| | | | Monday, November 6, 2023 | | We've had a lot of negatives to talk about this season, but I want to open today's podcast with an unquestionable good thing: C.J. Stroud's play. | | Stroud was, obviously, incredible on Sunday. That's underselling it. Stroud was incredible. It was one of the best games we've ever seen a rookie play from a statistical perspective, as Stroud became just the fifth rookie in NFL history to pass for five touchdowns in a game, and he did it while setting the rookie record for single-game passing yardage with 470. | | But Stroud was arguably even more impressive from "pull your head out of the spreadsheets and watch the games!" perspective. He set that record on a 15-yard touchdown pass to Tank Dell with six seconds left on the clock to push the Texans ahead of the Buccaneers , as they won a wild shootout, 39-37. They needed literally every single one of those yards, and Stroud threw for 75 yards and that score in the final 46 seconds to win the game. | | It was an unbelievable performance, the kind that makes discussions of future MVPs seem entirely reasonable. It was the kind of game that forces the question, "Exactly how many quarterbacks would I rather have in Fantasy right now?" | | And I think the answer might be as low as seven: Jalen Hurts, Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes , Lamar Jackson, Tua Tagovailoa, Justin Herbert, and Joe Burrow. Now, that's not to say Stroud is No. 8. Before dropping 51.8 Sunday, he had just 47.3 in his three previous games combined, after all. And if you wanted to take, say, Trevor Lawrence ahead of Stroud, I probably wouldn't quibble with you. | | | | But the point is, Stroud has been remarkable, and I think the coaching staff hopefully learned a lesson from winning with an aggressive game plan in Week 8 after losing a very winnable game the previous week against the Panthers with an unusually passive, run-heavy approach. The lesson? Let C.J. cook. Stroud might not have an established No. 1 option, but he's got a deep receiving corps with viable playmakers, and is playing at an incredibly high level, so why wouldn't they take advantage of that at a time when it might give them a significant leg up over most of their opponents most weeks? | | Stroud is 92% rostered, so there probably isn't much actionable here. But I do think you should probably view Stroud as someone you can start most weeks moving forward – I reckon he'll be a low-end QB1 for me in Week 10 against the Bengals, a tough matchup – and not necessarily someone you need to be trying to trade right now. Good quarterbacks are hard to find, and I very much believe you've found one. | | I wrote about the top waiver-wire targets heading into Week 10 as usual on Sunday night, but I'll be honest: This isn't a great week for it. At least, not as of now – we'll surely learn more about injuries that could change that today and tomorrow. But, as of Sunday evening, Keaton Mitchell looks like the only player I'd be really aggressive on this week, and if he had four carries next week, I wouldn't be even a little bit surprised. So, rather than spend time on the early waiver-wire targets, I'll just link you to it here and focus on the injuries you need to know about from Sunday's games before we get to the biggest winners and losers. | | And yes, we're already counting Stroud (and Dell, who had a monster game with six catches, 114 yards, and two touchdowns) as one of the biggest winners of the week. Here's what else you need to know about from Week 9's action Sunday: | | | | Week 9 Injury Tracker | | | | The biggest injury from Sunday probably came with Daniel Jones, whose season looks like it's probably over. According to multiple reports, the Giants fear a torn ACL for their starting quarterback, who had just come back from a neck injury Sunday. | | There's obviously no good time for an injury to your starting quarterback, but it comes as an especially bad time for the Giants, who just placed Tyrod Taylor on IR Saturday with a rib injury, putting him on the sidelines until at least Week 14. That means third-string rookie Tommy DeVito will likely start moving forward for the Giants, and while DeVito looked more prepared this week than he did last, he still had two interceptions on 20 passes and is likely to play pretty poorly. The Giants could also ultimately start Matt Barkley, the journeyman quarterback they added to their practice squad before this week. | | And, with Darren Waller on IR, there might not be anyone on this offense beyond Saquon Barkley worth using in Fantasy. It's gonna be really tough for this offense to move the ball consistently (not that it hasn't already), and I think the likeliest outcome is Barkley is a volume-based RB2 and there isn't another player in the top 20 at either QB or TE or top 40 at WR. It's been a bad situation, and it might just get worse. | | | | Jalen Hurts (knee) -- The bye week is coming at a very good time for Hurts, who has been playing through a knee injury he aggravated Sunday against the Cowboys. He took a hit to his left knee and stayed down for a moment before limping gingerly to the sidelines. He would come back into the game before going to the locker room early before halftime but ultimately ended up missing no snaps as he played through the issue. He's been dealing with a bone bruise in his knee for a few weeks, but he'll get the bye in Week 10 to recover and hopefully won't miss any time. Obviously, you will need a replacement for him in Week 10, though. | | Jaren Hall (concussion) – Hall took a big hit early on and was quickly ruled out, leading to Joshua Dobbs coming in just five days after the Vikings acquired him and leading them to a gutsy win over the Falcons. Dobbs completed 20 of 30 passes for 158 yards and a couple of touchdowns, while rushing for 66 yards and scoring another time on the ground. Dobbs isn't a great passer – especially down the field – but he is, for lack of a better term, a good football player, and he'll help keep this offense on schedule. They won't move the ball as well as they did under Kirk Cousins, obviously, but Dobbs might just be competent enough to keep T.J. Hockenson, Jordan Addison, and Alexander Mattison Fantasy relevant. | | Dallas Goedert (forearm) – According to Adam Schefter, Goedert suffered a fractured forearm Sunday and will undergo an MRI Monday to determine any further damage. That's a big blow for the Eagles offense and for Fantasy players, who now likely need a tight end for at least a few weeks -- and Goedert is a candidate for IR, at least. If there's a silver lining here, it's that there are actually some decent tight ends available on waivers in many leagues right now -- head here for a couple of candidates. | | Christian Watson (chest/back/concussion) – Watson exited Sunday's game after yet another subpar showing, as he caught just one pass for 37 yards on two targets. He played 52 of 68 snaps, and I'm not sure if he ended up coming back in after going to the locker room or not. However, the takeaway here is that, despite playing nearly the entire game, Watson continued to struggle. If the injuries force him to miss time, you might have a hard time justifying keeping him on your bench with just one game of more than 40 yards so far. | | Josh Downs (knee) – Downs suffered a knee injury during practice this week and was a game-time decision Sunday before ultimately trying to play through it. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it through the whole game, and now his status moving forward is unclear. Isaiah McKenzie played a bigger role in Downs' absence, but Michael Pittman was the only wide receiver with more than two catches for the Colts Sunday, and he's the only one I would even consider starting for Week 10 against the Patriots . Downs is worth stashing if he's only looking at a short absence. | | Cam Akers (Achilles) – This might be the most brutal injury of the day, as Akers suffered an Achilles injury Sunday. Coach Kevin O'Connell didn't confirm the extent of the injury, but it's hard not to fear the worst given Akers' history; he ruptured his right Achilles back in 2021. Sunday's injury was to his left leg, and we'll just hope it isn't the worst-case scenario. For now, it looks like Alexander Mattison's role as the No. 1 back in Minnesota looks secure, and he's probably back in the weekly RB2 discussion. | | Unfortunately, the QBs weren't the only players dealing with injuries Sunday. Let's quickly run through the other injuries you need to know about from Sunday's action: | | Biggest Winners and Losers | | Here's who has the arrow pointing up or down coming out of Sunday's action: | Winners
| | Rachaad White, RB, Buccaneers | | The concern with White has been that, though he opened the season as the clear lead back for the Buccaneers, it might be tough for him to hang on to that job if he didn't play well. So far, at least, that really hasn't been a concern, even with the team's complement of running backs behind him healthy now. White continues to not be particularly efficient as a runner, but still got 20 carries Sunday, rushing for 73 yards and a pair of scores. What's surely helping his case is that White continues to be terrific as a pass-catcher, hauling in all four passes thrown his way Sunday for 46 yards – leading to 27.9 PPR points Sunday. White may eventually lose his job – he is still averaging just 3.4 YPC – but it doesn't seem like it'll happen anytime soon. He's a fringe RB1 based on volume, especially in the passing game, and it sure doesn't look like that's going to change. | | Aaron Jones, RB, Packers | | There was a lot of talk this week about Jones being back to full health and ready to take on a bigger workload, and it wasn't just talk this time. Jones didn't have a particularly efficient day, but he made up for that with volume, rushing 20 times for 73 yards and a touchdown and catching four of six passes for 26 yards. For comparison's sake, Jones had just 25 carries and 10 catches in his first four games combined as he suffered, then recovered, then suffered again from a hamstring injury. I don't think you can expect Jones to get 20-plus touches every week, and he's still stuck in what looks like a mediocre-at-best offense, but this is the first time all season there was really a gap between his and AJ Dillon's usage, and that should happen every week as long as he's healthy. He's a vastly superior player. | | Jonathan Taylor, RB, Colts | | There's something kind of funny about the Colts finally unleashing Taylor as the lead back in what was probably his least impressive game in nearly a month, but hey, I won't complain. I've been expecting the Colts to fully unleash Taylor for a few weeks, and it finally looks like they were ready to, with Taylor playing 43 of 57 snaps and out-touching Zack Moss 22-7. The most exciting thing might have been the passing game usage, as Taylor ran routes on 21 of 28 dropbacks, which helped lead to what ended up being a very important early touchdown for his Fantasy day. I don't know if the split will be this pronounced every week, but it probably wouldn't be a bad idea – as good as Moss has been for the Colts this season, Taylor is simply a much more explosive back, and he's built for huge workloads and can handle them. He might be a top-five RB the rest of the way now. | | CeeDee Lamb, WR, Cowboys | | To a certain extent, there's an element of "dog bites man" to Lamb having a huge performance. But there was some pretty loud grumbling in the Fantasy world around Lamb's production over the first month or so of the season that has definitely quieted. He had more than 53 yards just twice in the first five games of the season, as the Cowboys found themselves consistently playing in weird game scripts – none of their first five games were decided by fewer than 12 points. In more competitive games over the past three weeks, Lamb has 117, 158, and 191 yards, with a career-high in consecutive games now. As it turns out, Lamb is still right there with the best at the position in terms of upside. It was nice to get that reminder. | | Jahan Dotson, WR, Commanders | | There's a part of me that wants to make the argument for Dotson as a sell-high candidate, and I may do that later in the week when we look for trade targets. For now, I don't want to rain too much on his parade, because while Dotson has benefited from massive volume over the past two weeks, it's also true that he wasn't performing well even in positive game scripts early in the season. Which is to say, we'll take the wins when we can get them. I'm not convinced that Dotson's recent run – 12 catches for 177 yards and two touchdowns over the past two games – means he's going to live up to all the preseason hype, and I would still rather have Terry McLaurin the rest of the way. But Dotson certainly needs to be rostered in all leagues, and that's not something we were saying even nine days ago. | | Taysom Hill, TE, Saints | | Hill had another terrific game for Fantasy Sunday, but I'm still not quite sure what to make of him. He accounted for a couple of touchdowns Sunday, passing for one from 3 yards and then catching another for 2 yards. That was one of four catches for Hill for just 13 yards, and he ran just 13 routes, as Juwan Johnson 's return has definitely pushed him away from the true TE role he played for a couple of weeks while Johnson was out. That leads me to believe that his Fantasy success is probably unsustainable, just like it ended up being last season when he had a few similar games. On the other hand, Hill genuinely seems to be the solution to the Saints' well-documented red zone issues, and he also had 11 carries for 52 yards Sunday, one week after he had nine carries for 63 yards. There are surely going to be weeks when the Saints don't have those goal-line opportunities, or defenses focus more on slowing him down near there, and I'm not sure Hill has much appeal if he isn't scoring touchdowns. However, he is more involved in the passing game as a receiver this season, and that should help. I think, in the end, he remains a touchdown-based TE starter, but I do think this might be a bit more sustainable than it was last season. | | Losers | | Geno Smith, QB, Seahawks | | When we talk about regression in Fantasy Football, we're usually talking about something like Gus Edwards ' recent stretch where he has six touchdowns on 38 carries over the past two games; statistical outliers that almost certainly won't be sustainable in the long run. That's the more purely luck-driven version of regression, where players just outperform their level of play, their context, their touches, etc. It's a pretty strong bet that Edwards won't score a touchdown once every seven or so carries the rest of the season. NFL history tells us that even the very best running backs in the very best offenses can't do that; when LaDainian Tomlinson scored an NFL-record 28 rushing touchdowns in 2006, he scored once every 12.4 carries. | | But there's another type of regression that we don't tend to talk about quite as much, and that's the kind we're seeing from Smith. In 2022, Smith had a 5.2% touchdown rate and 7.5 yards per attempt, which are pretty standard numbers from a good NFL QB, and that's what he played like. Whether you were a film-cruncher or a stats nerd, the conclusion was pretty clear: Geno Smith really played that well last season. | | But the thing is, what if Smith just ran hot for a year? Not in a way that suggests last year was an undeserved fluke or anything – again, he actually played that well last season! In that way, it wasn't a fluke. But the problem is, now he just isn't playing as well, and that might represent its own version of regression – Smith's talent level is regressing. He just hasn't been anywhere near as impressive as last season, and now he's down to a 7.1 Y/A and 3.6% touchdown rate. I still expect him to play better than that moving forward, but I'm not sure it's fair to expect him to play that well again. | | Jerome Ford, RB, Browns | | I'm genuinely struggling with Ford, who has a strong workload, plus athleticism, and a demonstrated ability to hit on big plays – he is one of just three running backs with two carries of at least 60 yards this season. Those are, generally, traits we're looking for from running backs. The problem is … I'm just not sure he's good. Take this, for example: Breece Hall and De'Von Achane , the other two backs with multiple 60-plus-yard carries, are averaging 5.7 and 12.1 yards per carry, respectively; Ford is at 3.97. If he's going to get 20 carries and seven targets every week like he did Sunday, it really doesn't matter if he's good, because Ford is going to be Fantasy relevant no matter what. And I'm not sure Kareem Hunt or Pierre Strong are any better, so there might not be much to be gained from going away from Ford. But man, he needs to be better, especially in what might be a mediocre offense with a bad offensive line (the Browns lost left tackle Jedrick Wills to a serious-looking injury Sunday, and they're already beating up across the line). | | Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua, WR, Rams | | So … Brett Rypien is a problem, and not in a positive way The Kids mean it. He had a couple of early fumbles, and the Rams just clearly did not trust him, dropping back to pass just 12 times on 28 first-half snaps before they went down by multiple scores in the second half. Rypien completes just 13 of 28 passes, with Kupp and Nacua combining for five catches for 80 yards. The Rams are on a bye in Week 10, and let's just hope Matthew Stafford's thumb is healthy enough to play by the time they come back in Week 11 – something Sean McVay wouldn't commit to Sunday, unfortunately. | | Nico Collins, WR, Texans | | One thing that has become abundantly clear about the Texans offense is they definitely don't have a No. 1 WR. The Fantasy community can grumble and moan about it all we want, but we probably just have to accept it. Collins can still be good for Fantasy, but there are going to be weeks, like Week 9, where he needs to find the end zone to have a good game; he did it Sunday, so no complaints here. But the idea that Collins is going to consistently earn targets on more than, say, 20% of Stroud's throws just doesn't seem realistic, given how they've spread the ball around – and given Collins' downfield-oriented route tree. Collins might just be more like a Mike Williams/Gabe Davis type than the true, high-volume superstar he looked like early on. | | Gabe Davis, WR, Bills | | One of the key things I wanted to keep an eye on in Week 9 was how the Bills used Davis, because his role changed dramatically in Week 8 in a way we'd never really seen before. Rather than just lining him up on the outside and using him almost exclusively on downfield routes, the Bills moved Davis around the formation and hit him on quick, short passes, and he looked like a much more interesting Fantasy option as a result. Unfortunately, that usage didn't continue into Week 9, as he was targeted just twice, both on passes that traveled at least 15 yards down the field. Davis did almost score a touchdown, but the hope last week was that he might be in a role where he didn't have to hit on 50-50 balls every week to be worth using. That's not what we saw Sunday, which means we can probably write it off as a fluke. Davis remains a coin-flip bet as a WR3. | | Michael Thomas, WR, Saints | | Through everything, the one thing we've been able to count on with Thomas has been volume. Even in a season where he hasn't been all that good, Thomas still had at least seven targets and at least four catches in seven of eight games entering Week 9. Sunday, even that evaporated, as he was targeted just once on 26 routes run. That projectable volume kept Thomas in my WR3 range most weeks, despite iffy efficiency and just one touchdown on 61 targets. Coming off a game like this, however, where the Saints made a notable effort to get Chris Olave involved in the quick passing game, I'm not sure how you can justify Thomas as anything more than a WR4 in PPR, even with a lot of players on bye in Week 10. | | | | | | | | Texas Rangers Championship Gear | | Fantasy Baseball Today | The Texas Rangers have won their first World Series title in franchise history. Show your pride and support with the official World Series Championship gear. Order yours today and celebrate the Rangers' historic victory with style.
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