5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 4

New York Giants' Passing Offense

Ain't nothing fun about clicking the add button next to Eli Manning's name. But the rest of this offense is certainly enjoyable, and they get what appears to be a favorable matchup Sunday with the New Orleans Saints.

At what point do we disregard what happened last year and accept that the Saints' defense may be bad again? All the early data says this is -- once again -- our reality.

When you adjust for opponents, the Saints' passing defense has allowed 0.595 expected points per drop back this season. The second-worst unit -- the Kansas City Chiefs -- is down at 0.348. We can talk about last year's success all that we want, but the 2018 Saints are outlierishly awful right now.

And, unfortunately for them, that doesn't figure to get any better in Week 4.

The sky's not falling, but it's at least starting to teeter.

In the Saints' defense, this will be their first game played outdoors this year. That should give them a tiny nudge in the right direction. But they're also facing a Giants offense that really seemed to hit its stride last week.

While facing a Houston Texans defensive line that can really get after the quarterback, Manning had his best game in quite some time. He finished with 297 yards on just 29 attempts, racking up 16.63 Passing NEP, a drastic deviation from Manning's -12.07 Passing NEP entering the contest.

The big difference seemed to be the rhythm of the offense. Manning's 2.40 seconds to throw was the second-lowest mark of the week, according to NFL's Next-Gen Stats. That number was 2.71 in Week 2 and 2.70 in Week 1, making this seem like it was more than just variance.

This is not the first time that we've seen this happen. Back in 2016, the Minnesota Vikings' offense line was decimated due to injury, losing piece after piece before the season began. They tried to mask this by switching to a quick-pass offense part way through the year, allowing Sam Bradford to have sneakily-solid season.

That change took place when Pat Shurmur took over as their offensive coordinator. Shurmur's now the head coach of the New York Giants. If anybody knows how to account for deficiencies up front, it's him.

Bradford finished that season ranked 12th in Passing NEP per drop back of 39 quarterbacks with at least 100 drop backs. There's no guarantee that Manning can duplicate that success, but Week 3 certainly showed a glimmer of hope.

Because this style of offense leads to a bunch of quick throws, it's possible that Manning's ceiling will never be great. As such, it's fine if you want to overlook him in tournaments at $7,100. His pass-catchers, though, are a different story.

The clear value of the week in the Giants' offense is Sterling Shepard. With Evan Engram out due to a knee injury, Shepard figures to absorb some extra targets. He had seven last week with Engram going down early, accounting for 24.1% of the team's looks in that game. Shepard is also the one who would benefit most from Patrick Robinson's absence as Shepard has run 81% of his snaps in the slot, according to Pro Football Focus. That's a lot to like for $6,200.

That's not to say that we should ignore Odell Beckham, even though he will be shadowed by cornerback Marshon Lattimore. Beckham enters this week with 31.4% of the Giants' overall targets, 42.1% of the deep targets, and 30.0% of the red-zone targets. His matchup is tough, and his role down the field would be limited if they were to get the ball out quickly, but he's still easily worth $8,600.

Finally, the potentially lowest-owned outlet for attacking this pass defense is Saquon Barkley.

As mentioned in the section on Elliott, plenty of high-cost running backs are attractive this week, and Kamara and Gordon figure to command the lion's share of the ownership. But we should be into Barkley, too.

In his rookie season, Barkley is commanding a whopping 25.0% of the team's targets, the second-highest mark for a running back on the main slate behind Kamara. This means that even when the team's ground game stalls -- as it very well may this weekend -- Barkley still has plenty of juice for DFS. We shouldn't go as hard at him as we go at the other expensive backs, but if you're loading up on this game, you have to make sure you get exposure to Barkley.