5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 10

The beginning of fifth grade was a good time for me. As we moved from the elementary school to the middle school, the dimensions of our kickball field changed. And I was ready to take full advantage.

I knew that if I yanked the ball down the third-base line, it'd clang down into a corner, and I'd have extra bases each and every time. It had nothing to do with talent or my pudgy legs. I just had some dumb information that the other kids hadn't quite picked up on yet.

As the year went along, the kids started to notice my tendencies. Once they realized I was kicking to the same spot every time, they just shifted heavily toward that side of the diamond. My advantage was gone. As such, my kicking average plummeted, and my hopes of going pro evaporated. And now here we are. Sigh.

Unfortunately, we can experience this same adjustment in daily fantasy football. After nine full weeks of games, people eventually start to realize which teams are fantasy goldmines. The New England Patriots are good. The Chicago Bears' defense is not. Our advantage dries up at some point.

This makes a deep look into team analytics even more important. Sure, the public has probably picked up on some of our go-to targets, but that doesn't mean there aren't values on the board.

The easiest way to identify these values is by looking at numberFire's Net Expected Points (NEP). This is the efficiency metric we use here for both teams and players with the team totals being adjusted based on strength of schedule.

In case you're new to the site, here's how NEP works. Before each play, there's an expected number of points the team will score on their current drive. A positive play (such as a three-yard rush on 3rd and 2) will increase that, resulting in positive NEP. A negative play (such as a three-yard rush on 3rd and 4) will decrease that, resulting in negative NEP. The sum of all of these plays over the course of a year is NEP.

Before we dive into the analysis, I should note that there are certainly some of those plays mentioned at the top that people have picked up on. I'll list them below because they're worth playing, but you certainly don't need me to tell you why.

The first is anything associated with the Patriots. They're good. You know they're good. Please take advantage of said goodness by plugging them into your rosters with regularity.

The other chalk is a pair of running backs in Todd Gurley and DeAngelo Williams. These two guys are the obvious workhorses in their offenses, and they're facing the two worst rush defenses in the league. You need exposure to them both in cash and in tourneys. Again, though, you probably already know this, so there's no need for me to spend a slide telling you.

With those caveats discussed, let's get into some other matchups that have juicy potential in Week 10.