3 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in the Divisional Round

Kansas City Chiefs' Passing Offense

The Colts' defense has played pretty well recently, holding opponents to an average of 15.3 points per game since their Week 9 bye. That likely helps explain why the Kansas City Chiefs are favored by just five points.

But the Colts ain't seen anybody like Patrick Mahomes.

Counting last week's wild-card round, the Colts have played 17 games this year; just one of them has been against a quarterback who finished in the top 10 in Passing NEP per drop back, numberFire's metric that looks at the expected points added by quarterbacks through the air while deducting for negative plays such as sacks, interceptions, and incompletions. That one quarterback was Tom Brady all the way back in Week 5. He finished seventh in Passing NEP per drop back, representing one of five games in which the Colts faced a top-20 passer in this metric.

It will not shock you to learn that Mahomes led the league here at 0.39 Passing NEP per drop back. Drew Brees was the only other guy above 0.30. We're going to see just how good this Colts defense truly is.

Adjusted Defensive Passing NEP per play is numberFire's team-wide metric to track how good a defense is against the pass. It takes into account the schedule a team has played and thus ranks the Colts as the 23rd-ranked pass defense for the regular season. Among remaining playoff teams, that's the worst ranking by five spots. The Chiefs were first on the offensive side. This is a pretty blatant mismatch, even with the Colts' defense on the rise.

That's what makes Mahomes alluring at $9,000 on FanDuel. Andrew Luck and company should be able to put up some points, preventing the Chiefs from just grinding clock with the ground game in the second half. Mahomes doesn't need a plus matchup to be in play, so even at this salary, we need to give him a look.

The only issue is deciding with whom we should stack him, and we're getting an extra wrench thrown in that decision-making process this week.

Sammy Watkins hasn't played more than five snaps in a game since Week 9, and things have changed a bit for the Chiefs in the time since then. But because Watkins was just limited in practice, we have to plan around how to handle the Chiefs both with and without Watkins.

Let's start with the latter as Watkins could be limited even if he does suit up. Because Watkins played just five snaps in Week 11, we can include both that game and the previous game (which Watkins missed completely) to see how the Chiefs have been divvying up the targets recently. A "deep" target is any target at least 16 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.

Both Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce have gotten elite market-share numbers with Watkins out of the equation. That's going to make both of them super appealing if Watkins does, indeed, sit or is limited.

Things would change quite a bit if Watkins were to play, though. Watkins has logged at least 75% of the snaps in eight games this year, and he has gotten a pretty sizable workload in that time.

Kelce's overall market shares come down a hair, but he's able to still post big upside with an increase in his share of the deep targets. Hill, on the other hand, goes down across the board.

This is not to say that you should completely avoid Hill if Watkins winds up playing Saturday. We can't know for sure that Watkins will play a full complement of snaps, and Hill can do work even on limited volume.

At the same time, though, an active Watkins would force us to at least alter the way we view Hill. Both his overall and deep volume would take a hit as Mahomes would have an extra outlet for shorter and intermediate routes. As such, if Watkins does wind up being active Saturday, it's wise to lower exposure to Hill a bit.

Kelce is a bit more Watkins-agnostic. The Colts have faced three tight ends with similar usage to Kelce in Zach Ertz, Rob Gronkowski, and Evan Engram; all three of those players had at least 5 receptions for 70 yards against this defense. Kelce's head and shoulders above every other tight end on both the Saturday-only and Saturday through Sunday slate.

As for Watkins himself, it's definitely risky to dive in given the nature of his injury. You can take some stabs, though.

In the table above, you'll see that Watkins got more underneath targets than anything prior to his injury. The Colts play a bend-but-don't-break defense in order to prevent big plays, which is another reason to be skeptical of Hill. That would, though, funnel a bit more volume Watkins' way if he were to be healthy. If you're comfortable with his practice participation during the week and what beat reporters are saying, it's not the worst idea to give him a spin in his first game back.

As mentioned, Watkins does come with some serious risk, and it's understandable if you want to avoid him completely. There's risk in Damien Williams, as well, but he's an alternative value play who we should also discuss.

Williams benefits from the plus passing-game matchup for a couple of reasons. The first is that he got work as a receiver at the end of the regular season, netting five or more targets in three of the final four games (including one in which Spencer Ware played). The Colts also allowed 109 receptions to running backs during the regular season, the third-highest mark in the entire league.

Williams is risky because Ware has been limited in practice this week and could make his return to the lineup. But Ware practiced in full prior to Week 17 and was still inactive. Additionally, the team inked Williams to a two-year extension while Ware was on the shelf, indicating that this could very well be Williams' backfield. If that winds up being the case, he's a mighty fine stacking partner with Mahomes against the Colts.