3 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in the Divisional Round
New England Patriots' Passing Offense
Be cool. Sometimes, the easy answer is the right one.
Before Travis Kelce's injury last week, it looked like the Kansas City Chiefs were going to scorch the souls of the Tennessee Titans' secondary. This week, those Titans are facing Tom Brady. Ruh roh.
The Titans finished the season ranked 25th against the pass, according to numberFire's schedule-adjusted metrics. That's the worst among all playoff teams even when you include the New England Patriots' wretched start to the season. And it gets even worse against quality competition.
As mentioned in our piece on each playoff team's biggest weakness, the Titans didn't face many quality passers this year. They faced just five quarterbacks ranked in the top 15 in Passing NEP per drop back. Four of those guys threw four touchdowns, all of them threw for at least 280 yards, and the only guy not to hit four touchdowns -- Jimmy Garoppolo -- went for 381 against them. If we want to extend that to the postseason, Alex Smith had 264 yards and 2 touchdowns against them despite playing half the game without his best piece on offense. They're really bad.
That said, Brady hasn't been playing like one of these top-tier starters recently. He has six touchdowns to five interceptions over his past five games, and he hasn't topped 300 yards since November 19th. That's a tough pill to swallow when Brady is $9,000 on FanDuel for the Saturday-only slate (and $8,800 for the full slate).
You could attribute this to his Achilles injury, which anecdotally makes sense. But there's another explanation that may provide a bit more optimism for this matchup against the Titans.
Ever since right tackle Marcus Cannon went down with an ankle injury, the Patriots have had issues keeping Brady upright. The table below shows how they have performed in games with Cannon compared to those without (including a standalone Week 3 game before he missed the second half of the year). Sack NEP per drop back shows the number of expected points the team lost due to sacks divided by the total number of drop backs with a more negative number being worse for the offense.
| Patriots in 2017 | Sack NEP per Drop Back | Sack Rate |
|---|---|---|
| With Marcus Cannon | -0.06 | 5.52% |
| Without Marcus Cannon | -0.11 | 5.83% |
With Cannon, they would have been the third-best offense in the league by this metric. Without him for the full season, they would have been 16th. That's a pretty significant split.
Because Cannon is on injured reserve, though, this wouldn't seemingly help the Patriots in this specific game. However, the Titans' pass rush certainly contributes to their issues defensively. They finished 18th in Sack NEP per drop back on the defensive side. That's despite four games against the Indianapolis Colts and Houston Texans, the two offenses that lost the most expected points due to sacks on a per-drop back basis in the entire league (31.7% of the Titans' Sack NEP came from those two opponents).
Sacks kill drives and hurt players' fantasy outlooks. They lower the odds of a touchdown, and they put quarterbacks behind the sticks, reducing the expected efficiency they'll be able to pump out. If the Titans can't get to Brady even with his depleted offensive line, he's going to be able to shred this secondary.
Brady comes with an opportunity cost because he is $9,000 on this slate. But if we're just looking at this straight, he seems to be the best quarterback play available. It will be hard to avoid him despite the pricing.
The hardest part of all this is deciding with whom we should stack him. You can just go the easy route with Rob Gronkowski, but at $8,200 for the Saturday-only slate, it's going to force you to scramble elsewhere. So, how do we handle this?
This is the first time we've had all of Gronkowski, Brandin Cooks, Chris Hogan, and Danny Amendola healthy since Week 8. Overall, those four have played six games together this year. Here's the target distribution they've had in those four games with a "deep" target being any throw that travels at least 16 yards beyond the line of scrimmage. The prices listed are for the Saturday-only slate.
| When All Healthy | FanDuel Price | Overall Targets | Deep Targets | Red-Zone Targets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rob Gronkowski | $8,200 | 20.5% | 26.2% | 29.0% |
| Brandin Cooks | $7,600 | 18.3% | 31.1% | 9.7% |
| Chris Hogan | $6,600 | 16.2% | 23.0% | 22.6% |
| Danny Amendola | $5,400 | 14.8% | 4.9% | 12.9% |
Gronkowski gets both deep targets and red-zone looks while leading the team in overall targets, so you want him if you can find the cash. But there's still some allure in Cooks and Hogan.
We know that Cooks' output goes down in games where Hogan is active. That's just how it works when there are more mouths to feed. But in those six games where everyone was healthy, Cooks still had yardage totals of 88, 131, 38, 93, 65, and 26. The 26-yard outing came against the Los Angeles Chargers, who have one of the best secondaries in the league. We should lower our expectations of Cooks with Hogan back, but we don't need to avoid him completely.
As for Hogan, it's all about snagging them tuddies.
Chris Hogan is 2nd on #Patriots in red-zone targets per game and still 2nd on team in targets inside 10-yard line despite missing 7 weeks. https://t.co/5AFP5emsIE
— Evan Silva (@evansilva) January 9, 2018
He gets work close to the goal line, and he'll get a few deep looks to boot. As long as we don't hear that Hogan's shoulder is still an issue, we can fully justify spending down for him in this matchup.
