Fantasy football week 12: 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 12!
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:

Atlanta: 25th Overall (Pass: 27th, Run: 11th)

Tampa Bay: 22nd Overall (Pass: 30th, Run: 1st)

Tennessee: 16th Overall (Pass: 22nd, Run: 4th)

New York Jets: 11th Overall (Pass: 21st, Run: 2nd)

Defenses struggling against the run and stout against the pass:

Jacksonville: 19th Overall (Pass: 11th, Run: 30th)

Carolina: 17th Overall (Pass: 7th, Run: 32nd)

Buffalo: 14th Overall (Pass: 9th, Run: 27th)

After yet another, blown fourth quarter lead, Denver will look to get back in the win column against the Bills this week. The Bills are slight home favorites, however, some early sharp action has made a push back towards the Broncos. One area in which the Broncos can exploit the Bills, is on the ground. Buffalo’s run defense efficiency ranks 27th in the league. This meshes well, as Denver’s strength, is it’s running game. Their passing game ranks 26th, while their running game ranks 10th in offensive efficiency.

Prior to last week’s game against Minnesota, Ian Rapoport, reported that Denver was planning on riding Phillip Lindsay more. Although it wasn’t an impressive stat line, Lindsay did out-touch Freeman, 18 to 9. This may be a perfect “buy low” opportunity, as Lindsay should still see an increased workload, but may have lower ownership given his performance last week.

Kansas City: 12th Overall (Pass: 4th, Run: 31st)

Baltimore: 10th Overall (Pass: 3rd, Run: 25th)

San Francisco: 2nd Overall (Pass: 2nd, Run: 19th)

Inefficient Defenses

Miami 32nd Overall (Pass: 32nd, Run 29th)

Cleveland will play host to the visiting Dolphins in a game in which the Browns are an 11 point favorite. Laying 11 points with Cleveland this year should scare almost everyone, but there may be a few indicators of hope for the Browns in this spot.

First is this matchup vs. the strength of their schedule prior to this week. Through 11 weeks, the Browns have faced the toughest slate of opposing defenses, in terms of defensive efficiency, in the entire league (Sharpfootballstats.com). The easiest defense that they’ve faced thus far, was Seattle (21st in defensive efficiency), where they scored 28 points. Now they’ll have the benefit of facing the Dolphins, who rank 32nd in defensive efficiency. So while their preseason hype seems to have turned into a train wreck, the schedule can explain some of their offensive struggles.

The second point to take note of, is how drastically different their offense has looked in the last two weeks, from a formation standpoint.

Weeks 1-9:

“11” personal – 75%

“12” personal – 20%

“20” personal – 1 total play

Weeks 10-11:

“11” personal – 32%
“12” personal – 25%
“20” personal – 19% (league high)

Part of the personal change can be attributed to the addition of Kareem Hunt, but a large portion should be attributed to Freddy Kitchens taking more control of the offense. Speculation swirled early in the year of turmoil between Kitchens and offensive coordinator Todd Monken. With his job on the hot seat, it appears as if Kitchens has identified just how bad his offensive line is and realized that they need help in pass protection.

As you can see, they’re no longer running three wide sets in which Baker has limited time to throw. Instead they’re getting more creative, adding in an extra tight end or running back. With Hunt in the fold, they used a two running back look on a league high, 19% of plays. With play-makers like Chubb and Hunt, this could provide the spark the offense is looking for.

I tend to think that the Browns hang a huge number on the Dolphins, in this spot. I’ll be targeting Mayfield, Beckham, Chubb, Hunt, and Landry, in all formats.