5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 3
Miami Dolphins' Passing Offense
It doesn't get much simpler than targeting the New York Jets' defense. And we're going to have to do it this week, whether that's via Jay Ajayi or the Miami Dolphins' passing offense.
Given Ajayi's insane workload this past week, he's one of the best cash-game running backs on the board, and he's a tremendous tournament play, as well. But in those tournaments, we'd also be wise to give Jay Cutler, DeVante Parker, and Jarvis Landry a sniff on the lineups where we don't use Ajayi.
We've got just one game of data on the Dolphins' new-look aerial attack, but they look pretty snazzy through the lens of numberFire's Net Expected Points (NEP). This is the metric we use to track each team's and each player's efficiency with the team metrics being adjusted for strength of opponent. NEP gives us the context to know that a three-yard completion on 3rd and 2 is infinitely more valuable than that same three-yard completion on 3rd and 4.
In Week 1, Cutler racked up 6.57 Passing NEP on his 35 drop backs. His 0.19 Passing NEP per drop back currently ranks 11th in the league and is a good chunk beyond Ryan Tannehill's mark of 0.09 with the Dolphins last year.
On top of that, the Los Angeles Chargers defense he faced -- even without cornerback Jason Verrett -- is undoubtedly better than the Jets'. Gang Green ranks 31st in Adjusted Defensive Passing NEP per play through two weeks after finishing 29th last year. This is always a unit we can target with pretty much any position on the opposing offense.
The other encouraging thing about Week 1 was that Cutler funneled targets to Landry and Parker. They were on the receiving end of 24 of his 34 targeted passes, meaning you know where the ball's going. As teams like the Denver Broncos have shown the past few years, there's immense DFS value in that type of certainty.
So, the question then turns to which guy you're supposed to target. The answer would largely depend on which game format you're playing.
If you're going here over Ajayi in cash games, then Landry's the person you want for $6,800 on FanDuel. He led the team with 15 targets in Week 2, three of which came in the red zone. Those two combine to give him tournament viability, as well.
Parker seems to be the one with the higher yardage upside, though, making him a solid buy in tournaments at $6,500. He had nine targets in Week 2, and a whopping five of them were at least 16 yards downfield. This gave Parker 47.66% of the team's intended air yards, according to NFL.com's Next-Gen Stats. Parker's a great bet for a big play against this secondary.
Given the Dolphins' pace (they were 31st in situation-neutral pace last year, according to Football Outsiders), you may not want to load up on Cutler shares. But he's still worth a sniff.
Through two weeks, the Jets have seen just 56 pass attempts against them, the fourth-fewest of the teams that have played two games. They have still given up the sixth- and fifth-best quarterback performances, respectively, in the two weeks, based on FanDuel's scoring rules. They give up points in a hurry, and that makes Cutler a worthwhile option at $7,400.
