5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 15

Pittsburgh Steelers' Passing Offense

The Steelers made this column last week, too, and something clearly didn't work out. The team lost to the Oakland Raiders, scoring just 21 points. Given the expectations, that's a letdown.

It certainly wasn't as bad as perception, though. Ben Roethlisberger was limited to 68.3% of the snaps due to an injury but still threw for 282 yards on 29 attempts, scoring 19.28 FanDuel points. JuJu Smith-Schuster had 130 yards and 2 touchdowns, and Jaylen Samuels scored 12.7 FanDuel points despite not finding the end zone. The only true disappointment was Antonio Brown. Once you dig into how things played out, there's definitely not enough concern here for us to avoid them in such a great environment.

This week, the Steelers return home to face the Patriots. The Patriots aren't an awful team against the pass, sitting 18th in Adjusted Defensive Passing NEP per play, which accounts for the schedule they have faced.

But when they go on the road, the brown stuff hits the fan in a hurry.

The table below shows the metrics of quarterbacks facing the Patriots depending on where the game is played. "Passing NEP/P" is short for "Passing NEP per drop back," which shows the expected points added on a per-drop back basis, including deductions for expected points lost on sacks, incompletions, and interceptions. "Success Rate" is the percentage of drop backs that increase the team's expected points for the drive.

The sample outside of New England includes one game against Derek Anderson and one against Josh McCown, but the Patriots have still been getting dunked on repeatedly. Patrick Mahomes scored 28.98 points in Foxborough, the most of any quarterback against the Patriots there, but both Blake Bortles and Mitchell Trubisky topped 33 points against them with the Pats on the road. The Patriots' home-road splits are almost as drastic as the Steelers'.

Even with a solid efficiency day last week, Roethlisberger does still benefit from playing at Heinz Field. He has averaged 0.28 Passing NEP per drop back there compared to 0.17 on the road. Roethlisberger's spendy at $8,600 on FanDuel, but with how juicy this game is, he's still worth that.

Then we get to the issue that figures to cause the biggest dilemma on this offense for the week. Do we ride the hot hand with Smith-Schuster or go back to ol' reliable in Brown?

To investigate this, let's dig into the market shares of both players. If we want the sample most representative of what we should expect on Sunday, we should be narrowing our scope to the past four games. In that time, Smith-Schuster has lined up on the outside for 59.0% of his snaps, according to Pro Football Focus, up from 24.9% prior to that stretch. That changes the dynamic of Smith-Schuster's role in the offense. Here's how the targets have been divvied up since that switch with a "deep" target being any target at least 16 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.

Prior to this change for Smith-Schuster, he was getting 22.9% of the overall targets while Brown was at 26.8%. There has been a clear shift since then, and that shift is explained by looking at where Smith-Schuster has been lining up. This matters.

If you're looking for a cash-game play between these two, Smith-Schuster seems to be the correct option. He has at least 78 receiving yards in 5 of his past 6 games, and he comes at a discount relative to Brown. He's the "safer" option of the two because he seems a bit less dependent on touchdowns.

But for tournaments, there's still plenty to like about Brown. Given that Smith-Schuster just went off last week while Brown was held to 5 receptions for 35 yards, Smith-Schuster is a lock to be the more popular play this week. He is not a lock, however, to be the higher-scoring option between the two.

Even in this stretch where Smith-Schuster's usage has been on the rise, Brown has still had his two highest yardage outputs of the season (117 in Week 11 and 154 in Week 13). A slate-busting day is still very much within Brown's range of outcomes.

If you're rolling out a bunch of tournament lineups, you need to get Smith-Schuster in there. He has shown his upside all year long, and his yardage floor is tremendous. But with Brown figuring to be on fewer rosters while still having huge upside, we'll want to get our fair share of him, as well.

As you can see in the table above, Vance McDonald isn't a huge part of this offense. But we could still look his way here.

The Patriots' defensive reputation is that they shut down the opposing team's top option (an anecdote that has been less true on the road with Corey Davis and Kenny Stills both netting at least 125 receiving yards against them). We don't know whether that will mean focusing on Brown or Smith-Schuster. But their focus isn't going to be McDonald.

Eric Ebron hit this defense for 105 yards and 2 touchdowns, and Trey Burton turned 11 targets into 126 yards and a score when facing them in Chicago. McDonald is only $5,500 and gets you access to the slate's best game while filling a dumpster fire of a position. We should be able to get behind that.

Finally, Samuels would again be in play if James Conner were to sit this week. Samuels played 80.0% of the snaps with Conner sidelined in Week 14 and got 7 targets on 33 routes run. His passing-game involvement would make him a viable stacking partner with Roethlisberger at $5,500.