5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 10
Los Angeles Chargers' Rushing Offense
This one likely isn't as tough of a sell as the Titans' passing offense. But you're going to want some Melvin Gordon in your life this week.
First of all, there's the matchup. Matchups truly don't get any better than this one against the Oakland Raiders.
The Raiders enter this week ranked 30th in Adjusted Defensive Rushing NEP per play, which is pretty bad, but it could also be selling this one short.
For the season, the Raiders have allowed seven different running backs to get at least 75 yards on the ground against them. Three of them have come in the past two games alone. Marlon Mack went for 132 yards, and Nyheim Hines turned his 11 carries into 78 yards in the same game. Then last Thursday, Raheem Mostert racked up 86 yards before leaving after just 7 carries. Oakland seems to have given up, and they are bleeding production to opposing backs as a result.
If you dig back a bit deeper, though, you'll see that Gordon didn't do much the first time these two teams squared off. In that one, Gordon rushed 19 times for 58 yards. He still paid off because he had a touchdown and 62 receiving yards, but they did hold up against him from a rushing perspective, and that game was in Los Angeles.
That's a fair point to bring up, but the game is also tainted. The Chargers played it without their starters at both tackle spots, starting Sam Tevi (a 2017 6th-round pick) and Trenton Scott (an undrafted rookie free agent). Left tackle Russell Okung is now healthy again, allowing Tevi to slide back over to right tackle, and it has helped Gordon go nuts recently.
In the past three games Okung has started, Gordon has gone for at least 100 yards rushing in each, and that's despite getting no more than 18 carries in any of those. That leads to a solid floor. The floor gets an even bigger boost with Gordon getting at least four targets in each game he has played, accounting for 21.1% of the team's targets in those games. The safety here is superb, putting Gordon in play for cash, even with Kareem Hunt at almost the same price as a 16.5-point home favorite.
That's not to say we should overlook Gordon's ceiling.
Gordon has basically been a touchdown machine all year long, and with the way the Chargers are using him, it's easy to see why. In the red zone, Gordon has 27.8% of the team's targets, and if you look at just the games he has played, it balloons to 32.3%. That has allowed him to score 23 or more FanDuel points in 4 of 7 games, topping 27 points 3 times.
The one concern you could potentially have about Gordon is what he'll do if this game gets out of hand. If Nick Mullens can put a whoopin' on this defense, a 6-2 team led by a future Hall-of-Famer at quarterback probably has a decent shot to do the same. And if that happens, they could choose to put Melvin in bubblewrap.
Although that's a fair concern some of the time, it doesn't hold up here. Thankfully, the Chargers have been balling out enough to give us a bit of a sample on this scenario.
Gordon has played in three games in which the Chargers have won by 10 or more points. In those games, he has 7 total touchdowns and is averaging 27.2 FanDuel points per game. If they get up big, Gordon likely played a role in getting them there.
It's difficult to separate between Gordon and Hunt when trying to size them up for cash games and tournaments. Objectively, Hunt's likely in the better spot being at home as a monster favorite. But with how good Gordon has been and how good this matchup is, it's hard to say definitively that Hunt has the edge.
