5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 16
Jacksonville Jaguars' Passing Offense
The "bounce-back" narrative doesn't apply to Blake Bortles here after he beasted out last week; rather, it applies to one of his pass catchers in Dede Westbrook. We'll touch on why he's in play later on, but we could see Bortles' run of competency continue against the San Francisco 49ers.
Although Jimmy Garoppolo has brought the 49ers' offense back from the dead, the defense is a bit of a different story. They're still 30th against the pass for the entire season and dead last from Week 10 on. That's not something we should fear.
What's encouraging for those of you who still have doubts about Bortles' abilities (a justifiable stance) is that a good chunk of that stretch has come against poor quarterbacks. In the five-game sample, the 49ers have faced just one quarterback ranked higher than 26th in Passing NEP per drop back. That was Russell Wilson, who went for 24.62 FanDuel points against them. Bortles actually sits ahead of Wilson in Passing NEP per drop back on the season. Yes, you read that correctly.
This isn't to say that Bortles is the better quarterback because so many factors will influence such a metric, but the factors that have helped propel Bortles to a decently-efficient season are still in place. The offensive line is healthy, and they have allowed the seventh-best sack rate in the league this year. That'll go a long way in reviving a quarterback's career.
It's also not as if Bortles randomly popped into the fantasy limelight last week. He has now scored at least 23 FanDuel points in three of his past four games, and he had 18.52 in the other. The only time that Bortles has scored fewer than 16 points over his past eight was a game that featured 16 mile-per-hour winds. Dude has been good for half of a season now. We just have to come to grips with it.
After what Bortles did last week, it shouldn't take much convincing to get you in his corner. He has been a consistent producer, and he's in a plus matchup. For $7,600, that'll certainly work.
Westbrook, though, is likely another case. He was on 22.9% of all rosters in FanDuel's Sunday Million and 33.0% of rosters in all contests, meaning that his two-catch performance burned a whole lotta people. Some of you may still be scraping the vomit out of your keyboard as a result. But we should be willing to roll him out in tournaments here.
Even when you include that game, Westbrook still has 23.5% of the team's overall targets, 37.5% of the deep targets, and 20.0% of the red-zone targets since his debut. That's a pretty sweet little portfolio for a guy who is $5,900.
On top of that, the team is likely to be without Marqise Lee, who injured his ankle in Week 15. Lee was the 1A to Westbrook's 1B within the offense, meaning there are targets up for grabs. Some of those could easily slide Westbrook's direction.
Allen Hurns returned to practice on Wednesday, making it seem likely that he'll get in his first action since Week 10. But his return would be more of a direct threat to Keelan Cole than to Westbrook. If you're going to ding anybody, it should likely be Cole.
We do need to be more wary of Westbrook now that we know a two-target game is within his range of outcomes. He's not a guy we should be trusting in cash games anymore. But we have seen speedsters like Sammy Watkins, T.Y. Hilton, and Jaron Brown torch this 49ers defense already this year. That makes Westbrook a great tournament play at what should be much lower ownership than he carried last week.
