Fantasy football Week 16: 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 16!
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:

Arizona: 28th Overall (Pass: 28th, Run: 16th)

New York Giants: 25th Overall (Pass: 30th, Run: 8th)

Tennessee: 15th Overall (Pass: 22nd, Run: 5th)

New York Jets: 13th Overall (Pass: 24th, Run: 2nd)

Tampa Bay: 9th Overall (Pass: 15th, Run: 1st)

Defenses struggling against the run and stout against the pass:

Carolina: 24th Overall (Pass: 9th, Run: 32nd)

Cleveland: 19th Overall (Pass: 13th, Run: 28th)

Kansas City: 11th Overall (Pass: 6th, Run: 30th)

Baltimore: 5th Overall (Pass: 4th, Run: 21st)

Inefficient Defenses:

Jacksonville: 29th (Pass: 21st, Run: 31st)

Atlanta will play it’s final home game on Sunday, in what can only be described as a disappointing season. Despite the losing season as a whole, there may be some daily fantasy value to be derived in this matchup.

Atlanta will have the luxury of taking on a woeful Jacksonville defense, that ranks 29th in overall defensive efficiency. This will be a welcomed matchup, as the Falcons have faced some tough defenses, of late. Over the last eight games, their opponents defensive efficiency average was 12.38. Neither team has anything to play for in terms of the postseason, however, it would appear as if Atlanta has rallied around Dan Quinn. Quinn is one of the coaches on the hot seat, and the Falcons have played tough for him, in the recent weeks.

Another appealing piece of this offense, is its condensed target share. With Ridley done, we saw Ryan feed Julio Jones last week. I would expect to see more of the same in this spot, especially with Jalen Ramsey gone. I’ll be over weight on Matt Ryan, Julio Jones, Devonta Freeman, Russell Gage, and Austin Hooper.

Cincinnati 30th and Miami 32nd: 

Another game with no postseason implications will take place in south Florida, as the Bengals face the Dolphins. I wouldn’t advocate spending your time watching this game, but again, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t appealing options for daily fantasy.

Both of these team come in, having faced some of the toughest schedules in terms of opposing defenses. Miami has faced the 2nd most difficult schedule of opposing defenses, with an average opponent defensive rating of 11.46. Cincinnati has faced the 3rd most difficult schedule of opposing defenses, with an average opponent defensive rating of 12.31 (Sharpfootballstats.com). I wont go as far as making the claim that these offenses are solely a by-product of tough schedules, but I will say that they are being undervalued in this spot.

In addition to both teams facing much easier defenses than they’re accustomed to, both team’s pace of the play could lead to an inflated total. Cincinnati ranks 7th in neutral situation, pace of play and Miami ranks 10th. If you’ve watched any of the Miami games this season, you can certainly see that they are still very much playing to win, despite the lack of talent, so if we get an all in effort from Cincinnati, we could see some points being scored here. I’ll have overweight exposure on the this game for DFS.