5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 7

Dallas Cowboys' Rushing Offense

If you open up Ezekiel Elliott's player profile, you're going to think that Washington is a run-stuffing powerhouse. The advanced analytics, though, make that conclusion appear to be a mistake.

On the season, only the New Orleans Saints and Tampa Bay Buccaneers have allowed fewer rushing yards to running backs than Washington. They're at just 347, equating to 69.4 yards per game allowed.

Against this seemingly-stout unit, no individual running back has topped 61 rushing yards, and only two have gained more than 45 yards on the ground. If you're going to pay $8,400 for Elliott on FanDuel, you need a whole lot more juice than that.

Once you dig in a bit deeper, you start to see why this is a flawed analysis.

Despite having played five games already, Washington is still yet to face a running back who has carried the ball more than 16 times. In fact, only one running back has gotten more than 10 carries against this team. Considering that Elliott has had 20 or more carries in 3 straight games, that seems likely to change on Sunday.

With this being the case, you can start to see why the raw numbers make Washington look like a top-end unit. They've yet to face a true bellcow outside of David Johnson, and his team got waxed, 24-6, taking the ground game out of the equation for the entire second half.

In the few times that running backs have gotten the ball against this unit, they've managed to be quite efficient. Washington has allowed the fourth-highest Rushing Success Rate to opposing running backs, according to numberFire's Brandon Gdula. Success Rate is the percentage of carries that increase the team's expected points for the drive, and teams are doing so at a higher clip against Washington than most other rush defenses.

The only running back to get good volume against this team was Mark Ingram in Week 5. He had 16 carries there, and although he had just 53 yards, Ingram had a 50.0% Success Rate (above the league-average mark of 40.7%) and managed to score twice. It hasn't all been three yards and a cloud of dust against this defense.

This leads us to believe that Elliott should be able to be efficient in his carries Sunday afternoon, which certainly elevates his appeal for fantasy. There are other things working in his favor, as well.

On the season, Elliott has 17.8% of the Cowboys' targets, which ranks sixth among running backs on the main slate. This boosts Elliott's floor and should help him be viable even if the Cowboys were to fall behind.

In essence, Elliott has everything that you want. He has guaranteed ground-game volume, a role in the passing game, and a better matchup than it appears. Ideally, the qualms of a poor matchup will help cap Elliott's ownership in tournaments, but even if he does wind up being popular, he appears to be a top-end play for both cash games and tournaments.