Transcription
We're going to go ahead and rank the best waiver wire pickups to the worst waiver wire pickups in this video. Starting off with the best waiver wire pickup, we are going to have Mr. Joe Burrow. Just in case you did not make the live stream that we had on Monday, we discussed at length the report that came out involving Joe Burrow actually coming off the IR and telling us that he's going to be good to go in week 13. Now, I mean, this is absolutely crazy to me, but we're already in week 11. So, realistically, I know y'all love that word. We have only two games that Joe Burrow is going to be missing until he comes back.
If you compare this to quarterbacks such as, I don't know, Justin Herbert who have a week 12 buy, like right now, if you're valuing Justin Herbert versus Joe Burrow, in theory, Justin Herbert's only going to play one more game this season. Now, I will say from a practical standpoint, I'm not going to rush out there and I'm not going to rush to put Joe Burrow ahead of players like Justin Herbert, like Baker Mayfield in my rest of season quarterback rankings until he is officially back. But what I've done is I've gone ahead and I've moved him up to about the range of Jared Goff, Bo Nix, and honestly, I could consider rostering a player like Joe Burrow over Jackson Dart, knowing that if we're going to look at Jackson Dart, there's a good shot he misses week 11 with a concussion and then he has the week 14 buy. So, there may be a decent chance that Burrow plays just as many games as him rest of season. So, Joe Burrow looks like he could very reasonably be a top 10 quarterback through the rest of the way. If you were rostering him on your IR, congrats. And if you were able to just pick him up and stash him on your bench, if your league didn't have an IR slot, I think you're actually in a pretty good situation.
Now, let's move over to the tight end position. Yeah, we don't have the super premium running back. We don't have the super premium wide receiver on the waiver wire right now, but you do have Theo Johnson and Theo Johnson's a player that we are steaming up our rankings in a dramatic way. Obviously, you are going to have to monitor the availability for Jackson Dart here in the short term. But the sneaky winner of the Malik Neighbors injury so far this season has actually been Theo Johnson where you're looking at him over the past, I want to say about seven weeks seeing at the very minimum four targets every single game and getting up to about six targets per contest. Now, this was a career-high for Theo Johnson with receptions this past week with seven. This was a career-high with receiving yards with 75. He's a bigger body tight end, super athletic tight end. So, we've already seen the touchdown upside in the past. But, if all of a sudden we're going to start combining actual real target volume with the additional upside that you get with his athletic profile and his touchdown upside, Theo Johnson I am going to be putting there as a borderline top 12ish tight end in my rest of season ranks.
Now, let's move over to Alec Pierce. If we are looking at Alec Pierce, this is a wide receiver that I think is 100% in flex consideration rest of season. I moved him inside my rankings up to the same range as guys like Khalil Shakir, Ricky Pearsall, Keenan Allen, Troy Franklin. Maybe we talk about Troy Franklin in this video as well, just in case we need to. But I would say that they're about the same for me at this point. If we're looking at Alec Pierce over the past month, you are seeing a player that's had a total of 35 targets and there is actually projectable volume. I was very surprised to see this, but if you go back and look at the projection show that we do every Saturday where we take the underdog projections, we rank those players in terms of how they are in their higher-lowers from yardage perspectives. You actually had Alec Pierce higher-lower 56 and a half receiving yards on Underdog Fantasy this past week. Obviously, he went to the higher of that, but the only wide receivers that projected better than him were JSN, Puka Nacua, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jaylen Waddle, Davante Adams, Deebo Samuel, Michael Pittman Jr., A.J. Brown, and Stefon Diggs. Alec Pierce this past week actually had projected to see more yards than Marvin Harrison Jr., Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave, Romeo Doubs, DeVonta Smith, DK Metcalf, and Jahan Dotson. So, this isn't just a random one-off wide receiver pop that he's not going to be able to replicate it and you're never going to be able to project it. Similar to somebody like Trey Tucker. No, this is real projectable volume in a good offense. And this past week, he actually didn't set a career-high with receiving yards. He didn't set a season-high with receiving yards. It was just a normal game, but he finally scored that touchdown. But you can go back two weeks ago against the Pittsburgh Steelers where he had 13 targets, six receptions, 115 receiving yards. He very clearly is drawing targets at a higher clip than the other wide receivers in this offense, not named Michael Pittman Jr., such as Josh Downs. And you actually did have Adonai Mitchell get traded out of Indianapolis as well. Really opening up just the guaranteed snaps that Alec Pierce will see. But of course, if you wanted to go through and check out any of those Underdog projections any given week, higher or lower, you can find the link to Underdog Fantasy always in the description and the comment section of these videos. Over there on Underdog, if you use code FLOCK, you are going to get a $100 added to your account after you play your first five. And on top of that, you'll actually be getting a free Drake May pick, higher-lower, half a total yard for the Thursday night game. And you'll get free questions that you can ask me in the live streams that I'm live streaming every single day until Christmas.
Now, let's move over to our next pickup. And our next few pickups are actually going to be a group of players. We're going to start it off with Tyler Allgeier. If you are looking at Allgeier, this is a running back that obviously vultures Bijan Robinson with multiple rushing touchdowns this past week. And I will say under the most desperate of circumstances, you could go through and you could start Tyler Allgeier. Like I honestly think I would probably put him in my starting lineup at this point over some players such as Ja'Quan McMillian, Jordan Mason, Chuba Hubbard, like the clear handcuff running backs that don't have the consistent usage at the goal line. Cuz if you look at Allgeier, Allgeier so far this season actually has six rushing touchdowns and he has five carries inside the 5-yard line according to flockfantasy.com. You go over and you look at Bijan Robinson on the other end. Bijan Robinson actually only has two carries inside the 5-yard line and two rushing touchdowns this season. So very clearly Tyler Allgeier is the goal-line running back in this offense. But I'm not wanting you to pick him up for that reason. I don't have him ranked. I don't have him ranked at running back 37 just because I like the goal-line role. In reality, I think you just have to love the upside that you're going to get if there were to be an injury to Bijan Robinson.
We can kind of say the same thing with Blake Corum at this point. If you go over and you look at Blake Corum, this is a running back that actually sees a career-high this past week with a very important statistic, and that's going to be his snap rate. He played 39% of the snaps in this Los Angeles Rams offense. You go back and look at last season, the highest mark that he had ever had was 32%. This season, the highest mark that he had ever had was 34%, and he actually now has back-to-back games with 13 carries. That's coming out of the bye week. And if we go back and look at what he had done in the first 22ish games of his NFL career, he had never had 13 carries in a game. And now he's gone back-to-back games with that. Hell, he had never even had double-digit carries in a game until week seven this year. And he's been able to log double-digit carries for three weeks straight. He is a very real threat to the Kyren Williams workload. Do I ever think you'll be starting Blake Corum with a healthy Kyren Williams? No. Just because Blake Corum is not going to have anything whatsoever as a receiver and Kyren Williams is still very clearly the goal-line back. But similar to what you have with Tyler Allgeier, we have a running back that's proving he's pretty good at the game of football. And if you were to get an injury to the guy in front of him in Kyren Williams, all of a sudden he would turn into a league-winning option.
Now, Tyjae Spears will be our next handcuffed running back that we need to discuss. If we are looking at Spears, the main concern that we are going to have is the Tennessee Titans offense is just absolutely garbage. But there is that possibility that now coming out of the bye, this team looks at the inefficiency that they've had from Tony Pollard so far this year and decide to expand the role for Spears, who has already demonstrated himself as the receiving running back in this offense, seeing at the very minimum three targets every game over the past four. And at the same time, he's played at least 40% of the snaps in every game over the past four or so. It's a very clear running back one, running back one-plus in Tennessee. Right, they are essentially just taking the same amount of work from each other, but Spears the younger, more dynamic back, and if Pollard were to go down, Spears is probably somebody that you start. But I would prefer the other handcuffed running backs like Tyler Allgeier and Blake Corum because they're in much better offenses.
Now, the other names that you can roster, these are more so players that if you're desperate, if you need to pick somebody up to put in your lineup this week, you can. Cade Otton looks to be, I mean, a player earning volume just with the injuries to Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. Over the past month, Otton's actually been averaging seven, eight targets per game. I mean, how we go through and we look at the past six weeks, he's averaging six, seven targets per game. But the reason I'm gonna have Cade Otton a little bit lower in comparison to Theo Johnson, who we talked about earlier in this video, is Cade Otton's just a much worse tight end. Like it sucks to say, but if you go back and you just look at flockfantasy.com with his yards per route run, he has been one of the worst tight ends that we have seen from an efficiency standpoint really in the NFL over the past three seasons as a receiver. So even if he's getting the volume, you don't have the big-play upside. He's yet to score a touchdown so far this year. So I am going to prefer Theo Johnson, even though Theo Johnson's in a much worse offense.
Now, our next name is going to be Jerry Jeudy. I went ahead and I dropped Jerry Jeudy earlier this season in my league. Now, sadly, he got picked up. I can't run over to the waiver wire and pick him back up. But honestly, the reason why I would rather have the handcuff running backs over him as well. He does come through with about 20 fantasy points this past week, which was the best mark that we've seen from Jeudy this season. I'm not going to tell you that all of a sudden he is just an absolute set it and forget it wide receiver, which the running backs we've discussed, they potentially could be that again if you were to see that injury to the guy in front.
Parker Washington, I know obviously had the big week and a lot of people are going to rush out there and say like, oh, you absolutely need him if you don't have him. And yeah, I mean, he's seen an average of eight, nine targets a game over the past three weeks. He showed the upside with the return touchdown this past week. He dropped 18 fantasy points. My thing is, I believe Jacobe Myers to be the long-term wide receiver one here while at the same time it's a garbage offense and Brian Thomas Jr. could be back any day. And hell, it's not like you're going to have a guaranteed Travis Hunter out for the season. And then Tez Johnson will be the last wide receiver we can talk about. If you're desperate, you can pick up Tez Johnson and potentially start him. I mean, he had 20 fantasy points this past week, but he had two receiving touchdowns off of only five targets. I think the setup that you're going to have in Tampa is just everything's going to get funneled through Mike Evans, but Tez Johnson very clearly the fill-in when you have no Evans and you have no Godwin.
Now, moving over to defensive streamers. If you needed options, there are probably two defenses that are by far and away the best this week. That's going to be the Patriots and the Texans, who get to play the Jets and the Tennessee Titans. Then you have the Baltimore Ravens, the Green Bay Packers, who get to play the Cleveland Browns and the New York Giants. The Packers DST will be the DST that I am playing myself this week. I picked them up when they were a free agent. I just stashed them on my bench, was like, "Yeah, maybe it's not the best matchup going up against the Philadelphia Eagles, but I believe it's an elite defense." And I really like this matchup against the Giants. The Atlanta Falcons have a sneaky good defense going up against the Carolina Panthers. The Los Angeles Chargers get to play the Jacksonville Jaguars. Kansas City, Denver play each other. Obviously, both defenses always in play, but then outside of that, there aren't too too many defenses I'd be interested in. You could go with Minnesota versus Chicago, but obviously those in-division matchups are a little bit tougher to project out. But I really hope I was able to help you out with this video. Of course, if you wanted to go check out any of those higher-lowers on Underdog Fantasy, link will always be in the description as well as comment section. Code FLOCK will get you $100 added to your account after you play your first five. And you'll get a gimme Drake May pick, higher-lower, half total yard for that Thursday night game. And on top of that, you'll be getting free questions that you can ask me in the live streams. And we're live streaming every single day until Christmas, answering your questions.