Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

One of our newest segments on the podcast is Pick Your Poison, where Dave, Jason and a guest pick between two close players based on the drinkfive.com player rankings. This week we were joined by site contributor Mike Mocerino. Our choices will be listed below each of the matchups. Let us know in the comments which players you would pick!

Quarterbacks

Dak Prescott (#6) @ PHI or Drew Brees (#7) @ TEN

Dak Prescott was limited in practice on Wednesday for the first time in his career. This really isn’t significant for his matchup, I just thought it was an interesting tidbit to illustrate his durability. Don’t worry about Prescott’s availability for Sunday – he has a decent matchup. The Eagles are somehow giving up the 19^th most points to opposing QBs, while giving up the 3^rd most points to opposing WRs. Regardless of any anomalies you may find with Prescott, he should be in shape to have a very high floor this week against the Eagles.

Last week Drew Brees broke two impressive records, the all-time TD record and the single game completion percentage. What does he do for an encore? I suspect he’s going to throw the ball to Michael Thomas an awful lot. The Titans are giving up the 18^th most points to opposing QBs, and have only surrendered more than 22 points to one player all year, Patrick Mahomes. Brees has 9 TDs in his last 2 games, and 16 in his last 5 – I expect him to continue to ride high going into the playoffs, though his ceiling in this game is probably a little lower than the last 2 weeks.

Mike: Drew Brees, Dave: Dak Prescott, Jason: Drew Brees

Matt Ryan (#11) vs JAX or Ryan Fitzpatrick (#12) vs CIN

Ryan gets the struggling Jaguars at home, a team that gives up the 11^th most points to opposing QBs. Last week he targeted Julio Jones a whopping 20 times, and if he wants to win this completely meaningless game, then he might as well target him another 20 times. The Jaguars have given up big games to Rivers, Mahomes and Tannehill this year, and have recently kept Winston to under 11 points, so they’re kind of all over the place. Matt Ryan has a range of just 18.5-21.3 over his last 3 games, and has not put up a really big game since he went down with an injury in week 7.

Fitzpatrick is throwing the ball an awful lot this year, with at least 37 attempts each of the last 5 weeks. He has 2 games with no TDs in that span, however he did manage to rush for 65 yards in one of those. Regardless, they were against tough defenses, Buffalo and the Jets – his opponent on Sunday, the Bengals, are definitely not that. They are giving up the 9^th most points to opposing QBs. They have given up 7 games of 20 points or more this season, including Lamar Jackson’s 2-30 point games. I expect Fitzpatrick to throw the ball a ton – he’s averaging 38 attempts per game since week 7 and he’s the QB7 over the last 4 weeks.

Mike: Matt Ryan, Dave: Matt Ryan, Jason: Matt Ryan

RB

Melvin Gordon (#17) or OAK or Devin Singletary (#18) @ NE

Melvin Gordon’s snap share has dipped lately, hitting a season low of 40% last week after a high water mark of 65% just a few weeks prior. Gordon also carried the ball only 7 times, the fewest he’s seen all year. The one bright spot is that he’s had 5 receptions in each of the last 2 games, and that’s his high on the season. He’ll be facing Oakland, who give up the 13^th most points to opposing RBs, though they did surrender 19.3 to Gordon when they played back in week 10.

Devin Singletary, aka the TRUTH, has been used a lot more on the Bills. He’s seeing a 70+% snap share every week since week 11, after having a max of 68% before that. He’s got almost 18 carries per game over that time period as well and is the RB18 over the last 4 weeks. Singletary has good volume that you can chase, however his biggest problem is his opponent this week, the Patriots. New England is giving up the 2^nd fewest points to opposing RBs, though last week Joe Mixon set a season high mark against them of 15.6 points.

Mike: Mike Singletary, Dave: Melvin Gordon, Jason: Melvin Gordon

Le’Veon Bell (#24) vs PIT or Raheem Mostert (#25) vs LAR

There’s been lots of flippant talk of #RevengeGame(s) this year, but this one could be real. Bell will face his former team, and probably better for him that this is in New York (Jersey) rather than Pittsburgh. Bell has struggled both on and off the field with his team lately, but he needs to have an impressive showing in order to market himself to a new team for next season. The Steelers are giving up the 6^th fewest points to opposing RBs. They have only given up 5 double digit performances all season, and several of those were very flukey, like to David Johnson in week 14, Rashaad Penny in week 2 and Jeff Wilson (the week doesn’t matter there, it’s just an anomaly). Bell still hasn’t broken 100 rushing yards this season, and the Steelers haven’t allowed a 100 yard rusher either.

Mostert is the kind of player that you picked up late and probably helped many teams make and win in the playoffs. Last week he disappointed with a 9.9 point performance, but his role on the 49ers should still be pretty safe. The game against the Falcons was something to forget for the Niners, and considering they fumbled the ball 4 times, I don’t expect a repeat. Since Matt Breida had 2 of those fumbles, I don’t see him overtaking Mostert, and Tevin Coleman has very clearly moved from the Guest House to the Dog House, with only 4 carries last week and only 13 touches in the last 3 games. The Rams are giving up the 14^th most points to opposing RBs, a number that is skewed by the fact that they gave up 48 points to Zeke and Pollard just last week.

Mike: Raheem Mostert, Dave: Le'Veon Bell, Jason: Le'Veon Bell

WR

Kenny Golladay (#14) @ DEN or Stefon Diggs (#15)  vs GB

Kenny Golladay is a very talented receiver, in fact, he broke a record that even Megatron didn’t have – he’s the first Lions receiver to have 1,000 yards in two of his first three seasons. Unfortunately, his QB is David Blough (that name again is David Blough) and that really sucks from a fantasy perspective. Blough has only 3 TDs in his 3 games, but he is throwing the ball a decent amount, averaging about 41 attempts per game (probably because the Lions are always losing). It doesn’t get any easier against Denver this week, who are giving up the 8^th fewest points to opposing WRs. The silver lining is that Denver is giving up big numbers to a lot of #1 WRs since Week 11 to guys like Diggs, Hopkins, Hill and Allen.

Speaking of a fellow NFC North wide receiver, Stefon Diggs has not been lighting it up lately, averaging only 7.5 points per game over the last 3 weeks. Diggs has had the volume, with 24 targets over that time, but his matchups have been tough. This week against Green Bay is kind of a middle-of-the-road matchup. They are giving up the 14^th fewest points to opposing WRs and held Diggs to 8.9 points back in Week 2. With Adam Thielen returning to the mix, Diggs is a mixed bag and more of a risk to than he was in the middle of the season.

Mike: Kenny Golladay, Dave: Stefon Diggs, Jason: Kenny Golladay

Anthony Miller (#31) vs KC or John Brown (#32) @ NE

Anthony Miller has been lighting it up lately, well, for a Bears WR anyways. Over his last 3 games, he has 42 total points and his target volume has been very high. He saw 13 targets in Wk 13, then just 4 the next week, but scored a TD. Finally he had another 15 targets last week in Green Bay. Over the last 5 weeks, he is averaging over 10 targets per game, so it’s clear that he’s becoming a favorite of Trubisky. The Chiefs, meanwhile, have really fixed their secondary this season and are giving up the 4^th fewest points to opposing WRs. Since Week 3, they have only given up 3 double digit performances. The Chiefs are much weaker against the run, though they’re also likely to get out to an early lead, so I do expect the Bears to continue to throw the ball, even against a tough passing D.

John Brown has had a breakout season this year (he was even our sleeper pick on the Bills during the preseason). He’s broken 1,000 yards for the second time in his career, and is easily having the best season of his career, with high marks in receptions, yardage and yards per game with 2 games still left to go. Unfortunately for him this week, he’s going to be shut down by Stefon Gilmore and the Patriots league leading pass defense. They give up the fewest points to opposing WRs by almost 3 points compared to the next team on the list. They’ve only given up 5 double digit performances all year, all of them to guys who scored TDs. They’ve allowed just 3 receiving TDs to WRs, which means that one of those performances contained a rushing TD, and the other contained a passing TD. This defense is really good.

Mike: Anthony Miller, Dave: Anthony Miller, Jason: Anthony Miller 

TE

Tyler Higbee (#5) @ SF or Austin Hooper (#6) vs JAX

Higbee has 3 straight 100 yard games over the last 3 weeks, and he’s just been tearing it up since taking over for Gerald Everett. Going in to week 13, Higbee had 884 career yards, and he’s increased that number by 37% since then. He’s already the TE14 on the season, and is the TE4 over the last 4 weeks. Higbee will be facing the 49ers defense, who give up the 2^nd fewest points to opposing TEs this season, though in weeks 13 and 14, they gave up big games to both Mark Andrews and Jared Cook.

Austin Hooper was leading all TEs in fantasy scoring when he went down with an injury and sat out Weeks 11-13. He has not produced since coming back, though he’s had 6 targets per game and probably scored a TD last week that was not ruled a TD. This week Hooper faces the Jaguars, who give up the 10^th most points to opposing TEs. Just last week they gave up a 10 catch, 122 yard performance to Darren Waller, so I expect that Hooper can get open and go back to his production that he had earlier in the year, especially since Jacksonville is likely to focus on Julio Jones.

Mike: Tyler Higbee, Dave: Tyler Higbee, Jason: Austin Hooper

O.J. Howard (#11) vs HOU or Dallas Goedert (#12) vs DAL

OJ Howard has not been a stellar TE this season, but he’s basically the default #2 target on the Bucs after their WR group has been decimated by injury, with 3 guys going down in the last 2 weeks. Howard has 19 targets in his last 3 games, and that number should just go up this week against Houston. The Texans give up the 6^th most points to opposing TEs, including double digit performances each of the last 2 weeks. I expect Howard to be used a lot and Houston will be able to focus on him since there’s not a lot of other options, however Howard is an ok spot start if you’re in a pinch.

Dallas Goedert has been a TD dependent TE on a team that also has a depleted WR group, but he’s way behind Ertz when it comes to a share of the targets. He’s averaging 6.6 targets per game in the last 5 weeks, though his high is only 8. Goedert is a high floor, low ceiling type player, just remember that the floor for most TEs is still pretty low. Dallas is giving up the 11^th most points to opposing TEs, and just last week got torched for 111 yards by Tyler Higbee. Dallas has given up 5 TDs to TEs this year, and Dallas will have to score a TD against Dallas to make Dallas a good start. Confused yet? Well I’m done, so good luck this week!

Mike: O.J. Howard, Dave: O.J. Howard, Jason: Dallas Goedert

Welcome to Statistically (in)Significant, the place to find great stats that probably only matter at the water cooler (or bar). Each week I'll dig through the stats of the week gone by and deliver you some choice conversation starters. All fantasy stats are half PPR scoring unless otherwise noted.

37 Completions

Thursday night, the Bengals unleashed their #1 overall pick in a prime-time game – though if you didn’t have NFL network handy, you struggled to find it. Broadcast rights aside, this Browns-Bengals matchup was better than it had any business being. In only his second game of his professional career, Joe Burrow attempted 61 passes, completing 37 of them for 316 yards and 3 TDs with zero interceptions. The 37 completions are a record for rookie passers. Now, perhaps, the Bengals would like to consider acquiring a defense so that their rookie’s arm doesn’t fall off by the end of the season.

50 years

Raheem Mostert, one of 49 (probably) players injured for San Francisco, recorded a feat that hasn’t been done in over 50 years. He became the first player in 50+ years to score a TD of 75+ yards in the first two weeks of a season. Last week, he had a 76-yard TD reception, and yesterday he opened the game with an 80-yard TD run where he was clocked at a blazing 23.09 MPH. Seriously. Get in your car and drive 23 mph and see if anyone could possibly keep up. Hell, Mostert would have been speeding on the street that I grew up on. Limited to only 10 touches since apparently injuries are more contagious than Covid-19 to the 49ers, Mostert still sits as this week’s RB14, and the RB4 on the season. Hopefully Mostert can stay on the field as he has the two fastest speeds clocked by ball carriers this season – and they’re the fastest regular season numbers since 2016.

75,000 Yards

Tom Brady became the second player, behind fellow quadragenarian Drew Brees, to reach the 75,000 passing yards mark. Brady has yet to really impress in a fantasy football sense this season, but he did lead his team to an impressive victory over the, admittedly lame, Carolina Panthers on Sunday. The question of whether Brady still “has it” is unresolved in my mind, but he does win games, so we can go ahead and give him credit for this one. He does need to stop throwing interceptions – that’s 4 games in a row including the playoffs last year. Nonetheless, we celebrate Brady’s 75,000 yards, a distance so damn far that it would take Raheem Mostert nearly 2 hours (111 minutes) running at full speed to cover all those passing yards. You can tack on another 17 minutes to include his playoff yardage.

60+ Fantasy Points

So far in this short season, 4 QBs are averaging 30+ fantasy points per game. Leading the pack is no surprise, it’s Russell Wilson, who has an amazing 82.5% completion rate to go with 9 passing TDs already. It’s the 3 players who also average 30+ per game that may have you surprised. In order, you have Josh Allen, Cam Newton and Kyler Murray. Between them they have 8 rushing TDs, obviously an invaluable asset to fantasy football QBs. Amazingly, Cam Newton has landed here with only 1 passing TD in 2 games so far this season.  Last year’s MVP, Lamar Jackson sits just outside the top 10, just a few points ahead of 2020 Rookie of the Beginning of the Year Joe Burrow.

43.6 Fantasy Points

Aaron Jones is insane. This is the note that was my placeholder and I really can’t start this section any better. Since the start of last year, he has 13 games over 15 points (and 2 more games of 14.8 points). Two of those games are over 40 points, 8 of those are 22+ points or better. On Sunday, Jones was everywhere. He carried the ball 18 times for 168 yards, good for a 9.3 yards per carry average. He found the end zone twice on the ground and once more through the air, where he added 4 catches for 68 yards. His performance in Week 2 was so dominant over all other RBs that the difference between Jones and the RB2, Nick Chubb, is an entire Raheem Mostert – 17.8 points! If you take the highest non-QB, non-Jones scorer in Week 2, Calvin Ridley, you would need to increase his output by 65% just to reach Aaron Jones’s performance. This guy is insane, and the Packers are really, really good this year.

It's time to look forward to the next several weeks and pick out some busts. These are guys that all have very tough schedules coming up, and are top 15 at their position through 5 weeks. My suggestion to you is to get the trade discussion going in your league and try to unload some of these players to your league mates who may lack the foresight that you do.

Ryan Tannehill, QB-TEN – On the season, Ryan Tannehill has the 8^th most points per game, turning in his best performance just last night. Tannehill has had some easy matchups, so far all of his games have come against teams that are giving up top 12 points to opposing QBs. This bust has a lot to do with his matchups coming up, but I also want to point out that he is trailing behind many stat categories that he was doing very well last season. So far, his completion percentage, yards per attempt, yards per completion, and QB rating are all lower than last year’s numbers. Now, he has 6 straight games coming up against teams that are all very tough against opposing QBs. Five of those six teams are giving up the 10^th fewest fantasy points to opposing QBs or better. The worst team there is the Steelers, haven’t given up a 20 point game to opposing QBs so far this season, keeping all QBs below 300 yards and giving up no more than 2 TDs in each game. Yes, you’ve accidentally eaten the bye week on Tannehill at this point, but it’s time to find someone with better matchups. Sell high on Tannehill while you can this week.

Raheem Mostert, RB-SF – Mostert has been in and out of the lineup this season, just like in years past. Through his 3 games, Mostert is the 6^th best RB by points per game, averaging 18.1 points in his 3 games this year. The 49ers offense is falling apart and has not had any consistent QB play this season. He’s also trending down in points, though he hasn’t been a total disappointment just yet. However, his matchups coming up are going to get much tougher. Games against the Rams, Seahawks, and Patriots will be very tough to rack up big numbers. His best matchup coming up is against the Packers, but that game is on a Thursday night and I don’t like counting on anything that might happen on a Thursday in the NFL. Mostert still has a bye week coming up as well, so dump him for some value now before he starts slumping.

Tyler Lockett, WR-SEA – Tyler Locket has the 14^th most points per game among WRs this year, but that is boosted by his 3 TD week 3 game. Aside from that week, he has not reached 100 yards in a game. Lockett’s targets are falling - only 9 across the last 2 games after having at least 8 in each of the first 3 games. DK Metcalf is really starting to explode in the Seattle passing game and has clearly taken over as the number 1 target on the offense. Coming up, the Seahawks play Arizona twice, San Francisco and the Rams, all of whom are top 10 in locking down opposing WRs. Their best matchup comes against the Bills, who are still in the top half of the league. As with all of these suggestions, these players definitely have value, but their top-notch play is going to disappear. Trade Lockett away now while he’s considered a top 15 receiver. His bye week is coming, so maybe you can eat the bye week as a way to improve his trade value and get people to forget about DK’s recent offensive explosion.

Tyler Higbee, TE-LAR – Higbee is the 11^th TE in points per game, tied with Hunter Henry. Given the two, I’d much rather roll with Henry based on Highbee’s lower production in the last 3 weeks. Excluding his week 2 explosion of 3 TDs, Higbee hasn’t scored OR broken the 40-yard mark this year. He has only 17 targets through 5 games, just not enough volume to start him on a weekly basis over a generic replacement streaming option. His upcoming matchups are also quite rough. Over the next 8 weeks, only his matchup against the Bears in Week 7 comes against a team giving up top 10 points to opposing TEs. The rest of his matchups are far tougher, and let’s be honest, an 8-week stretch is far too long to hold out for a player to get better. Unloading Higbee now won’t likely net you too much value, but it’s a good idea to start looking for streaming options at TE and maybe try unloading him if he does put up a good game in Week 7.