5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 1

Atlanta Falcons' Rushing Offense

If you want to avoid the chalk at running back this week, your best route is to target the second-tier guys at the position. Both David Johnson and Le'Veon Bell will have massive ownership (rightfully so), Todd Gurley has a favorable matchup, and some cheaper assets have bigger roles than they were projected to have when pricing was released.

That's going to allow non-Gurley assets in the mid-$7,000 to mid-$8,000 range to go a bit overlooked, which can be intriguing when their matchups are as favorable as Devonta Freeman's.

Heading into 2016, the Chicago Bears tried hard to improve their rush defense. They drafted two linebackers in the first four rounds, a defensive tackle in the third, and a safety in the fourth. With that level of investment, you'd assume they would have taken steps forward the following season.

They did not.

Instead, the Bears finished dead last in Adjusted Defensive Rushing NEP per play. Opposing running backs averaged 0.05 Rushing NEP per carry with a 41.55% Success Rate, significant deviations from the league averages of -0.01 and 40.50%, respectively. It helped them allow nine separate rushers to rack up at least 75 yards on the ground against them, including a pair of 140-yard games.

There were no major upgrades to change the unit up front over the offseason. Instead, they traded the farm to move up a spot and select quarterback Mitchell Trubisky, leaving the Bears with just five total draft picks, only one of which was on the defensive side. They have given us no reason to believe they will be better against the rush in 2017.

If they were hoping for an alternative outcome, Week 1 doesn't figure to be the best way to get things started. The Atlanta Falcons finished the year as the third-ranked rushing offense, trailing just the Dallas Cowboys and the Buffalo Bills. The retirement of guard Chris Chester -- who played every single offensive snap for the Falcons in 2015 and 2016 -- is a big one, so we should expect some regression this year. But the matchup here should help temporarily quell the concerns.

The matchup, though, likely isn't the biggest question here. Instead, that probably revolves around whether or not we can trust Freeman when the team is on the road with Tevin Coleman fully healthy. That discussion is a bit trickier to navigate.

If you look at Freeman's fantasy output the past two years when Coleman has been active and the team has been on the road, you might be inclined to fade him. He has averaged just 15.42 FanDuel points per game in those scenarios, according to the RotoViz game splits app, compared to 19.39 points per game out of that split. When you're paying $8,300 and forgoing a shot at either Johnson or Bell, you need more than that from your second running-back slot.

But the fantasy output doesn't tell the full tale here. A big cause for the split stems from touchdown variance as Freeman has 0.31 rushing touchdowns per game in this split compared to 1.06 out of it. From an opportunity standpoint, Freeman remains largely static.

In terms of total opportunities, Freeman actually had a higher workload in the split than outside of it. That's not to say that we should expect him to do as well as he would if Coleman weren't a factor, but Freeman is still a high-volume back we can trust in fantasy.

The Falcons have the highest implied team total on the main slate at 27.5 points, suggesting they'll make plenty of trips to the red zone. Freeman had 38.07% of the team's red-zone opportunities in 2016, so when they do get there, you know he'll be involved. Combine that with the seven-point spread in Atlanta's favor, hinting at a rush-heavy game script, and you can start to see why Freeman may have more appeal than you'd think at first glance.