5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 16
New England Patriots' Rushing Offense
We know that Dion Lewis should benefit from the injury to Rex Burkhead, so it's probably not going to take a ton of convincing to get you to plop this guy onto your rosters. But it's truly hard to overstate the extent to which Burkhead's injury alters our view of Lewis.
Burkhead bounced into his expanded role back in Week 10. He left early in Week 15 due to the injury, so we're going to toss that one out the window, giving us five games to peep in which Burkhead and Lewis were operating as a two-headed monster. There's a lot of opportunity to be had here.
In that five-week sample, Lewis controlled 48.8% of the team's running-back carries. Burkhead was at 37.2%, which is a pretty meaty part of the pie, and no other running back was above 12.4%. Although we can't simply assume all of that work will go to Lewis, you can bet a good chunk of it will.
That's exactly how things went down after Burkhead got hurt on Sunday. Lewis played 55.0% of the snaps, a major increase over his previous season high of 43.3%. He handled each of the team's running-back carries that didn't go to Burkhead. Some of that will go to Mike Gillislee this week, but we'd be foolish to think that Lewis' carry total won't get a healthy nudge.
What's even bigger, though, is Burkhead's role near the goal line. In our aforementioned five-week sample, Burkhead had 36.0% of the team's carries plus targets inside the 10-yard line. That number shot up to 47.1% inside the five. Gillislee's a guy who could suck up some of that work, but Lewis did handle a pair of carries inside the 10 last week. Clearly, it's not a trust issue holding him back from getting that volume.
We could get behind Lewis as the lead early-down back in this offense even if he weren't guaranteed goal-line work. But if that does become part of his repertoire, this dude becomes a fantasy stud in a heartbeat.
This situation is akin to what we saw with the New Orleans Saints earlier in the year when they traded away Adrian Peterson. No, Peterson wasn't the biggest piece of their offense, but those carries have to go somewhere. Lewis has played like a baller this year, holding the second-highest Success Rate (the percentage of carries that increase the team's expected points for the drive) in the league out of 39 running backs with at least 100 carries. Why shouldn't some of that volume shift his way?
This potentially expanded role for Lewis comes at a tremendous time, too. The Patriots are at home as 11.5-point favorites against the Buffalo Bills. Buffalo ranks dead last against the rush for the entire season, and they're 30th from Week 10 on. They're not going to slow down this ground attack.
We've already seen this in action earlier in the year. Back in Week 13, Lewis turned his 15 carries into 92 yards against the Bills, but he failed to hit paydirt because Burkhead was there to fill that niche. That's no longer the case. Lewis is $6,700 on FanDuel, and with all of the things working in his favor, he should be a fixture on your rosters.
