5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 15

New England Patriots' Passing Offense

The Steelers' pass defense isn't bad, by any means. They're ranked 15th, according to numberFire's metrics, which means they don't stand out as being one we'd generally go out of our way to target.

With the way the Patriots' offense is playing right now, though, it's still a mismatch in New England's favor.

The turnaround for the Patriots started after their Week 11 bye. That was when they got both Rob Gronkowski and Sony Michel back from injury in addition to having all five of their Week 1 starters on the offensive line healthy for the first time since Week 6. Tom Brady has clearly benefited.

For some context, Mahomes leads the league in Passing NEP per drop back at 0.40, and Drew Brees leads in Success Rate at 58.4%. That's the level Brady has been playing on with improved health around him.

You can try to poke holes in this by pointing at the teams Brady has played. Two of those three games were against the New York Jets and Miami Dolphins, both of whom rank 19th or worse against the pass this year, according to numberFire's metrics. But the Minnesota Vikings are a bit of a different story.

For the full season, the Vikings rank fourth in Adjusted Defensive Passing NEP per play. That includes the time that stud defensive end Everson Griffen missed for personal reasons. They've been a force since Griffen returned against every quarterback except for Brady.

The Vikings' rejuvenated defense was on full display on Monday night as they held Russell Wilson to 72 passing yards on 20 attempts. But Brady's 15.35 Passing NEP represents his third-highest total of the season, all of which have come in the three games since their bye week.

The Steelers aren't terrible by any means, but they're certainly not the Vikings. And good quarterbacks have had success when facing them, even in Pittsburgh.

Back in Week 2, Mahomes torched the Steelers for 326 yards and 6 touchdowns on just 28 attempts. Then Philip Rivers touched them up for 299 yards and 2 touchdowns in Pittsburgh two weeks ago. Even Joe Flacco went for 363 yards and 2 touchdowns against this team in Pittsburgh. They're not a team we'll target all that often, but we can do so when the opponent is playing this well.

To further add to the appeal, Brady's salary has not yet caught up to his play. He's $7,900 on FanDuel this week, a $700 discount from Roethlisberger. Before the bye, Brady's salary had been $8,200 or higher in every game this year. Now, he's playing his best ball of the season, and he's a good chunk cheaper than that. Brady's in play for both cash games and tournaments at that salary.

The other positive here is that we have viable pass-catchers to pair him with. They're not quite on the same level of Smith-Schuster and Brown, but all three are solid.

There are two different ways to view the Patriots' "Big Three" pass-catchers. The first is to look at the five games the trio of Julian Edelman, Rob Gronkowski, and Josh Gordon have played together since Gordon's snap rate spiked in Week 6. Here's the target distribution in that sample.

The alternative is to look since the team's bye. In this sample, James White's involvement has gone down a good chunk, opening up some additional targets for these three.

Whichever sample you prefer, it's pretty clear that Edelman's in play this week.

Edelman hasn't been getting the deep looks with Gronk fully healthy, but that hasn't prevented him from getting yardage. He has at least 80 receiving yards in 4 of the past 6 games and had 71 in another. This has allowed him to score 12.1 or more FanDuel points in all but 2 games since returning from his suspension.

Edelman will also benefit from facing this Steeler defense. Receivers who operate in the slot have gotten massive volume against this team with Jarvis Landry getting 15 and 12 targets in his two contests against them, Keenan Allen netting 19, and Emmanuel Sanders getting 12. If Edelman can continue to rack up the yardage and find the end zone, his ceiling is pretty tasty, putting him in play for both cash games and tournaments.

Gronkowski isn't to the point yet where we should be willing to pay his salary in cash games, but the tournament appeal is clearly back.

Gronkowski has gotten talk this week for his play on the Dolphins' game-winning touchdown, but if not for that, we'd likely be buzzing about what he did offensively. Gronk racked up 100 receiving yards for the first time since Week 1 and scored for the second time in three post-bye games. He certainly looked closer to the old version of himself than he had prior to the injury.

On top of that, this matchup is as good for Gronk as it is for Edelman. The Steelers have allowed at least 70 receiving yards to Travis Kelce, O.J. Howard, Austin Hooper, and Jared Cook. Gronkowski may not be his old self again, but he's at least in a tier similar to the non-Kelce members of that list. For $6,900, he brings plenty to the table this week.

Gordon has the toughest matchup of these three as he'll go toe-to-toe with ex-teammate Joe Haden. That -- combined with Gordon's reduced market shares compared to the other two -- puts him firmly third in the pecking order. But there's still some appeal for tournaments.

As noted by ESPN's Mike Clay in his weekly wide receiver-cornerback matchups column, Gordon squared off with Haden last year, netting 4 receptions for 115 yards in the game (with 87 of the yards coming while in Haden's coverage). Gordon had a similarly difficult matchup with Xavier Rhodes two weeks ago, but Gordon had 58 yards and a touchdown in that game (though the touchdown came outside of Rhodes' coverage).

Finally, Gordon is a talented athlete who will play nearly every snap in a game with massive shootout potential. That should justify getting exposure to him, no matter who may be staring him down on the opposite side of the ball.