3 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in the Wild Card Round
Chicago Bears' Passing Offense
The Sunday-only slate involves some top-notch defenses. Based on Adjusted Defensive NEP per play, the Chicago Bears, Baltimore Ravens, and Los Angeles Chargers rank first, second, and sixth in the league in overall defense for the season. It means you're going to have to use players in bad matchups at some point when you're dabbling here.
The one exception is with the Bears' passing offense.
They're going up against the Eagles' secondary, and it's one we've been picking on for a while now due to the multitude of injuries back there. They finished the year ranked 17th against the pass, and things were much worse once the injuries started to pile up.
The big turning point for the Eagles seemed to be in their Week 6 Thursday night win over the New York Giants. In that one, Sidney Jones left after just eight snaps. The next week, Derek Barnett got hurt. Here's how the team performed from Week 7 on compared to what they had done prior to that with "Passing NEP/P" standing for Passing NEP per drop back.
| QBs vs. Eagles | TDs | INTs | Passing NEP/P | Success Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1 to 6 | 8 | 4 | 0.05 | 44.9% |
| Weeks 7 to 17 | 15 | 7 | 0.16 | 49.8% |
Those post-injury numbers are pretty bad to begin with. They look even worse when you add in that the sample included games in which Mark Sanchez, Blake Bortles, and Josh Johnson all got heavy run. Mitchell Trubisky has had some rough spots this year, but he's certainly above that group.
It may be hard to get too jazzed about Trubisky because he has struggled since returning from his shoulder injury. In four games since then, he has just four touchdowns to three picks, and he hasn't exceeded 246 passing yards or 23 rushing yards in any of them.
A partial explanation of this could come from the locations of where those games took place.
In Trubisky's four games since coming back, two have been on the road with the other two at home. His first game off of injury was a struggle in hosting the Los Angeles Rams as Trubisky threw three picks. That's a bit understandable as it was his first game back and he was facing Aaron Donald.
The next game, Trubisky looked much better. He tossed a pair of touchdowns against the Green Bay Packers, finishing with 14.86 Passing NEP. That was his third-best game of the season by that metric, dulling the concerns around his shoulder.
As for the final two games of the regular season, those were largely in line with what Trubisky has done all season on the road. He has some of the most drastic splits in the league in that regard.
| Trubisky in 2018 | TDs | INTs | Passing NEP/P | Success Rate | FanDuel PPG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| At Home | 19 | 9 | 0.25 | 50.9% | 24.10 |
| On Road | 5 | 3 | 0.06 | 47.3% | 9.58 |
At home, Trubisky's per-drop back numbers are the same as what Jared Goff had for the full season; on the road, he drops down to the Marcus Mariota and Derek Carr tier. With this game in Chicago, he should bounce back from two quiet games.
This should also be a nice rebound spot for Trubisky as a rusher. He has seemingly been a bit more hesitant since returning from injury, but the Eagles have struggled against mobile quarterbacks this year.
The Eagles have allowed four different quarterbacks to rush at least seven times this year, and all four of them racked up at least 43 yards rushing. Marcus Mariota scored once, and Deshaun Watson hit paydirt twice just a few weeks ago. This helps add to Trubisky's ceiling, which is already battling with Lamar Jackson's as the tops on the slate.
Trubisky is $8,100 on the Sunday-only slate, meaning he'll save you $300 from Jackson. On the four-game slate, he is fifth in salary among quarterbacks. You won't have to break the bank to get him, and with Trubisky's matchup being as good as it is, there are plenty of reasons to look his way here.
Given the way the Bears have divided targets this year, though, it may seem hard initially to stack Trubisky. There are still a few solid options here.
On Wednesday, all three of Allen Robinson, Taylor Gabriel, and Anthony Miller were able to get in a full practice, putting them on track to play Sunday despite injuries in Week 17.
From Weeks 10 through 16, all three of those players were healthy, giving us a solid seven-game sample to check out. This is what the target tree looked like in that span.
| Weeks 10 to 16 | FanDuel Salary | Overall Targets | Deep Targets | Red-Zone Targets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tarik Cohen | $7,000 | 20.0% | 9.3% | 21.4% |
| Allen Robinson | $6,500 | 23.2% | 32.6% | 17.9% |
| Trey Burton | $6,200 | 13.6% | 9.3% | 14.3% |
| Taylor Gabriel | $5,000 | 18.2% | 16.3% | 10.7% |
| Anthony Miller | $4,800 | 8.2% | 16.3% | 17.9% |
Based on this, it's pretty clear that Robinson is the guy we want in this offense.
Robinson hasn't scored a touchdown since Week 10, which is a bit of a bummer for someone with his frame. But in that Week 10 game, he went off for 133 yards and 2 scores. He also had 79 yards in Week 13 and 85 in Week 16 before sitting out in Week 17. Robinson's upside is likely better than perception, especially when you factor in the secondary he'll face. At $6,500, Robinson's not a bad option at wide receiver at all.
If you're looking for a play with a lower salary, then Gabriel appears to be your best outlet. He has a pair of 100-yard games this year, and both came with Robinson in the lineup. The Eagles have been exploited by deep-threat speedsters this year, allowing more than 125 receiving yards to both DeSean Jackson and Tre'Quan Smith. Gabriel has a path to a decent game, making him palatable at $5,000.
As you'll see in the table above, Tarik Cohen was actually second on the team in targets during this seven-game stretch. But his role has seemed muted recently with just 11 rush attempts and 4 targets the past 2 weeks combined. That makes him a bit of a tough sell at $7,000.
Even with the capped volume, Cohen needs to be on our list, especially on the Sunday-only slate. It's hard to find a great running back without concerns on that offering, and Cohen can cash in on the volume he does get.
Entering the wild card round, Cohen has scored double-digit FanDuel points in 10 of his past 13 games. He finished the regular season with 10 targets at least 16 yards downfield, a monster number for a running back, and he had 14 red-zone targets. There's a lot of juice in the way the team uses him.
It often seems as if the Bears deploy Cohen based on the way his skillset matches up with the opposing defense. We can't know in advance the way that head coach Matt Nagy views the Eagles, but we do know what's possible if the Bears decide it's a Cohen game.
Cohen has scored 25 or more FanDuel points twice this season. All other running backs on the slate have combined for four such games, and all four of them came from Melvin Gordon. If you're looking for a true ceiling play at running back, then Cohen is very much in play even with his lofty salary.
