5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 10
Pittsburgh Steelers' Passing Offense
I know, I know, I know. The Pittsburgh Steelers are on the road, and Ben Roethlisberger magically morphs into an off-brand Cheeto when he leaves Heinz Field. Just hear me out for a second.
Let's pretend that we don't know about Big Ben's road woes and view this matchup in the most basic form.
This game features the league's fourth-ranked passing offense, per numberFire's schedule-adjusted metrics, going up against the 31st-ranked passing defense. If you were told this would be the case, wouldn't you assume the offense would be able to move the ball through the air? And we're obviously not talking about the Jacoby Brissett-led Indianapolis Colts here. The Steelers are just much better than they've seemed.
When you're watching the games, it's clear that Roethlisberger isn't connecting on deep passes the way he has in the past, and they've had some big blow-up games in the negative sense. Roethlisberger threw five picks in one game, for goodness sake. But when you account for the schedule, few teams have been more efficient through the air than this squad.
If you look at the opponents the Steelers have faced this year, this will be just the second time they have faced a team outside the top 20 in Adjusted Defensive Passing NEP per play. The only other poor opponent they faced was the Cleveland Browns back in Week 1, and Roethlisberger was fine there with 263 yards and 2 touchdowns. That game was also on the road.
Despite this tough stretch of opponents, the analytics on Roethlisberger truly aren't that bad. He's 15th in Passing NEP per drop back among the 34 quarterbacks with at least 100 drop backs, ahead of guys like Matthew Stafford, Kirk Cousins, and Matt Ryan. It may not look pretty for Roethlisberger, but for the most part, he's still getting the job done.
This puts us in a good spot to buy low on Roethlisberger with his price at $7,600 on FanDuel. The Colts have already allowed Jared Goff, Carson Palmer, Russell Wilson, Brian Hoyer, Marcus Mariota, and Blake Bortles to throw for at least 295 yards against them, and Roethlisberger is a good candidate to add his name to that list on Sunday.
Using Roethlisberger doesn't mean you have to avoid Le'Veon Bell, either. You can stack the two together due to Bell's involvement in the passing game.
On the season, Bell has 16.4% of the team's targets. That number ranks seventh at the position for the slate. This means that you can double dip on yardage whenever Roethlisberger goes Bell's way, and you'll likely have exposure to each of the Steelers' offensive touchdowns for the day. Bell's a great play by himself, but he's also fully satisfactory in a stack with Roethlisberger.
Of course, the most logical outlet would be Antonio Brown, and he's getting a bit of a boost this week. The Colts released the struggling Vontae Davis on Thursday, but Brown probably doesn't need a plus matchup to be viable.
It is dumb how delightful Brown's target distribution profile is. He has 34.6% of the Steelers' overall targets, 50.0% of their targets 16 or more yards downfield, and 31.3% of their red-zone targets. He's far and away the most expensive receiver on the slate at $9,300, but with those numbers, he's worth it.
If you do want a low-cost way to stack Roethlisberger, then your guy would be JuJu Smith-Schuster, but you should be expecting high ownership there after his outburst back in Week 8.
Still, it's not completely a point-chasey move. In that game, Smith-Schuster had 10 targets, and 5 of them were at least 16 yards downfield. He had four deep targets the entire year prior to that. They're in a controlled environment again this week, and even with Martavis Bryant back practicing with the first-team offense, Smith-Schuster is the third piece to target if you need to spend down.
