5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 13

Carolina Panthers' Passing Offense

The narrative here is pretty simple: we have to be wary of divisional teams facing each other for the second time in a season. That could push us away from this weekend's matchup between the Carolina Panthers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which has the highest total on the main slate.

And this narrative isn't just anecdotal. There's actually some evidence to back it up, as well.

In general, as you can see in that tweet, this is likely a narrative we should follow. But it's also not universally true.

A couple of years ago, we looked into this narrative at numberFire to see whether it was legit. When looking at the data, a quarterback's average fantasy output did go down the second time facing a divisional team. But the difference was just 0.33 FanDuel points, and it was 0.12 points if you excluded games that occurred in Week 17 when teams are potentially resting starters.

Additionally, a certain archetype of passer was more prone to seeing a decrease than others. The league's most efficient quarterbacks were the ones who struggled most the second time facing a divisional team while less efficient quarterbacks remained largely neutral or even improved.

This does make sense. The biggest fear of having a quarterback face a divisional team for the second time is that they will know the offense the other team runs, allowing them to shut it down a bit and make them less efficient. That's going to harm players who are more dependent on efficiency than others.

Cam Newton has been great this year, ranking 10th in per-drop back efficiency, according to numberFire's metrics. But to say that he derives his fantasy value from that would be a mistake.

As such, it makes sense to dig into Newton individually to see what we should expect from him against the Buccaneers. After all, they rank 30th in Adjusted Defensive Passing NEP per play, and we'd want to spring at this matchup if this weren't the second time they were facing each other.

For Newton in 2018, this will be his first time facing a divisional foe for a second game. As such, we'll have to look back at past versions of Newton to see how he has performed in these circumstances.

If we dip back to 2014 -- the year before Newton won the MVP award -- we get a sample of 10 times in which he faced a divisional team twice in the same regular season. Here's how Newton performed there compared to his first time against that team.

It's worth noting that Newton's Adjusted Yards per Attempt (AY/A) did go down to 6.57 from 6.80 in these repeat matchups. So his efficiency went down, validating the narrative in a way. But he's not a guy who's dependent on efficiency, and it allowed him to still be a monster even when the defense knew what was coming.

As mentioned, though, Newton has been a different player this year. Thanks to improvements to the talent around him, he is throwing the ball efficiently, posting the second-best AY/A of his career. Should that alter the way we view him here?

To get a look, let's go back to Newton's MVP season, his only campaign with better efficiency marks than this one. We're starting to deal with some small samples, but here's how Newton fared when facing divisional teams that year (three games for each split).

The first thought is that Cam was really freaking good that year. The second is that he -- once again -- wrecked teams the second time he faced them.

Even with the data above, we shouldn't bump up our thoughts of Newton when he's facing a team for the second time. That would be taking things too far. But it does seem like we can still use him in these spots, allowing us to slobber all over both him and the skill-position guys around him.

Newton carries a lofty salary at $8,700 on FanDuel, second-highest on the main slate behind Patrick Mahomes. But Newton has scored at least 18 FanDuel points in every game but 1 and has scored 23 or more in 7 of 11 games, meaning his floor and ceiling combination is hard to parallel. All things considered, he's a great play for tournaments.

As for whom you should pair with Newton, you've got some options, but the picture may be getting a bit muddier this week.

If Devin Funchess does, indeed, play, it would be an upgrade for Newton as he'd have all of his toys for the first time since Week 7. But it would certainly make all those toys harder to trust in DFS.

Perhaps the easiest out here is to just focus on Christian McCaffrey and pair him here with Newton. McCaffrey is expensive, but his workload has been massive all year long.

Even if we look back to the time before Funchess and Torrey Smith got hurt, McCaffrey had 22.7% of the targets through the first six games with 25.0% of the red-zone targets. That's great work for a running back.

He's also in an ideal matchup himself against the Bucs. They've allowed three running backs -- including McCaffrey in the first meeting -- to net at least 75 receiving yards against them. As such, if you're looking to stack Newton, your best choice is likely McCaffrey at $8,800.

The guy we'd likely be most eager to use outside of McCaffrey is D.J. Moore. He had a big role last week with Funchess out and was thriving earlier when Smith was injured. Now that they're both potentially healthy, can we still truly trust Moore?

The answer in cash games would likely be no. We can assume Moore will still be on the field -- he's been too good to put that genie back in the bottle -- but we don't know what his target load will look like.

For tournaments, it's a bit different. Here, he's likely our best option outside of McCaffrey by a wide margin.

As we've seen with guys like Aaron Jones and Phillip Lindsay this year -- two players we'll talk about in a second -- talent and production can lead to additional opportunities. There is no doubt about Moore's talent after he was a first-round pick who had a massive workload in college.

The production has been there, too. Newton has averaged 0.63 Passing NEP when targeting Moore this year, ranking 8th among 66 wide receivers with at least 45 targets.

Having Funchess come back does put a dent in Moore's target projection, but we likely don't need to worry too much about Smith. In his return last week, he played just 22.0% of the snaps. Curtis Samuel played 91.5%, so it's possible he's the guy who takes the biggest hit with Funchess coming back.

As such, we should likely be able to still get behind Moore at $6,400 in tournaments. He's showing Newton and offensive coordinator Norv Turner that he deserves a role in the offense, and he has the talent to turn that volume into a big fantasy day. As long as you're okay with a bit of risk, Moore's firmly still on the fantasy radar.