: 19th, Run: 23rd)

Tampa Bay will make the long trip to Seattle this week, to take on the Seahawks, in a game in which Seattle is now a five-point favorite. As usual with Jameis, the Bucs offense has been a rollercoaster this year, but they may have a few advantages on Sunday. First would be the matchup. Gone are the days of the feared Seattle defense — they now currently rank 22nd in overall defensive efficiency. The Bucs have played one of, if not the most, difficult slate of opposing defenses to start the season. So far they’ve faced: San Francisco (second in overall defensive efficiency), Carolina (fifth), New York Giants (26th), Los Angeles Rams (fourth), New Orleans (sixth), Carolina (fifth), and Tennessee (12th). So other than the game against the Giants, they’ve faced the top-tier defenses in the league.

Another nugget to consider here is Bruce Arians familiarity against this Seattle team. Generally “trends” going back multiple season are garbage, and have very little useful predictability, but this one may be worth noting. With Arians spending a lot of time with Arizona in the NFC West, he’s had ample opportunities to prepare and coach against this Seattle team. Now times change, players change, and coaches change, but Arians has gone into Seattle and won every single game, except one, in his coaching career.

It would appear as if the market tends to agree with Tampa Bay in this spot, as Seattle opened as a 6.5 point favorite, but has passed through a key number of 6, to now, a dead number, at 5. This may be a spot to get a boom or bust passing attack at very low ownership this week. The running backs leave little to be desired, given their usage, but I’ll be targeting those in the passing attack. Consider using Winston, Evans, Godwin, and maybe even Tanner Hudson, in tournaments this weekend.