Fantasy Playoff Matchups and Custom SOS

Photo: USA Today Sports

When making difficult starting lineup decisions in the fantasy playoffs, one of the key angles to consider is how favorable the player's matchup is. In this article, we will provide you with the numbers and tools you need to help make those decisions.

The first way to judge the difficulty of an offensive player's matchup is to take a team-level view. A great way to do this is to compare each team's Week 15 team total (calculated from consensus lines and game totals from the top sportsbooks) to the team's performance in the rest of the 2023 season.

In the table below, you can see how many points each team is expected to score in Week 15 (Team Total) compared to how many points each team has averaged through the first 14 weeks (Season Avg.). The difference between these two numbers divided by the team's season average provides us with a strong baseline number (Weekly Boost) to judge how favorable the game environment and matchup is for our offensive players. For example, the Rams are 7.0-point favorites against the Commanders in a game with a total of 49. This means the Rams implied team total for Week 15 is 28.0 points. Los Angeles has averaged 23.0 points through the first 14 weeks. This means the Rams are projected to score 21.7% more points than normal (Weekly Boost), giving them one of the top matchups of Week 15.