5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 15
San Francisco 49ers' Passing Offense
Your thoughts on Jimmy Garoppolo's first two games with the San Francisco 49ers will be highly dependent on what route you use to assess him. If you look at fantasy points, he'll be underwhelming with games of 11.52 and 16.06 FanDuel points, respectively. But the advanced metrics are slobbering over this dude, and it could all translate into the fake football realm against the Tennessee Titans.
There are currently 42 quarterbacks who have had at least 75 drop backs this season. Among them, Tom Brady is second in Passing NEP per drop back at 0.31. The only guy to top him? That would be Garoppolo at 0.35. It's possible the Patriots know a thing or two about quarterback evaluation.
It's not just big plays propping up Garoppolo in a small sample, either. His 55.26% Success Rate is also highest in this group, topping second-place Matt Ryan at 52.30%. From an advanced analytics perspective, Garoppolo has been the real deal early.
We know that there's a correlation between quarterback efficiency and fantasy output. So why hasn't Garoppolo turned that sickly efficiency into huge point totals yet? The team has just had some funky touchdown luck dragging them down.
As noted by Rotoworld's Rich Hribar, the 49ers have scored on 52.4% of their possessions with Garoppolo at quarterback. That's up from 28.6% prior to the switch. This has benefitted kicker Robbie Gould moreso than Garoppolo with nine of those scoring drives ending up as field goals compared to two touchdowns, but that's not a ratio you would expect to be sticky. The touchdowns will come eventually.
There may not be a better spot for Garoppolo to put the full package together than against the Titans. They rank 26th against the pass, according to numberFire's metrics. We've just been allowed to forget this recently because of the wretched string of quarterbacks they've faced.
Over their past nine games, the Titans have gone up against one quarterback ranked higher than 24th in Passing NEP per drop back. That was Ben Roethlisberger, who emptied the clip with 299 yards and 4 touchdowns. A four-touchdown day may not be in Garoppolo's range of outcomes, but he may already be one of the better passers this defense has faced. Why wouldn't we give him a crank?
Garoppolo's $7,300, which is a good chunk below the quarterbacks in the high-scoring games we touched on earlier. There is an opportunity cost in not using those guys, but Garoppolo can also help get you access to other high-priced pieces like Le'Veon Bell, Antonio Brown, Todd Gurley, and Rob Gronkowski. There's value in that. We should be willing to roll with Garoppolo as a result and hope that he's able to get his team into the end zone this time around.
You can also save a bit by stacking Garoppolo with Marquise Goodwin, though the price there has gone up a smidge. He's $6,600 after sitting at $5,700 last week. That doesn't mean he's not worth it.
Goodwin led the team last week with 12 targets; no other player had more than 4. In the two games that Garoppolo has started, Goodwin has 29.0% of the overall targets, 41.2% of the deep targets, and 18.8% of the red-zone targets. He may not be a lock for a bunny touchdown, but busting a long one is not out of the question.
Before Garoppolo took over, Goodwin was dependent on deep balls to get yardage. Now, he's getting targets all over the field on top of those deep looks. That gives him a floor and ceiling combo that we can absolutely accept at his price, especially against a secondary this leaky. Goodwin's in play both for stacks with Garoppolo and as a stand-alone play at wide receiver.
