If you aren't freaking out, flipping tables over, and screaming at random passers by, then you likely avoided the pure chaos that unfolded in Week 1 of fantasy football. Mazel tov.
For the rest of us, the panic has already set in. What do we do with Keenan Allen gone? Should the Buffalo Bills disband due to Sammy Watkins' foot amputation? When did Coby Fleener decide that he'd rather frolic aimlessly across the turf than attempt to catch footballs?
Why wait until Week 3 to overreact to everything when we can simply do it right now?
The problem with this line of thinking is that it can force us to overlook otherwise positive situations that are conducive to fantasy goodness. If we've already abandoned hope on a situation, then we could prematurely write them off prior to a strong matchup. That can lead to missed opportunities in the fantasy world, only furthering our unending sadness.
Thankfully, we have some tools that can help us combat this. Specifically, we've got numberFire's Net Expected Points (NEP), a metric we use to track the efficiency of teams and players with the team side being adjusted based on strength of opponent.
Here's how NEP works. Prior to each play, there's an expected number of points that a team will score on its current drive. A three-yard completion on 3rd and 2 will pick up a first down, likely increasing the expected points and giving the team positive NEP. That same three-yard completion on 3rd and 4, though, will likely result in a punt, dropping the team's NEP. The sum of all of these fluctuations can give us a good idea of how efficient each unit is throughout the course of a season.
NEP can help us spot situations to exploit, regardless of our biases for or against a specific team. Let's dig in to find five matchups we can exploit in Week 2 of daily fantasy football, including one that we may have written off just a bit too quickly.