| | | | Monday, October 11, 2021 | | Before we move on to Week 6 tomorrow, let's take one last look back on Week 5's action. In today's newsletter, I've got the biggest winners and losers from Sunday's action, and I'll be taking a look at the biggest storylines coming out of Week 5 with Heath Cummings' Believe It or Not column. And, we'll take another look at my top waiver-wire targets ahead of Week 6, in case you missed it last night. | | And, if you've got any questions, as always, make sure to send them my way at [email protected]. I'll be looking to answer some waiver-wire questions tomorrow, some trade questions Wednesday, and all of your other questions throughout the week, so make sure to send them my way with the subject line "#AskFFT" to have them included. | | And now, here's today's newsletter. | | | | Biggest Winners/Losers | | | | I wrote about the biggest winners and losers from Week 5 here, with 10 choices on each side. Here are the top five from Sunday's action: | | Winners | | These players come out of Week 5 looking better than they did coming in. | | Kyle Pitts -- It took Calvin Ridley being away from the team dealing with a personal matter, a matchup against one of the worst defenses in the league, and a trip across the Atlantic ocean, but Pitts finally had the breakout game we've been waiting for Sunday. He was the team's obvious No. 1 target, with Matt Ryan looking his way 10 times, and Pitts hauled in nine of those passes for 119 yards and a touchdown. Sure, Pitts benefitted from Ridley's absence, it goes without saying. However, there's no reason the Falcons shouldn't be able to feature Pitts like this pretty much every game. It would make their offense more dynamic and would make it even harder for opposing defenses to focus on slowing Ridley down. Pitts has elite upside and you can't even consider benching him and passing up days like this. Cordarrelle Patterson -- The idea behind calling Patterson a sell-high candidate last week was that he couldn't keep putting up elite Fantasy numbers while playing just 30% of the team's snaps. Well, Sunday, he plays closer to 60% of the snaps and actually led the team in rush attempts with 14, totaling 54 yards, while ranking second with nine targets, which he turned into seven for 60. Whether Patterson can sustain that kind of role when Ridley is active remains to be seen, but he also got twice as many carries as his previous season high. The Falcons would do well to continue getting him the ball, because it sure seems like this offense needs to revolve around Pitts, Ridley, and Patterson. James Robinson -- If you were worried about whether Robinson's dominance in Week 4 came about because Carlos Hyde wasn't active, Sunday's game gave you a lot of reasons to be optimistic. While Robinson's snap share did fall from north of 90% last week to 67% Sunday, that was more than enough for him to rush for 149 yards on 18 carries, with Hyde getting just five carries. Robinson was only targeted once in the game -- and Hyde did get a key 4th and goal carry from the 1-yard line, which was infuriating, frankly -- but it's hard to come away from this game anything but pleased with Robinson's role. He's clearly not just the best back in this offense but one of the two or three best players, and he has to be viewed as a must-start RB at this point. Alvin Kamara -- I have my complaints about how the Saints have run their offense, but they addressed some of the biggest ones Sunday, as they threw a season-high 30 passes and made a point of featuring Kamara in both facets on offense. Kamara is on pace for by far the most carries and yards of his career, but he somehow didn't have a rushing touchdown entering Week 5 and was coming off his first career game without a target. Sunday, he earned eight targets and got his first rushing touchdown, in addition to a short receiving touchdown. The Saints simply don't have enough playmakers in the passing game not to feature him like this, and while things could look different in Week 7 when they return from the bye -- potentially with a healthy Michael Thomas -- hopefully Week 6 was the low point of Kamara's season. Chase Claypool -- While we don't yet know the extent of JuJu Smith-Schuster's shoulder injury, any amount of missed time would obviously be good news for Claypool. At this point, I'm not sure Ben Roethlisberger can support two starting caliber Fantasy options in the passing game alongside an elite running back, but I'm pretty certain he can't support three. Claypool was actually Roethlisberger's top target Sunday, with six passes going his way compared to just two for Diontae Johnson. Johnson should be the better player in any case, but if Smith Schuster is out, Claypool figures to play more two-WR sets and should see an uptick in target volume as well. That would put him in the WR3 discussion most weeks. | | | | Losers | | It's hard to feel better about these players coming out of Week 5 than you did coming in. | | Adam Thielen -- Two games in a row without a touchdown for Thielen, and now we're starting to see the limitations of his current skill set. When he's finding the end zone regularly, Thielen is a must-start Fantasy option, but the problem with that is, you can't count on someone who isn't putting up big yardage to get into the end zone regularly unless they are in an elite offense. Now, the Vikings have had a very efficient passing game the past few seasons, but Kirk Cousins isn't Tom Brady , so you can't necessarily count on that, too. He hasn't topped 50 yards in a game since Week 1 and is now averaging just 53.4 yards per game on 7.2 yards per target. Even if you think Thielen is more likely than nearly every other wide receiver to score on a per-target basis, this kind of production just leaves far too narrow a margin for error. I'm not saying you should cut him, but he's probably not going to be in my top-30 until we see something change. Justin Fields -- I was cautiously optimistic that the Bears would start to use Fields more like he should be once they named him the starter, and maybe that was the plan before he dealt with back and knee injuries throughout this game. However, Fields ran the ball just four times in this one for 3 yards, and now has just 24 rushing yards in three games as the starter. I just don't know when we're going to be able to trust Fields in Matt Nagy's offense, but I'm just not optimistic about it at all now. Tyler Boyd -- The Bengals have played three games with all of Boyd, Tee Higgins, and Ja'Marr Chase active, and Boyd has five or fewer targets in two of them; across the three games, Boyd has 18 targets, while Higgins has 22 and Chase has 21. Even as the No. 3 option, Boyd still has some value, but given that he's probably the least likely of the three to score a touchdown or hit a big play, he's probably also the clear third-most valuable Fantasy option of the bunch, and probably not a top-30 option at WR, even in PPR. Trey Sermon -- So, it turns out, maybe the fact that Sermon didn't touch the ball until every other running back on the roster got hurt might have told us something about how this coaching staff feels about him. Revealed preferences, and all that. With Elijah Mitchell healthy, Sermon played just two snaps in Week 5, carrying the ball once for 7 yards. Obviously, Sermon still has a chance to carve out a role for himself, especially if Mitchell suffers another injury, but there's no way you can view him as a starter. And, if we start to get word that JaMycal Hasty (IR) or Jeff Wilson (PUP) are close to returning after the team's Week 6 bye, Sermon may be droppable. Odell Beckham -- I was so encouraged by Beckham's usage in Week 3, and I was willing to forgive his limited production in Week 4 as a result of Baker Mayfield's shoulder issue. However, Mayfield looked fine Sunday, throwing for 305 yards on 32 attempts and only three of those passes went to Beckham. Beckham did have a crucial drop on a fourth down in the second quarter, but that shouldn't be enough to lose his QB's trust. For some reason, Beckham and Mayfield just haven't been able to get on the same page over the three seasons they've played together, which makes it awfully tough to trust Beckham for Fantasy. | | Biggest Storylines | | | | Every week, Heath Cummings takes a look at some of the biggest Fantasy storylines coming out of Sunday's games and tries to separate fact from fiction in his Believe It or Not column. You can read the full column here, and here are my thoughts on three of the big storylines he highlighted: | 1. Adam Thielen is a touchdown-dependent flex
| | Heath's verdict: Believe it. | | Well, you already read my thoughts on Thielen earlier in the newsletter, so you know I'm on board with this one. Thielen can be a starting-caliber -- even must-start -- Fantasy wide receiver in his current role, sure, but the margin for error is a really thin one. He's actually averaging slightly more targets per game than he did last season, but he just hasn't been nearly as good, and it's not just because of the lack of touchdowns. Despite a higher catch rate (68.5% to 70.3%), Thielen has fallen from 8.6 yards per attempt to 7.2. Last year's was his lowest since becoming a full-time player in 2016, and this year's is driven by a dip in both average depth of target and average yards after catch. Thielen is 31, so this could just be the natural signs of decline we would expect with a player his age, and if that's the case, his margin for error is extremely slim even if you buy that he is more likely to find the end zone than your typical WR. | | 2. Myles Gaskins is a starting Fantasy RB again | | Heath's verdict: Don't believe it. | | My thoughts: There seemed to be a confluence of events working in Gaskin's favor in Week 5. First, and most obviously, was a matchup against a Buccaneers team with a terrifying offense and arguably the best rush defense in the league. Second, and perhaps an overlooked factor, is that Jacoby Brissett suffered a hamstring injury in this one, and while he was able to play through it, he clearly was not fully healthy, limiting his ability to scramble -- and leading to more targets for Gaskin. That it was Gaskin getting those targets and not Malcolm Brown or Salvon Ahmed is a great sign, but in a more typical game plan, can you trust Gaskin to get enough work to be worth starting? Well, maybe in Week 6 against the Jaguars, but probably not against most defenses. | | 3. Kadarius Toney is the best Fantasy player on the Giants rest of season | | Heath's verdict: Don't believe it. | | My thoughts: I mean, I guess we'll see how serious the injuries suffered by Saquon Barkley (ankle) and Kenny Golladay (knee) Sunday were, but even if both miss time, I'm not sure I would take Toney over them. Certainly not Barkley, who I fully believe in as a must-start Fantasy option when healthy, assuming he didn't suffer a season-ending injury. However, I would say even with how amazing Toney was Sunday -- 10 catches for 189 yards before being ejected -- I might still take a healthy Sterling Shepard over him. Let's not forget that Shepard had 41.8 PPR points in his first two games before leaving Week 3 with a hamstring injury. But Toney is clearly a more dynamic receiver than I gave him credit for and should be one of the top targets on waivers in Week 6. Speaking of ... | | Top Early Waiver-Wire Targets | | Here's an early look at who I think we'll all be clamoring for in Week 6: | | Devontae Booker, RB, NYG 10%Darrell Williams, RB, KC 38% *Clyde Edwards-Helaire left Week 5 with a knee injury.Kadarius Toney, WR, NYG 19%Rondale Moore, WR, ARI 55%AJ Dillon, RB, GB 65% | | For the rest of my top early priorities and why I'm targeting them, head here. | | | | | | | | Europe's Best on P+ | | $100,000 Pick'em Contest | The 2021/22 UEFA Season promises to be one of the most exciting and thrilling in recent times! Watch Europe's Elite on the road to glory exclusively on Paramount+.
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