5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 16

Chances are, Week 15 was either your favorite week of the NFL season thus far or your least. No middle ground.

This was one of the first weeks of the season in which the chalk won out. If you played David Johnson, you likely won. If you played Cam Newton, Christmas shopping was easier to stomach. The most obvious plays ended up being the right ones.

This is great for those of you playing heavily in cash games. When those high-floor studs pull through, you'll be looking pretty across the board, and you're feeling pretty good heading into Week 16.

If you're tourney-heavy and tried to fade the chalk, you probably went all Odell Beckham and head butted your router. While that's an odd outlet for anger, I feel you, homie.

The issue with all of this is that it looks like we'll be sucking on some chalk again in Week 16. Johnson is again in a phenomenal spot, fantasy darling Blake Bortles is facing the dumpster fire New Orleans Saints secondary, and the Pittsburgh Steelers' tasty receivers get a matchup with the Baltimore Ravens' abysmal cornerbacks. Think ownership will be high here?

I'm not saying you can't use those players. They're all chalky for a reason, and that is that they are highly likely to be great plays. I'd use Johnson in a tournament regardless of his ownership. But you're still going to need to find ways to make yourself a wee bit different from the field if you want to strike it big. There are still some spots where you can do that.

In order to identify these less-obvious plays, we'll be using numberFire's Net Expected Points (NEP). This is the efficiency metric we use for both teams and players, with the team metrics being adjusted based on strength of opponent.

If you're new to the site, here's how NEP works. Prior to each play, there is an expected number of points that the offense will score on its current drive. A positive play (such as a three-yard rush on 3rd and 2) will increase that, resulting in positive NEP. A negative play (such as a three-yard rush on 3rd and 4) will decrease that, resulting in negative NEP. The fluctuation in expected points over the course of a season is NEP.

These matchups certainly won't go under the category of "contrarian," but that's not the intent. I just won't be going over the super chalk plays mentioned above, even though they would likely qualify under the exact same discussions, and you should find creative ways to get exposure where possible. Here's where I'm looking when I want to change things up a bit.