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5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 6

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Atlanta Falcons' Passing Offense

It's Julio Jones week. That's the name brand, and we'll clearly be getting some of that. But there are some off-brand options that we'd be wise to consider in a dream matchup.

The reason we're slobbering over the pass-catchers here is that the Atlanta Falcons are going up against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It's indoors, which is always a plus, and the total is 57.5 points, the highest on the main slate by 5 points. We'd love the Falcons even if they weren't facing arguably the league's worst pass defense.

Through the first five weeks, the Bucs have been exactly that, sitting 32nd in Adjusted Defensive Passing NEP per play, numberFire's schedule-adjusted metric for team pass defense. That's what happens when you allow a previously-struggling Mitchell Trubisky to drop six tuddies on you in a single game.

Every quarterback the Bucs have faced this year has thrown for at least 330 yards, and Nick Foles is the only one who didn't throw for 3 touchdowns. In their other dome game, Drew Brees lit them up for 439 yards and 3 touchdowns while playing catch-up. Matt Ryan's game script may not be the same as Brees', but he has shown gobs of upside this year.

For the entire 2017 season, Ryan never once topped the 20-point barrier on FanDuel. He has scored at least 29.26 FanDuel points in every home game he has played in 2018. Those old ceiling concerns are right out the window. You likely don't need to use Ryan in cash because his opponent in this game is much cheaper and also in a great spot (more on that in a second), but Ryan's one of the top tourney plays on the board.

Now we get to the pass-catchers. How on earth are we supposed to handle Jones at $8,500 on FanDuel?

The touchdown concerns are legit, and they're not going away. Jones hasn't gotten a red-zone target since Week 1, and with the way that Ryan has performed since then, we shouldn't expect that usage close to the goal line to change. This is a problem that's going to persist.

But even with that being true, Jones has still been a decent fantasy asset. He has managed to score 21 or more points in 2 of 5 games, and his worst output was 8.7 points while getting shadow coverage from Joe Haden last week. Even without the touchdowns, having Jones in your lineups hasn't been a kiss of death.

On top of that, the yardage upside for Jones in this game is stupid. Michael Thomas, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and Taylor Gabriel have all topped 100 yards against this Bucs team, and Gabriel found the end zone twice. This team is terrible at stopping opposing wide receivers.

As such, Julio can have a big day for fantasy even without scoring. If he does wind up accidentally hitting paydirt once or twice, he'll have slate-busting upside. Because of that, when we wind up stacking this game, we should probably have a lot of Jones in those lineups. He's worthy of stand-alone consideration, too, but the big appeal for Jones is a situation where this game goes absolutely bonkers.

But we still want to get exposure to this game even when we're not stacking it, and there, it makes a bit more sense to settle for the generics. That's where Mohamed Sanu and Austin Hooper swoop in.

With Calvin Ridley's emergence, there's no question that the Atlanta offense has changed recently. He has forced the defense to do more than just put all eyes on Julio, which can open things up elsewhere.

Ridley's first monster game was in Week 3 against the New Orleans Saints. The table below shows each relevant player's target market share over the past three games to see what things have looked like since then. A "deep" target is any throw that travels at least 16 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.

Past 3 GamesFanDuel PriceOverall TargetsDeep TargetsRed-Zone Targets
Julio Jones$8,50023.3%34.8%0.0%
Calvin Ridley$6,70016.4%30.4%30.8%
Mohamed Sanu$5,80019.0%17.4%15.4%
Austin Hooper$5,60015.5%13.0%7.7%


Because Ridley's getting so many high-leverage targets, he's the second-best choice straight-up behind Julio. But if you get a $900 discount on a slate where value is minimal, Sanu starts to look pretty spicy.

Sanu's deep targets haven't been as abundant as those of his teammate, but he's not just living off of bunnies. He has four deep targets the past two games, and he took one to the house last week. On top of that, he'll see the most work of this group from the slot, and all three of the receivers to top 100 yards against the Buccaneers were also guys who get some run inside. Sanu's likely the player in this game with the most appeal beyond game stacks.

As for Hooper, the market share numbers certainly aren't appealing. But he also plays tight end, a position that is missing the three best options for DFS from the main slate. Hooper's playing 80% of the snaps for the team with the highest implied team total on the board, and we should be able to get behind that at $5,600.