5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 9
Carolina Panthers' Passing Offense
The Carolina Panthers are in an offensive rut, scoring a combined 20 points in their past two games. They just traded their top wide receiver, Kelvin Benjamin, to the Buffalo Bills. The over/under for their game is just 43.5.
Why in the heck would we want to target them in DFS?
Hopefully that's the thought process that the public uses in Week 9, allowing guys like Cam Newton to fly a bit under the radar. Because, honestly, they're in a really good spot to shift the perception in a hurry.
The Panthers will be facing an Atlanta Falcons defense that ranks 27th against the pass, according to numberFire's metrics. This hasn't shown up much in traditional stats with just one quarterback topping 275 yards against them, but the advanced analytics say this is a team we can target.
A big part of the reason for the masking is the quarterbacks the Falcons have faced. Within their first seven games, they have faced Mike Glennon, Tyrod Taylor, Jay Cutler, and Josh McCown. While Taylor isn't a bad quarterback, he rarely racks up enough volume to post grotesque passing stats, and he threw just 20 times against the Falcons. Glennon and Cutler are 30th and 29th, respectively, in Passing NEP per drop back, and McCown is 20th. There haven't been many quarterbacks capable of exploiting these weaknesses yet.
Based on the past three games, though, you may not think Newton is able to exploit that, either. In those games, he has maxed out at 239 yards passing, and he has two touchdowns to six interceptions. Yikes. That's not necessarily separating from the Glennon-Cutler-McCown tier of quarterbacks.
When looking at those games, though, it's important to remember the context surrouding each one. And when you include the context, things don't look nearly as brutal.
In Week 6, the Panthers played on Thursday Night Football after back-to-back road games. Not ideal.
The next week, they were facing the Chicago Bears in Chicago. Not only are the field conditions rough, but the Bears currently sit ninth against the pass, according to numberFire's metrics. That's one spot ahead of the Philadelphia Eagles team that the Panthers faced the week before. On top of that, three of the Panthers' starting offensive linemen got hurt during the game, including both their center and left tackle.
Then last Sunday, it was a date with the Buccaneers defense that we discussed before as being amongst the worst in football. But again, that game featured heavy winds and sapped the life out of the passing offenses on both sides. Weather's important, and it clearly played a big role last week.
These may all seem like minor things, and they could be taken as excuses for a dip in Newton's production. But they're all legitimate factors we need to consider that won't show up in a simple box score.
Now, Newton and friends return home to play just their second game in Charlotte since September 24th. The winds are calm, and the matchup is good. This isn't a bad time for a bounceback.
The other positive for Newton is that he doesn't need to throw for 350 yards and 3 touchdowns to have a big day for DFS. His legs can help out plenty there, and he hasn't been afraid to use them recently.
In the first three games of the year, Newton never rushed more than six times, and he averaged just 4.7 rush attempts per game. But since then, his per-game rushing totals are 8, 7, 11, 9, and 11, respectively. As the team's ground game has stalled, Newton has cranked up his own involvement there, and it has resulted in at least 44 yards on the ground each of the past three games.
Newton's price is at $7,600, down from $8,200 just a few weeks ago. Sure, he has struggled of late, and he did lose Benjamin, but there are reasons to believe he's primed for a rebound. With a cheap price tag and likely low ownership, there's plenty to like here.
You can use Newton all by himself in your DFS lineups without much hesitation. His rushing output makes that a fully viable strategy. But Benjamin's departure has opened up value in the receiving options, starting with Devin Funchess.
Even before Benjamin left, Funchess was getting tremendous usage. From Week 3 on, Funchess has 23.8% of the team's overall targets, 34.1% of the deep targets, and 25.0% of the red-zone targets. He would have been worth $6,100 even if Benjamin were still on the team. But now that Funchess is the unquestioned top option in the passing game, we should feel safe stacking him with Newton or using him as a one-off in non-Newton lineups.
If you worry about Funchess against Atlanta's stout perimeter corners, though, you have other options in Christian McCaffrey and Ed Dickson.
With McCaffrey, it's all about volume. He actually leads the team in target market share this year at 24.8%. They did get Cameron Artis-Payne more involved last week, but McCaffrey still played 58.5% of the snaps and garnered seven targets. His price is down to $6,100, making him a solid option against an Atlanta defense that has allowed the fourth-most receptions to running backs this year.
As for Dickson, he's a bit riskier given some spottier involvement. But he could also snag some of the lost Benjamin targets.
A big part of the battle for tight ends is just getting on the field, but Dickson hasn't had that issue. He has played every snap in each of the past four games. That has allowed him to rack up at least five targets in all of those, as well, meaning he already had some involvement in the gameplan.
These aren't all bunny targets, either. Now that Benjamin is gone, Dickson is second on the team in deep targets this year, trailing only Funchess, even when you include the time when Greg Olsen was healthy. Dickson has added four red-zone targets the past three weeks, as well.
There's very little safety in targeting Dickson. But at the end of the day, there's opportunity to be had, he plays all of the snaps, and he'll get some deep shots. If you're taking a stab at a $4,900 tight end, you could do a whole lot worse than that.
