The fantasy football landscape shifts each week, bringing fresh opportunities and unexpected challenges that separate the prepared from the pretenders. Savvy managers know that last week’s performance tells only part of the story, and diving deeper into the underlying metrics reveals the accurate picture.
This week presents some intriguing decisions. Here’s insight about key Las Vegas Raiders players heading into their matchup with the Cleveland Browns to help you craft a winning lineup.
Check out the FREE Start/Sit Optimizer from PFSN to ensure you are making the right decisions for your fantasy lineup every week!
Geno Smith, QB
The NFL is very much a league of haves and have-nots.
Every week, we see some quarterback play at a borderline all-time level, but the other side of that coin is some awfully dismal play, and that’s the neighborhood in which Geno Smith has lived all season.
Dillon Gabriel hasn’t shown much in the way of potential, J.J. McCarthy is struggling despite a strong system around him, and Cam Ward can’t seem to put 60 good minutes together.
MORE: Free Fantasy Start/Sit Lineup Optimizer
All of those names are on the board, and it’s Smith who owns the league’s lowest passer rating on balls thrown 10+ yards downfield this season.
81 attempts
36 completions
3 touchdowns
7 interceptions
There’s a real chance that the D/STs post the highest fantasy point totals in this game. Smith isn’t worth a look in any format. We can only hope that he throws enough accurate passes in the direction of Brock Bowers.
Ashton Jeanty, RB
I never played football at a high level and have never coached it.
That said, the play-action-centric approach for the Raiders last week was … a choice. We are three months into the season at this point, and the NFL is well aware that this offensive line can’t run block, so why would defenses sell out to stop the run in such a way that play-action opens up anything?
Some things, we will never know.
Ashton Jeanty finished Monday night with more targets than rush attempts, and while the usage in the passing game is nice (and the only reason you can justify starting him this week), the floor remains low because of the rushing limitations.
Week 11 was the second time this season that Jeanty averaged negative yards before contact, dropping his season average to 0.61. I think the talent is there, and we see it when he actually has room to operate, but that’s just not often enough.
MORE: Free Fantasy Waiver Wire Tool
Even as a great post-contact runner, he’s failed to gain yardage on an absurd 30.2% of his attempts this season, something that probably doesn’t change against the Browns this weekend, the second-best run defense by success rate.
A handful of targets is enough to get Jeanty to 10-12 PPR points most weeks, but there is little hope for a ceiling performance this week and, to be honest, at all moving forward.
Brock Bowers, TE
Bowers has seen his snap rate increase each week since his return, and there’s not much space to improve upon the 96.6% he logged on Monday night against the Cowboys.
When great players are on the field for essentially every snap in a limited offense, they will be fed and fed often. The efficiency may fluctuate depending on the defense’s attention, but over 60 minutes, his value as a top-5 player at the position holds steady.
MORE: Fantasy Football Trade Analyzer
Last week, he earned a dozen targets, cleared 100 air yards for the first time this season, and saw his fourth end zone target in his three games since returning. The struggles of Smith are going to make it hard for Bowers to produce at the Trey McBride level the rest of the way. Still, he’s firmly in the next tier at the position: that’s not going to return value on the price you paid this summer, but it’s also not going to sink your team during the postseason.
Michael Mayer, TE
Michael Mayer’s role as the unique TE handcuff is interesting during the middle portion of the season, but as we prepare for the stretch run, it becomes far less appealing.
READ MORE: Soppe’s Week 12 Fantasy Football Start ‘Em Sit ‘Em: Analysis for Every Player in Every Game
The Raiders have kept him involved since the return of Bowers (15 targets across those three games), but he’s not getting anything valuable in terms of downfield or red zone work, and that makes him unrosterable.
He teamed with Bowers to power the Tre Tucker touchdown on Monday night: He holds value to his NFL team, just not in our stat-based world.