Transcription
Rashi Rice is officially back in scoring touchdowns. CD Lamb, back from injury, looks amazing. And Travis Hunter might have had his breakout game today. Finally, we see something from Travis Hunter. Nathan's got a special one to open us up. I don't—I mean, I think the headline players of the week this week should be Avery Huffman and Salvetri in the Flock League. You're going to see this in the video coming out very soon, but both of these guys are training to score 200 points, and it's going to come down to the Monday night games. So, uh, you know what players both these guys have: CMC, JT, Rasheed Rice, Devontae Smith, literally everybody on both of these teams popping off at the moment. Avery's in shambles right now. I don't think you should feel too bad scoring 200 points, win or lose here. But, uh, those are the stars of the week in fantasy football this year, or this week.
Let's start with Rashee. Let's start with something that's going to make me happy because I traded for Rashi Rice. You'll remember I essentially traded QJ, uh, for Rasheed Rice. You know, it was Kairen and Jvonte, which was pretty much a swap. Um, and as of right now, this second, I feel pretty good about that trade. Pretty decent. Pretty decent. So Rashid Rice comes back, and you know, I've never really seen a team hype up a guy's return as much as they hyped up Rashid Rice's return. And everybody's like, "It's EG, everybody's got to eat." Everybody. I'm like, "What's this man going to do in his return?" Only has 42 yards, so that's kind of a letdown, right? Wrong. Two touchdowns, he had seven receptions, he had 10 targets, and he didn't even play like most of—they gave up the second half, and they just ran the ball. It is—they took my, my, the Mahomes-Rice stack had 44 points in the first half. It will never cease to amaze me how much Rashe Rice alone unlocked that offense. And I understand why some people are a downer on him from, like, a schematic perspective. He's very unique because he doesn't operate like an elite alpha like a CD Lamb or something, but he's just—they, they utilize him in his schemes so perfectly that, like, it just—it opens up, like, the, the, the sky is the limit for this offense for the rest of the season, and Rasheed Rice is going to go.
10 targets is the main thing you need to look at here in two quarters. Like, I mean, yeah. Rashi, if you have him on your team and you've made it this far and have a winning record, you're looking pretty good. You're looking pretty darn good. I will say that. Unless you score 200 points and lose this week. Yep.
So, Travis Hunter finally has his breakout in a game that was honestly a lot of garbage time. Um, I, I will say I'm not expecting Travis Hunter to get this consistent target volume every single week because I don't expect Jacksonville to be down by three-plus possessions heading into the second half. But, he did have 14 targets, eight receptions, 101 yards, and one touchdown. If you were an investor in Travis Hunter and you held him through this really, really rough start to, uh, begin the season, you're feeling really good heading into the bye week for Jacksonville, uh, with a lineup against Vegas, Houston, and the Chargers after this bye week. So, all eyes on BTJ and his injury because I think that was another factor that led to Hunter getting a lot of receiving work in the fourth quarter. Specifically, BTJ left that game early. We're going to talk about that in the injuries later in this video. But again, nothing but good things to say about Travis Hunter. Looked the part as a potential number one for the foreseeable future for Jacksonville.
A lot of people have been talking about DeAndre Swift potentially getting that post-bye bump in that Ben Johnson offense, and so far, it looks like DeAndre Swift might get that post-bye bump in the Ben Johnson offense. That's just what it looks like because post-bye here, 35 and 25 points. He didn't have a game above 16 points in the first four weeks. 14 and 19 attempts. The volume hasn't really changed. So what has changed? The efficiency for DeAndre Swift. 7.7 yards per carry in week six and 6.5 yards per carry in week seven. I mean, the efficiency is off the charts. He's ran for over 100 yards in each of those two games. He's had three and one targets, so he's not getting any crazy target volume, but he's just scoring a ton of points. Now, granted, you know, the New Orleans matchup was pretty favorable for him. However, the Baltimore matchup is favorable. The Cincinnati matchup is favorable. The Giants matchup is favorable. So, you've got three straight weeks of DeAndre Swift. If you have DeAndre Swift and you're skeptical of him rest of season, he always has a crazy stretch during the middle of the year. It's going to be these two weeks and the next three, okay? And maybe we think about selling high after that, but right now, he's going to win you the next three weeks potentially and, and scoring 25 points a game. He looks fantastic right now in this Bears offense.
So Chris Ave has an awesome week. Uh, he gets the target volume with the efficiency with the touchdowns. Um, this is what you have been wanting to see all season with him. Uh, you had plenty of, you know, high-end target volume for the first part of the season. Not a ton of touchdowns, and the touchdowns came. The volume went down a little bit. Volume goes up last week, continues, stays up there. He, he's just looking to be like a really solid high-end wide receiver two on a weekly basis from here on out. And as long as New Orleans is down in a lot of these games and Rattler has to throw the ball 35-plus times a game, he's going to continue to be the primary recipient of that. So, uh, big fan of him and his rest of season outlook in a terrible situation, uh, for that team as a whole from an NFL perspective, but for fantasy purposes, I view very similarly to Garrett Wilson where he's just going to get so much garbage time work that he's going to have double digits most weeks.
CD Lamb was back this week, and he was absolutely electric. 22 points on eight targets. He had five receptions for 110 yards and one touchdown. Um, and really what you saw in this game, in a game where they put up 45 points, um, you know, Lamb had 22 points, Pickens had 12 points. And so you saw Pickens' target volume go from 11 to six week over week. You saw again, CD Lamb had the touchdown. Pickens, I think, had a big play that actually padded his stats a lot. And so what you're seeing here is Pickens is a top-five receiver probably when CD Lamb is not on the field, but when CD Lamb is on the field, he's probably more of a wide receiver two. And hopefully that's baked into his price in your league. Um, if not, it probably should be going forward because again, this is a game where they scored 45. Okay? And and George Pickens only had 12. Like, that, that is his role with CD Lamb back. It's not to say he's not going to have 20-point games, but CD is the alpha wide receiver there. He's always going to be Dak's number one target. You sprinkle in Jake Ferguson, you sprinkle in Javonte Williams, and it all of a sudden becomes a pretty crowded offense there. And so, you know, great day for CD Lamb. A little bit of an indication of what we might see from George Pickens in the future. Obviously, owning a piece of that Cowboys offense at any point is a good sign because this Cowboys offense is putting up a ton of points every single week.
Jordan Addison's putting up a ton of points too. Ever since he came back from the suspension, he has been hyper, hyperproductive. The last couple of weeks, it's been from like fourth-quarter production with kind of last-second touchdowns or big plays. And this week, it was a little bit of a different story because they were down against Philly for most of that day. Went had to throw the ball, what, like 42 times. Um, Addison had 12 targets, ended up on the day with like 22 points, which was more than Jefferson. But again, both of these guys very productive. Jefferson obviously didn't have a touchdown, but again, still like 13 points on the day. So, uh, with Addison and Jefferson, their outlook is very positive as long as WZ is in there. But here's the issue: Wentz is not going to be there for much longer. Uh, he does have his clear shortcomings, costing the game honestly this week against Philly because of his interceptions and turnovers. Um, but once McCarthy comes back, I do think you're going to see overall less consistency on a weekly basis between Addison and Jefferson together. Um, but again, in the, in the short run with Addison, you got to be feeling pretty good with him in your flex spots.
Yeah, Aronod Gadsden might be a top-12 rest of season option at tight end if this continues. I mean, he scored 29 points today against just a completely awful Colts defense, by the way. Uh, but nine targets, but he's had nine and eight targets in each of his last two games. 11 and 29 points in those games. He had 64 receiving yards today. And you've just seen Justin Herbert, but really since week three when he had seven targets, he just likes to target Gadsden. And Gadsden again is only 22 years old. So it's his first year in the league. Came out of Syracuse. Look, I mean, the rest of the season, Gads might be a waiver guy to be honest with you. We'll talk about that. But today he looked really good. Again, 29 points. He's not—they're not going to be playing the Colts every single week. And so that's worth—they're not going to be down multiple scores every single week to a great Colts offense and then playing a Colts secondary that literally you could—I could, I could run routes against. We could send Nathan out there, put him in pads, and he could run a route against the Colts defense, and he'd probably have 50 fantasy points. 50, at least 50. And so take it with a grain of salt because they're playing the Colts. But they're six and one. So I'll be happy. But with that being said, um, Gadsden, I mean, it does look like 11% rostered. It looks like he's going to be somebody that's a little bit dangerous at the tight end position for the rest of the season.
So, a lot of people wanted to see what that backfield was going to look like in Carolina now that Chuba Hubbard is back healthy. And instead of it being like a 70-30 or 65-35 split, uh, with Chuba Hubbard having the upper hand like it was at the beginning of the year pre-injury, it looked like a true running back committee backfield. Um, and Dowdle with 17 carries, Chuba with 14. Again, they had the lead for almost this entire game. And then with Bryce Young going down in the fourth quarter, they kind of just ran it out and ran out the clock because the Jets couldn't do anything offensively. But, um, I would, I would steer clear from from this backfield honestly rest of season. You're not looking at either of these guys probably like really establishing themselves as the bell cow long term because from a skill set perspective, Chuba is good enough for him. He, he offers enough on that offense for him to stay on the field consistently. And same with Rico Dowdle, like he's kind of your, your tough, uh, big body between the tackles type of guy that's going to get short goal-line opportunities or, or short yardage opportunities. So, uh, with both of these guys, I think it's going to come down to who's getting the red zone work. And it literally this week, at least the first week with them together since Chuba was back healthy, um, it's looking like a true 50-50 split. I mean, they were just alternating drives all day long.
Yeah, Juan Dale Robinson had another 15-point outing. So, since the Malik Neighbors injury, obviously, had the eight-point game, but then 20 and 15 points in his last two games. He had 12 targets today, caught six of those. And and that offense looks to just be a little bit more competent than we thought, which makes Juan Dale more of a more of an asset that is probably worth owning in fantasy football. Coming in today, he was the wide receiver 24 on the season. So, he's surely going to be higher than that after today. And again, with the offense, with Jackson Dart looking like he can support fantasy football wide receivers, with Cam Scataboo looking like he will run straight into you and into a brick wall with his head straight down and maybe crack his neck, but he doesn't care because he's playing football. I mean, this makes Wandale Robinson a little bit more of an asset that you might want to own. And so with Wale, again, nothing crazy. No touchdowns today, and so that kind of limited his upside. But again, 15 points on no touchdowns on only six receptions. He had 95, he had 95 yards here. And so, you know, this is pretty impressive. Um, and if that, that offense, again, that New York Giants offense can can kind of maintain this level of being not the worst in the entire NFL, then Wandale is going to be somebody that, like, rest of year, you are going to want to flex, I think. And so he's going to look like a solid flex option for the rest of the year.
All right, let's talk about injuries now. Um, really a couple big ones, but not as many as the last couple weeks. Brian Thomas Jr. had a shoulder injury. Did he come back in the game? No, he did not recover. So, that's why that's part of the reason why Travis Hunter, you know, had a big game and, and also they, you know, were down a million points. But he had six points. He had seven targets while he was in the game. Uh, I don't have the percentage that he played, but I do know that, you know, we're going to be monitoring that. Obviously, BTJ has not particularly been good for most of the year outside of last week, and so that's a little bit concerning. Um, and now we have the injury to add on to that. This one's, um, it's tough because, you know, Daniels has kind of been hobbled all year already. And then we have the hamstring. And the hamstring's just not good. It's just not—it's not good for a rushing quarterback. It's not good that he has kind of, you know, he's just really banged up. Like, he's, he's already had the MCL sprain, which isn't great for mobility anyways. He looked fine moving around on it. My guess is they shot him up with something. Um, but, you know, the hamstring is going to probably sideline him.
I don't know. They've got four weeks. They've got four weeks until their bye, and so I don't know, man. I, I, I hope they, I hope they bring him back before the bye. I hope they do. But realistically, I could see them being very conservative with Jaden Daniels. You know, they got—they can win without him. They've won a couple times without him even. They have. And the, the problem today obviously was again, you're playing that Dallas offense, and, and they just absolutely took it to him. The defense has not been near as impressive for the Commanders, and so I actually think they're a little bit—they're going to be on the ropes without him. However, they might not have a choice. They have to be pretty careful with their 24-year-old franchise QB. If you have Jaden Daniels, um, you're probably going to want to be looking at a waiver wire option at quarterback this week. To how there are plenty. I think, I think Jackson Dart's still widely available in a ton of leagues. Um, you, you've got Sam Darnold in most leagues that you could roster, and Sam Darnold has been fantasy football productive. Um, it's tough. It's tough for Zack obviously in the Flock. Do feel bad, but, um, you know, those were those injuries are pretty, and those are guys you're drafting in the top three rounds of fantasy football draft. So, all right, a lot of our headlines this week are actually kind of nestled into our waivers video. We already talked about our top one here. Aronod Gadsden is probably going to be, I, I mean, I would probably—I don't know with tight end. It's, it's, it's tough with tight ends. Just depends on how much you need a tight end. Like, I would almost put these top three that we have in the same—I was going to say, I would rather have Manungai. I think Manungai would be my top pickup. Um, I honestly think it's team need dependent. It is. And, and so Swifty, you know, we talked about Swifty and how good he's been. He was great again today. Had 19 carries. So like that's not necessarily a good sign for an guy getting like consistently involved because it was the Saints and they were winning by a million. However, he did have 13 carries and he looked really good in this game as well. And Swift has a, has a history of getting injured. So, he's just a really good, he's a really good stash right now. He is. I'm not breaking the bank though. I mean, I could see spending 5 to 15% on Kyle Manungai. And I'm going to go ahead and give that designation to all these guys here. Um, I, I'll let you, I'll let you talk about the next one.
Yeah, I mean, we again, we already mentioned Gadsden. Um, he looks great. If he can continue to get seven-plus targets a game, I mean, you're looking at a decent floor. Um, but I don't know how explosive he's going to be after the catch when he's playing secondaries that aren't the Colts secondary right now, which again, is decimated with injuries. Um, Brashard Smith, I think, is a very interesting case because, uh, you looked at that split today, and he had 14 carries to Pacheco's 15 carries to Kareem Hunt's four. And, um, Kareem Hunt like kind of got knocked out of the game early, and he, he came back and played, but they were kind of playing it safe. And then again, once you got into the fourth quarter, they didn't even have their starters in there, um, or they were just running, running the ball like crazy. But here's where it gets interesting with Brashard Smith, and this is what we always suspected heading into the season. Brashard Smith always had showcase, at least in college, as a prospect, that he could have like receiving upside. And you've seen in the past, again, I don't want to say Derrick McKinnon, but like you've seen that type of upside for a receiving skill set running back in a committee backfield for the Kansas City Chiefs just in the past like three years. So if Brashard Smith can continue to stay on the field and get consistent opportunity because Kareem Hunt doesn't look super efficient with his opportunity, Pacheco is looking better really every single week, and his workload is is going up and up and up on the ground comparatively to Kareem Hunt, like he's looking to be the guy on the ground over Kareem Hunt at this point. And Brashard Smith really is that passing down back. If you're looking at a, at a committee between Brashard Smith and Isaiah Pacheco, that's a lot more complimentary between those two than it would have been previously with like Pacheco and Kareem Hunt because they were, um, they were definitely like exclusive assets. They had the same skill sets, right? Um, so eyes on Smith, if he can continue to get like five or more targets a game with Mahomes playing as, as well as he has, and with Rasheed Rice just opening everything up in that offense, he, he's a guy that you could stash. I will—some context here with with Brashard Smith. The Chiefs obviously pulled their starters late in the third. Yep. Um, 13 of his 28 snaps occurred in garbage time. But, um, a lot of his a lot of his receiving work came—he did get receiving work. I just think that, you know, he had nine points in the receiving game today. Yeah. And I did note that was—I still think he's going to be a very limited ceiling guy just because—he'll probably—I don't think he's going to be Jerick McKinnon in the sense that I think Jerick McKinnon was a huge red zone threat for the Chiefs back then in the receiving game. That has a stash. Yeah, he has a good stash though. But that's all he is. Like, I, I think that's what Manungai is as well. And so like with these guys, I mean, realistically, I'm probably not spending big. I would say anywhere from zero to 15% depending on how deep your league is, how bad you want these guys. I, I, I personally don't think you have to go get any of these guys. I don't think they're going to make a difference for you unless you stash them on your roster unless and then they have, you know, an opportunity because of injury or something like that. We'll go to Parker Washington, and it's kind of the same thing. The, the thing with Parker Washington, he's actually been solid pretty much every year, um, or sorry, every game this year. He, you know, he's, he's 12, 75, nine, four, 10 points. So like on 30% snap share most of the time. The one time he played 85-plus percent snaps, he had five points. So Parker Washington's not been necessarily bad. The reason that Parker Washington at this point is going to be a stash for us or somebody you want to pick up is because you're looking at Brian Thomas Jr. potentially missing time. And so you, you, you kind of piece that together, and he could be somebody that sees an increased workload because of the Brian Thomas Jr. injury. We'll see what ends up happening there. But I think he is probably worth picking up again. I'd probably go 0 to 10% for Parker Washington. I'd probably say the same for Xavier Legette.
Um, he had a 25-pointer today. Yeah, he had a big game. Yeah, but, but, you know, he had seven targets and eight targets in the first two games of the season. Had four and zero points. He had, he had 0.8 points on eight targets. He had negative two yards on eight targets in the second game of the season. And so it's not like we haven't seen this before. He had games of nine, eight, eight targets last year where he didn't crack double digits. Um, he had a game of 10 targets last year against Cincinnati where he actually had 20 points. And so we've seen something similar to this before. Obviously, the 92 yards and then catching nine of his 11 targets is a little bit new. Legette was early second round, right? Yeah. So I mean, he was late first. Late first. Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. Yeah. He was in the late first, which is insane. Um, because he wasn't that good of a prospect, but he was a decent prospect. And so, um, you know, really, I, I, I think kind of the same thing here. I think 0 to 10% depending on how much you want. You know, Tate McMillian had a little bit more of a slow day. His probably slowest game of the year so far. Um, and, and saw his targets decrease a little bit and had six points. I don't think you're going to see that every week, right? You also had Jaylen Coker, I think, was active today. I'm not sure how much he played. He had two targets today. He didn't do anything. So, I, I would expect him to get eased back in. So, Legette is again somebody I think in a deep league, you're going to stash, but outside of that, I'm not super concerned about going and getting him on waivers.
Yeah, and then Chime DK, I would put like 0% on. Make a claim if you want to, but generally we see this with teams that have firings is you have like this short-term gasp of life or like final gasp of air for this offense where it's like, "Oh, that was the best offensive showing we've seen for Tennessee all year," and they scored 13 points. Um, and DK only had four targets. He again plays like the deep threat role in that offense. So he's going to have some weeks this year where he has 15-plus points if he can, you know, get a 50-yard touchdown. Um, he's definitely an Alec Pierce, and long-term again, that could be something that's that's viable in, in the, in the future, but not this year, not with this offense, not with this situation. We're, we're not too high on on anything long-term here. If you're going to see a guy, um, come in here and command target volume, it would be Calvin Ridley, and Calvin Ridley was out this week. So again, I mean, most of the guys in the waivers this week are, uh, kind of fool's gold. They're just stashes. And so if you're in deeper leagues, you're probably going to be active this week. If you're not, probably focus on defenses this week mostly, and that's going to be it. I, I don't think any of these guys offer a ton of long-term upside of the, I mean, outside of the scenario again where they, you know, face an injury and then they get elevated up. So, that's going to do it for this week. We are really, we're really getting a clear picture of our playoff picture, um, right now in fantasy football leagues. So, do us a huge favor. If you enjoy the playbook every week, make sure you drop a like. Make sure you're subscribed as well. If you play fantasy football, of course, we're going to have buys for you in the morning. Um, and by the time you watch this video, I will know how many points Chris McCaffrey had. And please, please, I needed him to have like less than 20 points. Maybe even less than 25 would be fine. So if—that's what I said with Puk against Zach. I was like, I'm setting the bar really low. So you, you already know my fate. You can either laugh at me or say good, congratulations in the comments. We appreciate you guys. We'll see you in the morning.