Fantasy Football Week 2: Cardinals vs. Panthers, Texans vs. Bucs, and other matchups to exploit

Every week during the regular season I’ll use this space to highlight teams facing various funnel defenses.

What’s a Funnel Defense?

A funnel defense, in case you’re wondering, is a defense that faces an unusually high rate of pass attempts or rushes. I’ll take a close look at how opponents are playing these defenses in neutral game script — when the game is within a touchdown either way — and how good or bad these rush and pass defenses have been of late.

Identifying funnel defenses is hardly an exact science, and whacked-out game script can always foil our best-laid plans. It happens. I’ve found it useful in recent seasons to analyze matchups through this lens to see if there are any useful additions to the always-agonizing start-sit process we put ourselves through every week.

With more data, this analysis will improve. It happens every season. The first few weeks are always tough to pin down. I’ll focus mostly on how defenses were attacked in 2024 and try to adjust for offseason moves and other factors that might change things for that defense in a new year.

🏈 Run Funnel Matchups

Cardinals vs. Panthers

Carolina, just like last year, appears to be one of the league’s most prominent, easy-to-target run funnel defenses. Travis Etienne — one of the NFL’s least efficient running backs over the past two years — ran wild against the Panthers in Week 1. Only Derrick Henry averaged more yards after contact per rush in the season’s opening week.

The Jaguars last week had a low 49 percent pass rate in neutral situations against Carolina (when the game is within one touchdown either way). Jacksonville was 10 percent below its expected pass rate on early downs, a stark departure from what Liam Coen’s offense looked like in Tampa. It makes sense that Coen played a little bully ball in Week 1: The Panthers allowed the third highest rate of rushing yards before contact.

We can expect a heavy dose of James Conner and Trey Benson in Week 2 against the Panthers. Last week Conner handled 12 rushes while Benson saw eight. Conner, meanwhile, caught all four of his targets on 21 routes; Benson was targeted once on ten routes. Conner should certainly remain in 12-team league lineups in Week 2. I think Benson makes sense in deeper formats assuming the Cardinals — 6.5 point favorites as of this writing — have game script on their side and can run it at will against the down-bad Panthers. Benson’s explosiveness means he can get there for fantasy purposes with 10-12 touches, which he might get here.

Lions vs. Bears

The Lions didn’t exactly go ultra pass-heavy in their embarrassing Week 1 drubbing at the hands of the Packers. They were, in fact, 4 percent below their expected pass rate. They didn’t have much in the way of neutral game script against Green Bay, but when they did, they ran the ball at a 62 percent clip.

That Jared Goff dropped back 43 times doesn’t mean much in this context. The Lions had to chase points over the final three quarters. That’s when a team drops back and lets it rip. The plan, clearly, was to be pretty run heavy against the Packers. And we can expect more of that in Week 2 against a Chicago front seven that gave up the seventh highest rate of rush yards before contact in Week 1. This is the same Bears defense that allowed a league-high rate of yards before contact in 2024.

Obviously you’re playing Jahmyr Gibbs here. I wouldn’t pull the plug on David Montgomery as an RB2 option after Montgomery out-carried Gibbs 11 to 9 in Week 1. The usually pass-first Vikings last week had a 48 percent neutral pass rate against these Bears, the fourth lowest neutral pass rate of Week 1. Last year in his lone game against Chicago, Montgomery turned 21 rushes into 88 yards (Gibbs had nine carries in that game).

Barring weird game script, Montgomery could easily see 15 touches in Week 2. Don’t panic after his opening day clunker.

🏈 Pass Funnel Matchups

Bills vs. Jets

Arthur Smith did a strange thing in Week 1 and quickly pulled the plug on the running game against the Jets, leading to a league-high 72 percent neutral pass rate. Foolishly we thought we knew something about old Arthur. Nevertheless, we persist.

It makes sense that the Steelers shifted hard toward the pass last week. The Jets allowed the sixth lowest rate of rush yards before contact along with the third highest rushing stuff rate. That followed a 2024 in which the Jets profiled as a pass funnel defense.

That means Josh Allen and the Bills could be in for their second straight pass-heavy outing. Allen dropped back 53 times in Week 1’s stunning comeback against the Ravens; we could see something similar if Justin Fields and the Jets offense forces Buffalo to keep their foot on the proverbial gas. Keon Coleman, following his massive Week 1 performance against Baltimore, could once again see the sort of game flow that fuels outlier games for mediocre wideouts. After being targeted on 17 percent of his routes in 2024, Coleman saw a target on 26 percent of his routes in Week 1. Josh Palmer, meanwhile, was targeted on 25 percent of his routes while logging a route on 40 of 56 Buffalo drop backs.

Khalil Shakir could get back on track here. Shakir caught six of his eight targets against the Ravens for 64 scoreless yards. As I mentioned in an offseason analysis of receivers’ splits against zone and man coverage, Shakir thrives against zone and fades against man. The Ravens played quite a bit of man coverage. The Jets should play far more zone against the Bills. It’s a boon for Allen’s primary slot guy.

Dalton Kincaid largely got away with it in Week 1. He scored a touchdown on one of his four grabs but ran a route on just 57 percent of Allen’s drop backs. He’s still not a full time player, as Bills beat writers predicted in August. Be careful about playing him in Week 2.

Texans vs. Bucs

Tampa is once again asking opposing offenses to drop back at a high rate against them in 2025. The Bucs were one of the NFL’s most extreme pass funnels of 2024 and continued that trend in Week 1 against the Falcons, who passed the ball at a 60 percent rate in neutral game script.

The Bucs appear to have a strong run defense, just as they did last season. Falcons rushers averaged a minuscule 0.18 yards before contact per rush, the second lowest rate of Week 1. Atlanta couldn’t get anything going on the ground; it’s why they retreated to the air.

The Texans, I think, will be left with little choice but to air it out against Tampa in Week 2. Though they had the sixth lowest pass rate over expected in Week 1 against the Rams, there are plenty of reasons to believe CJ Stroud will be forced into a pass-heavy script here. The Texans enter this game as underdogs and no one in the Houston backfield has the juice to fuel an effective ground attack.

Inflated drop backs for Houston would be fantastic for Nico Collins, who had 20 percent of the team’s air yards in 19 percent of the targets against the Rams -- hardly spectacular rates. Dalton Schultz, who logged a pass route on 22 of 34 drop backs in Week 1, would also benefit (even if TE Cade Stover was involved last week with four grabs on four targets).

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