5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 13
Detroit Lions Passing Offense
The New Orleans Saints just mauled the Los Angeles Rams for 49 points and 555 total yards in Week 12, and they're back at home again this week. There, they'll face numberFire's 31st-ranked pass defense in the Detroit Lions.
These puppies finna be popular on Sunday.
There's obviously plenty of justification for that given that they are the Saints, but it could allow the Lions to be under-owned relative to where they should be. Nobody's going to forget the Lions exist, but they're obviously not the flashiest object in this equation. We, however, want to give Detroit's offense -- specifically its passing game -- the ownership it deserves.
The Saints' defense has been allowed to fly a bit under the radar recently for two reasons. The first is that their rush defense has actually been balling out ever since they activated their first-round pick -- defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins -- off injured reserve. In the four games he has played, opposing running backs have a Success Rate of just 27.5%, meaning they've increased the team's expected points for the drive on just 27.5% of their carries. It was 41.4% before that, slightly above the league average.
The second reason is they haven't faced many passing games able to exploit their porous secondary. Since their Week 5 bye, the Saints have played seven games, and only one of those was against a team ranked higher than 20th in schedule-adjusted passing efficiency. So, they've been stuffing the run, and the opposing quarterbacks have largely been in the bottom portion of the league. That's how you get a defense to go overlooked.
When you adjust for schedule, though, the Saints' pass defense still ranks 28th in the league, according to numberFire's metrics. The Lions rank seventh on the offensive side, the best passing attack the Saints have seen since Week 3 when Matt Ryan and the Atlanta Falcons hung 45 points on them.
From a matchup perspective, it doesn't get much better than this for the Lions. Add in the funnel aspect of the Saints, forcing teams to air it out, and a 5.5-point spread in the Saints' favor, and you've got the recipe for some high-efficiency, high-volume passing. We don't want to pass up the Lions here.
You likely don't need a ton of convincing to use Matthew Stafford, and he'll probably be one of the highest-owned quarterbacks on the slate. The issue here is trying to decipher with whom we should stack him.
Were it not for his dud in Week 12, Eric Ebron would be the obvious choice, and he probably needs to be back on our radar in this one. The Saints have allowed 7.64 targets per game to tight ends this year, and Ebron has a 16.4% target market share in games he has played. He's a solid guy to pair with Stafford.
At wide receiver, it's a bit of a guessing game, but there are at least merits to all three of Golden Tate, Marvin Jones, and Anquan Boldin. For Tate, his upside is his 26.2% target market share since Week 6. That's easily tops on the team, and it has allowed him to top 70 receiving yards in four of the past six games.
Jones is obviously more of a gamble due to his disappearing act since Week 4, but an 11-target outing last week helped rekindle a bit of fantasy relevancy. He's -- at worst -- a deep threat who generally plays over 90% of the snaps, and with his price finally reflecting his role at $5,600 on FanDuel, we can snag some exposure to him in tournaments.
With Boldin, you're looking for touchdowns, but he's a pretty solid bet to get one. He has 26.7% of the team's red-zone targets, and he has nine targets in both of the past two games. He doesn't offer the same upside as Tate and Jones, but you could do a lot worse at $5,000.
