3 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in the Divisional Round

Tennessee Titans' Passing Offense

Be different. When you know everybody's going one way, and there's a viable alternative that provides similar allure, don't be afraid to stroll the other path.

Derrick Henry is going to be the chalk at running back this week. And, frankly, he should be. He's just $7,000 on FanDuel for the Saturday-only slate and $6,700 for the full slate, which is criminally cheap for someone who has played at least 96% of the snaps in each of the past two games. You need a whole lotta this guy in your lineups despite the heavy spread in New England's favor.

But with everybody rushing to use Henry, it seems unlikely that his quarterback, Marcus Mariota, will be as popular as some of the other options. We'd be wise to give him a sniff as a result.

If we're looking at the full season, we're not going to want to touch Mariota. He was awful for a good chunk of it, finishing 23rd in Passing NEP per drop back out of 46 quarterbacks with at least 100 drop backs. That's not going to cut it when our other options are as spicy as Brady. But there also seems to be a bit of noise in Mariota's season-long marks.

Mariota injured his hamstring in Week 4 against the Texans. Watching him play, he never really seemed as if he was the same after that. The analytics back that sentiment up.

A Passing NEP per drop back of 0.17 would have ranked 12th in the league this year; -0.03 would have been 28th. That's an issue when we're still in that post-injury split.

However, things have been looking a bit rosier for Mariota recently, implying he may be coming out of that rut.

The biggest positive sign for Mariota is that he's starting to run more. He carried the ball 10 times in Week 17, his highest output of the season. He ran the ball seven times in Week 3 (before the injury) and hadn't gotten back to that number since prior to the season finale.

He did it again in the wild card round, rushing 8 times for 46 yards. You're not doing that if you're still dealing with a bum hamstring. The increased rush attempts boost his fantasy appeal, and they make you feel better about the offense as a whole.

Some of these same threads have shown up in Mariota's passing metrics, too. He reportedly suffered a knee injury in Week 14 against the Arizona Cardinals, and his play reflected it. But the past four games have been different. Here are his single-game metrics in those four alongside the average marks for quarterbacks facing those same defenses this year.

The one game in which Mariota was below the other quarterbacks was last week against the Chiefs. But that number is skewed a bit. The Passing NEP per drop back of opposing passers when the game was in Kansas City was -0.03; they were just so awful on the road that it threw everything off. Mariota easily outperformed that number in his game, making it look as if he has truly turned a corner.

This wouldn't matter much if Mariota didn't have a good matchup, and that's a bit of a divisive subject when it comes to the Patriots. Their full-season numbers are not great, but they also include a stretch at the beginning of the year in which they were pure, stinky trash. It's not representative of their current abilities.

So, let's throw that out the window and just look at what happened in the second half of the season (from Week 10 on). In that time, they were 11th in the league against the pass, which is quite good. But among the teams playing this weekend, they're down in fifth. One of the teams behind them is the Pittsburgh Steelers, and they were missing one of their best players in Joe Haden for much of that sample. This is still not an upper-echelon pass defense, meaning Mariota needs to be on our radar.

The question is whether or not we can use Mariota and Henry in the same lineup. We want Mariota, but we don't want to pedal back exposure to Henry to get there. Henry's not going to get a ton of targets, and the Titans' implied team total is tied for lowest on the slate at 16.75. We have to be wary of over-investing in the offense. So, is this a viable plan of attack?

We should be willing to do so, yes, and much of it boils down to pricing and available alternatives. By using both Mariota and Henry, we're getting access -- one way or another -- to every play the Titans run and every touchdown they score. That's what you get for $7,600 out of Mariota and $7,000 for Henry on the Saturday-only slate. It absolutely goes counter to a process we'd deploy on a full slate, but there's a chance that the Titans score some points here. Mariota's viable in tournaments.

If you decide not to pair him with Henry, things are a bit spread out among the pass catchers. Here's a breakdown of their target distribution in the past four games where the offense has started to click. Again, prices listed are for the Saturday-only slate.

Rishard Matthews had been the best option prior to his injury, but he has a total of four targets the past two weeks. That's partially due to facing some elite cornerbacks, but Malcolm Butler and Stephon Gilmore are pretty snazzy, too. We should probably be inclined to look elsewhere.

The optimal choice -- given the alternatives at his position -- seems to be Delanie Walker. He leads in overall targets and is tied with Eric Decker for the most red-zone targets. There are only a few viable tight ends for this slate, meaning Walker's a pretty decent way to avoid paying up for Gronkowski.

The choice for wide receivers would then seemingly be between Decker and Corey Davis. Davis is the better bet for a bomb with all of the deep targets, but he has exceeded 50 receiving yards just twice all season. That may push us toward Decker, who is also risky but at least can bail us out with a touchdown.

The Titans' passing offense isn't safe given the projected game flow, and banking on Mariota based on a four-game sample doesn't lower that risk any. But there's reason to believe they could perform well, so they're at least worth a shot in tournaments.