5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 11

New York Giants' Rushing Offense

We haven't gotten to see Saquon Barkley on the main slate much recently. Between two Monday night games, a Thursday night game, and a bye week, Barkley and the New York Giants have been available for the choosing on just one of the past five main slates. He has been a bit out of sight, out of mind for more than a month.

That's going to change in a hurry on Sunday.

The Giants are at home to face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and there may not be a better matchup for a running back of Barkley's mold.

Starting with the ground game, the Buccaneers have had some bad injury luck in their front seven. They've gotten defensive tackle Gerald McCoy back after he missed a couple of games, but their linebacking corps have gotten shredded. Kwon Alexander is on injured reserve with a torn ACL, and Lavonte David may miss this week due to a sprained MCL.

This Buccaneers defense was built -- for whatever reason -- to stop the run, but that task has become far more challenging with all of the injuries. They rank 28th in Rushing Success Rate allowed to running backs, according to numberFire's Brandon Gdula. Success Rate refers to the percentage of carries that increase the team's expected points for the drive, and the Bucs are having troubles stopping teams there.

The ground-game efficiency certainly helps someone like Barkley, who is forced to fight behind a mediocre-at-best group of blockers. But the true appeal in both Barkley and this matchup is the aerial attack.

Good pass-catching backs have basically gone bananas against the Buccaneers this year. Tarik Cohen turned 8 targets into 121 yards and a touchdown, Alvin Kamara had 112 yards and a touchdown, and Christian McCaffrey racked up 78 yards through the air on just 6 targets. Those are all among the top pass-catching backs in the league, but so is Barkley.

Barkley enters this week with 22.7% of the Giants' total targets for the season, trailing only Odell Beckham at 30.5%. Even in the three games since Evan Engram returned from injury, Barkley's market share is at 22.3%, and he has gotten double-digit targets in two of those games.

Plenty of those targets have come in the red zone, as well. He's at 17.2% of the team's red-zone targets for the full season. That's in addition to his eight carries inside the five-yard line, the third-highest total for a starting running back on the main slate.

The matchup and the volume are both tremendous for Barkley, making him look like a drool-worthy option at $8,700 on FanDuel. But with all of the great options at our disposal, we need to be picky, and Barkley's offense isn't exactly one we want to target all that often.

Efficient quarterbacks generate scoring drives, amplifying the touchdown upside in running backs tied to them. But with Eli Manning ranked 23rd in Passing NEP per drop back, this isn't one of those situations. That's even more concerning when the other high-priced backs are tied to guys like Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, and Cam Newton, all of whom are in the top 10 in that metric.

Thankfully for Barkley, we've already seen the effects of this offensive ineptitude, and the output was still acceptable. He has failed to score a touchdown in three games this year, and his FanDuel points in those games were 17.8, 15.6, and 12.0, respectively. That's his floor, and it's pretty tasty. The upside when he does score is massive with a 33.4-point game under his belt already.

The Giants' implied team total is 27.0 points, second-highest on the main slate. If they wind up hitting that mark, Barkley's a great bet for at least one touchdown. That amps up his floor even higher than it already is. Two touchdowns certainly isn't out of the question, and the yardage upside -- both on the ground and as a receiver -- is beyond tempting.

It's hard to find a better spot than this to deploy Barkley in a lineup. Yes, there are a ton of good options at running back this week, and Barkley comes with an opportunity cost. But he has had one of the best workloads in the league this year, and his matchup is pristine. That puts Barkley near the top of the heap for both cash games and tournaments.