5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 16

Los Angeles Rams' Passing Offense

In that onslaught last week, Jared Goff didn't have to do much. He attempted just 21 passes and finished with fewer than 15 FanDuel points for the second consecutive game.

If they can just ride Todd Gurley to victory, what's the point of using Goff in DFS?

Based on Week 15, that line of thinking is absolutely true. But when we look at the grander context of the entire season, we'll see that Goff has some pretty solid appeal in Week 16 against the Tennessee Titans.

The draw here starts, of course, with the opposing defense. The Titans are ranked 27th against the pass for the entire season, and they're 28th from Week 10 on. It has just been masked by facing a slew of wretched quarterbacks.

From Week 5 on, the Titans have faced two quarterbacks ranked better than 28th in Passing NEP per drop back. Those two quarterbacks (Ben Roethlisberger and Jimmy Garoppolo) combined for 680 yards, 5 touchdowns, and no interceptions. Goff is ranked ninth in Passing NEP per drop back, making him one of the best quarterbacks they've faced the entire season.

All year long, Goff has made his living off of beating up on poor opponents. Five of his 14 starts have come against teams ranked in the bottom half of the league in Adjusted Defensive Passing NEP per play. Against those teams, he's averaging 22.61 FanDuel points per game; that drops to 13.76 against better competition. He's a different quarterback when he's in a peach matchup, which is what he gets this week.

Next comes the conversation about Gurley. Sure, the Titans could just keep on giving that bad man the ball, preventing Goff from basking in fantasy glory. There are still a few reasons that shouldn't push us off.

First, Goff doesn't need volume to post a big score. He has 23 FanDuel points three times this year, and in two of those, he attempted fewer than 30 passes. He got there in just 22 attempts in one of them. Touchdowns are what matter most, and he can get those here.

Second, the Rams -- overall -- still pass more than your average team in neutral situations. They rank 11th in pass rate when the game is within seven points, according to Sharp Football Stats. It takes a fairly extreme scenario for Goff to disappear from the gameplan, and with this game in Tennessee, that seems a bit less likely.

Third, the Titans are a defense that funnels volume to opposing quarterbacks. Although they've struggled mightily against the pass, they're actually second against the rush for the full season and first from Week 10 on. Opposing quarterbacks have averaged 37.9 pass attempts per game against them for the entire season as a result. While Goff may not need to throw 50 times if the team gets ahead, we shouldn't expect this to be a repeat of last week in the volume department.

Goff's floor isn't superb, which is why we likely shouldn't use him in cash games. But from a tournament perspective, he has shown that he has a ceiling, meaning he's definitely worth a sniff here.

Just because you're using Goff doesn't mean you have to avoid Gurley, either. He has 16.9% of their targets this year, the fourth-highest mark among all running backs. This allows him to avoid the ills of facing a stout rush defense, too. You can always use Gurley by himself, but he also fits in stacks with Goff.

If you decide to go with a more conventional stack, you're choosing between Robert Woods, Sammy Watkins, and Cooper Kupp. Woods returned last week and led the team in targets, which means we don't need to worry about that shoulder injury anymore. So which of these guys should we favor?

We've had four games since the team's bye in which all three receivers have been healthy. Here's the target distribution profile they've sported in those games. It's pretty clear that Woods is our guy.

When you're getting those types of targets in an offense this good, you're worth a heck of a lot more than $6,600. This target tree was spread out earlier in the year, but it's Woods' show now, meaning he's in play both for cash games and tournaments.