An interesting conversation about Austin Ekeler and his matchup against the Broncos in the Footballguys staff chat led me to dig deeper into the idea of assessing matchups over different time frames. Are the Broncos a good matchup for opposing running backs? The answer depends on how much you want to value defensive performances that happened months ago. For the season, the Broncos are giving up 7.6 fantasy PPG more than their opponents' average, most in the league. From that perspective, this is the best running matchup in the NFL. However, this is not the same Denver defense that got run over by the Dolphins way back in Week 3. The Broncos have not given up more than 22 points in any game since Week 5. Over that stretch, they faced C.J. Stroud, Josh Allen, Jordan Love, and Patrick Mahomes II (twice). These are legitimate offenses that have been shut down by Denver.
I was left wanting an easy way to check how offensive players at each position did (compared to their averages) when limiting the sample of games to a certain stretch. Thus, I built the tool below, which allows us to pick any timeframe to look at.
So, let's say we look at just Week 6 through Week 13. Are the Broncos a good matchup for Austin Ekeler? The answer is no. The Broncos have been dead average, with opposing running backs averaging exactly their average output over the past eight weeks.
This was a great start, but I also wanted a tool that went further. I wanted to limit things to only the teams on the FanDuel main slate. I wanted to view the matchups from the perspective of the individual offensive players. Furthermore, I also wanted to apportion the scoring boost among the different players at each position based on their projected share of their team's offensive production. So, for example, the Lions have struggled against wide receivers of late. In terms of how much of a fantasy boost (in terms of pure points), that should benefit D.J. Moore more than it would Equanimeous St. Brown. So I built the tool below, which allows you to explore which players on the FanDuel main slate are getting the biggest boost this week due to matchup (depending on which timeframe you want to look at).
Hopefully, these two tools help your research process this week. Now, let's dive into the specific player recommendations at each position for the Week 14 main slate.
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