5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 7

Sometimes, the NFL schedule makers are kind enough to do my job for me.

Each week, we've been trying to locate matchups to exploit in daily fantasy football. This week, they made things easy on all of us by pairing a bunch of plays that are just begging to be jumped on.

Todd Gurley against a wretched Cleveland Browns defense. The unfadeable Devonta Freeman versus the Tennessee Titans. Antonio Gates up against the Oakland Raiders. Carson Palmer taking his merciless aerial assault to the Baltimore Ravens defense. It's easy.

Unfortunately, in daily fantasy, when it's easy for you, it's easy for everybody. That means everybody will be using these same plays, and you don't need me to tell you to do it. So, I'm not going to.

Don't get me wrong -- you should still be using those matchups I listed above. They are obvious for a reason, and you'd be a fool not to take advantage of them. But I'm going to pivot my focus elsewhere so that you have options to mix and match if you want to differentiate yourself from some very obvious picks.

In order to find these "other" matchups to exploit, we'll be using numberFire's Net Expected Points (NEP) metric. If you're new to numberFire, here's how NEP works. In each situation, a team has an expected number of points they'll score on that drive. A positive play (such as a three-yard run on 3rd and 2) will increase that; a negative play (such as a three-yard run on 3rd and 4) will decrease it. NEP tracks the expected points added or subtracted by teams and players throughout the year and turns them into one number, with the team side being adjusted based on strength of schedule.

Now, let's get into some of the matchups -- beyond the obvious ones -- that could be ripe for the picking in Week 7.