5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 3

Back in middle school, I had this teacher who may or may not have been in a permanently-altered state of mind, a residual effect of indulging in the more glorified "recreational activities" of the 1970s. To protect the innocent, we'll call him "Mr. Davids."

Mr. Davids always meant well, but he was still a bit of a strange cat. When trying to teach us how to study, he cited the KISS acronym as something for us to keep in mind.

This is where the aftershocks of those recreational activities come into play. KISS, in its usual state, stands for, "Keep it simple, stupid," telling the audience not to overthink things. Easy enough.

Mr. Davids didn't get that, though. He thought the "stupid" was just some random word thrown in there. So, instead of "Keep it simple, stupid," he personalized the phrase to be, "Keep it simple smart." Because of course.

It wasn't until recently that I realized that Mr. Davids may have been the world's most under-appreciated genius. Okay, that's probably a bit of a stretch, but at least he may have been on to something. And it may have made him a good DFS player, too.

What if, instead of mistaking the utility behind the word "stupid" in the original phrase, he was just expanding on the saying to add an extra layer to the process? What if "Keep it simple smart" was intended to remind you to start with the basics before later bringing additional knowledge into the equation?

There's roughly a 0.5% chance that this is what he was actually saying, but hey, I'm all for leniency in hindsight. And, honestly, "Keep it simple smart" can be useful for filling out daily fantasy football lineups.

Between pace, air yards, splits, and situational run-pass ratios, we've got a whole lotta information to digest each week when we're trying to build lineups. Every single one of those metrics has value, and we need to factor them into our decision-making processes, but we should always remember to start with the basics. We have to keep it simple before we can make it smart.

It's entirely possible Mr. Davids has already leveraged all of this into a win in the Sunday Million, but we're not quite there yet. So it's time to apply this line of thought to the Week 3 main slate to see which players we should target. By starting with the simple and working our way into more advanced analysis, which matchups should we try to exploit this week? Let's check it out.