5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 7

Jacksonville Jaguars' Passing Offense

If you can't live with risk, feel free to move onto the next section. I won't know, and I can assure you that I understand the trepidation.

Blake Bortles is not a good quarterback. In back-to-back favorable matchups for the Jacksonville Jaguars, he flopped spectacularly, racking up -35.36 Passing NEP in Weeks 5 and 6 combined. He was hot, stinky trash, and there is no nicer way to say it.

Part of that likely is due to his offensive line. Left tackles Cam Robinson and Josh Wells are both on injured reserve, and this dip in Bortles' production started with Wells going down in Week 5. That's likely not a coincidence, and it should give us pause about reinvesting in Bortles going forward.

But there was also another factor at play that will now be back in Bortles' favor this weekend. He was on the road, and that matters more for him than you may think.

On the season, Bortles has managed to crank out two truly masterful performances. One of them was against the New England Patriots, and the other was against the New York Jets.

What do those two games have in common? They both took place in Jacksonville.

Because this season is so new, it's hard to ever buy into a single player's home-road splits, and it would be wise to avoid doing so. But this is something we saw -- to a drastic degree -- last year, as well.

The table below looks at the expected points Bortles has added as a passer at home versus on the road in the past two seasons. This may not be some small-sample fluke.

Between the two seasons, Bortles has 21 touchdowns and 7 interceptions at home. That ratio slips to 9 touchdowns and 14 interceptions on the road. It's possible we should have seen the struggles coming even with the matchups being favorable.

Luckily for Bortles, he gets another poor defense on Sunday. Thanks to a boatload of injuries in the secondary, the Houston Texans' defense ranks 30th against the pass, according to numberFire's metrics. They've been struggling, and bad quarterbacks have taken advantage.

Back in Week 2, the Tennessee Titans were playing without Marcus Mariota. They benefitted from a long trick pass, but Blaine Gabbert also added 1.45 expected points on 21 drop backs. You have to grade a guy like Gabbert on a curve, and he tested out well there.

We saw the same thing from Eli Manning in Week 3. Manning finished that game with 16.63 Passing NEP. He's at -16.60 in all other games combined, and he hasn't come within 10 Passing NEP of that mark he posted against the Texans in any other game. If they can revive Eli, why not Bortles?

The other reassuring thing about Manning's big game is that he also has offensive-line concerns. If Bortles were to flop, the Texans' stout defensive line would likely play a big role in it, but that didn't seem to affect Manning too much.

Bortles is just $6,500 on FanDuel, putting him above only Derek Anderson and C.J. Beathard among starters. There's reason to be interested in Beathard, but bookmakers seem to favor the Jaguars.

Bortles could bust, but he's crazy cheap and allows you to get spicy players in your lineup elsewhere. Why not?

Once you come to grips with the fact that you're using Bortles, you then have to decide who to pair with him. There may not be a right answer.

Because things are a bit hard to predict with this team's pass-catchers, it's not a bad idea to roll Bortles all by himself. You won't get the double-dip, but at least you won't shoot yourself in the foot by picking incorrectly among the three receivers.

If you're rolling out a single lineup and using Bortles, that may be the way to play it. If you're multi-entering, though, it makes sense to take some stabs at the receivers. So let's try to decipher whom we should favor.

In looking at the snap rates for the receivers, Dede Westbrook's role seemed to expand in Week 4 when his snap rate went up to 74.0%. It had been below 70% in 2 of the previous 3 games. As such, let's narrow the scope to just the past three games to see who's getting the most looks.

Although Westbrook is the most expensive, he has the fewest deep targets of the bunch and is yet to get a red-zone target this season. He's got talent, so he's still worth exposure at $6,000, but he's not the runaway top option.

Instead, that top player could very well be Donte Moncrief. He's getting as many raw targets as Westbrook while getting some high-leverage looks at the same time. If you want to dub someone the top option on this team for DFS purposes, it looks like that crown belongs to Moncrief.