5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 17

Atlanta Falcons' Passing Offense

No game this weekend carries heavier playoff implications than this one between the Atlanta Falcons and Carolina Panthers, and our loins can handle a bit extra tingliness with the game being beneath a roof. We're going to want exposure to both sides, starting with that bad man, Julio Jones, and the rest of the Falcons' passing offense.

If you look at the season-long numbers, this won't appear to be a mismatch in the Falcons' favor. They're ninth in schedule-adjusted passing offense, and the Panthers are ninth on the defensive side. Based on that alone, it looks like a pretty even matchup. But, as always, context is king.

There are two routes to establishing an elite pass defense. You can get there by deploying a ball-batting secondary or ferociously rushing the passer. Knowing in which category each defense falls can help spot some sneakier mismatches.

The Panthers are very much on the pass-rushing side of the coin. Opponents have lost 105.33 expected points due to sacks against them this year, the only team in football to top 100 points in that category. Jameis Winston alone has lost 23.33 expected points on sacks to this team, which is a simply ghastly number.

If the Falcons struggled to keep Matt Ryan upright, this would pose a serious issue. That's not the case, though. They rank sixth in adjusted sack rate, according to Football Outsiders. They've also been trending up, losing just 12.18 expected points on sacks from Week 10 on. This may not be the strength of the Falcons' offense (that's probably that Julio guy), but it's far from a weakness.

Based on these numbers, we can tell that the Panthers are among the best teams at getting to the passer. So, why, then, are they just ninth overall against the pass when numberFire's metrics account for their talents in generating sacks? It turns out that bad things happen when the opposing passer has time to get rid of the ball.

Over the past seven games, every quarterback to face the Panthers has either tossed a pair of touchdowns or thrown for 269 yards. Three quarterbacks topped 300 yards (including Ryan in Week 9), and two guys threw three touchdowns. They can mask this when they're putting teams in holes via the sack, but that's not as big of a factor when you're facing Atlanta.

This may not be enough to get you to use Ryan this week, and maybe it shouldn't be. He hasn't scored more than 20 points on FanDuel the entire season. He just has not been an acceptable fantasy asset. But we do still need to give him a look.

Strip away the game logs and the frustration. Once you do that, you get a quarterback who is favored, at home, in a dome, in a must-win game, with a not-too-terrible matchup, and just $7,400. That is the complete checklist for what we want in a quarterback for Week 17. No matter how many times he has burned you, it would still be wise to give Ryan a chance here.

You likely don't need as much prodding to use Jones. Just in case you do, though, here's the case for plugging him in.

We all know that Jones' usage was frustrating earlier in the year. But in Week 7, the team said they needed to get him the ball more often. They have done exactly that.

Since that edict, Jones has 33.3% of the team's targets and 58.9% of the deep targets. Those are otherworldly numbers that give him a steady floor and gobs of yardage upside, which he flashed in Week 16 with 149 yards against Marshon Lattimore and the New Orleans Saints.

Still, the touchdowns haven't been there. At all. He has hit paydirt just three times all year, and two of them came in the same game. That puts a dent in both his floor and his upside.

This isn't to say that he can't cash in with some sweet, sweet tuddies. Not only did the team start funneling him additional overall looks in Week 7, but they made him a focal point inside the red zone.

Jones had just one red-zone target the first five games; he has multiple looks there in six of the past 10 games, including each of the past three. He's second among all wide receivers in red-zone target market share over the past five games, netting 43.8% of their targets there. You can't keep avoiding the end zone when you're getting that usage. Something's going to pop eventually, and we're going to want him on our team when it does.

Jones is in the same pricing tier as guys like the aforementioned Keenan Allen and Michael Thomas, so there's an opportunity cost associated with using Jones. But nobody has the same ceiling that Jones can boast. He topped the 100-yard mark against this Panthers team in Week 9, and he could easily light it up again here.