5 Daily Fantasy Football Matchups to Exploit in Week 17

Week 17 isn't about matchups for fantasy football. Not even for a second. It's all about finding volume and cashing in.

Last year, 10 different players had at least 20 carries in Week 17; half of them do not have roles on their current teams, assuming they're still in the NFL at all. It's a week for randomness, and if we don't embrace that, we're going to be licking our wounds when Sunday night rolls around.

So, what's the point of reading a column about matchups, then? If they don't matter, then what are we even doing here?

While those random pop-up volume guys are always going to be important, you can't just fill your roster with them. Even when we know randomness will abound, predicting that randomness is a difficult task. If you just load up on the randos, you're inevitably going to whiff on one, and that can sink even the sauciest of lineups. You need to have some stability in there, too.

That's where matchups come hurtling to the rescue. There are still a good number of games with something at stake heading into Week 17, and you know the teams involved will not be resting their players. They're going to be utilizing their best assets, likely in a similar fashion to what they have done the entire season leading up to this slate. Predictability be a blessing.

If we're able to identify players in favorable matchups on these teams that need to win, we can target them under the assumption that they'll be getting the volume that we need with a bit less randomness. Sure, we're still going to have to dumpster dive in some spots, but our rosters will be smelling a lot prettier if we surround them with more reliable targets.

Identifying said matchups is a whole heck of a lot easier than knowing who will pop up in the season finale with the help of numberFire's Net Expected Points (NEP). This is the metric we use to track the efficiency of both teams and players with the team totals being adjusted for the strength of the opponent. While a yards-per-attempt metric views all plays that pick up the same yardage as being equal, NEP gives us the context to know that a three-yard completion on 3rd and 2 is wildly different from that same three-yard completion on 3rd and 4. Viewing this on the team level can allow us to pinpoint when an efficient offense is facing a foe that is unlikely to slow them down.

You'll have to track player news all throughout the week to know which guys will be the difference makers when Sunday rolls around. But we can check out these studs in plus matchups to round things out. While focusing on the teams with something on the line, which matchups should we be looking to exploit in Week 17? Let's check it out.