Because the NFL is a wickedly brutal sport, we're already to the point in the year where injuries are playing a major role in how we make our decisions. And it's not just with the big guys like Aaron Rodgers and Odell Beckham going down.

Across the Week 7 slate, there are plays that depend almost entirely on the health of certain individuals. If Player X suits up, then Player Y's value hits the tubes with the quickness. And unfortunately, we're not going to have some of those answers until Sunday morning.

That's going to make Week 7 a bit of a balancing act. It should force us to withhold making final judgements on some players until we've at least seen some practice reports to know whose odds of suiting up are trending in the right direction. And it means we absolutely must be available Sunday morning to make some tweaks based on who's active and who's still chilling on the sidelines.

All of this ambiguity is going to make things a wee bit more dicey in identifying some matchups to exploit for Week 7, but it doesn't mean it's an impossible task. We can at least take a look at Wednesday's practice reports, extrapolate out based on that, and discuss how each player's hypothetical availability would affect the appeal of those around him.

Thankfully, we can get some aid in all of this from looking at advanced analytics, specifically numberFire's Net Expected Points (NEP). This is the metric we use to track the efficiency of both teams and players with the team totals being adjusted for the strength of opponent. NEP shows us the expected points added or subtracted on each play throughout the year, giving us the crucial context to know that a three-yard completion on 3rd and 2 is infinitely more valuable than that same completion on 3rd and 4.

Things are going to change drastically as the week goes along based on player health. But which matchups should we be monitoring entering Week 7? Let's take a look.