Strategy

Amari Cooper disappointed last week despite the highly anticipated return of Deshaun Watson. He posted only eight fantasy points on nine targets. However he led the Browns with 96 Air Yards.  He is clearly Watson’s primary pass catcher in this offense.  Look for Amari to bounce back this week against the Bengals. He can be rostered confidently in all formats.

D.J. Moore returns from bye as the Air Yards value play of the week! Perhaps the fourth time is a charm as Moore scored a season high 20.3 with the Panthers utilizing, Sam Darnold, their fourth quarterback this season. Since the trade of Christian McCaffrey, Moore is the focal point of the Panthers offense and sports a league leading 44.6-percent Air Yards share. Play him in all lineups this week.

We will work under the assumption Vegas is sharp about the 49ers playing from ahead in Week 13. This means San Francisco has to find scoring somehow and production from one of their many weapons, especially in the end zone. We’re choosing Kittle to do that for us because this season the Dolphins have allowed the No. 6-most receiving yards per game and third-most receiving touchdowns to tight ends.

In his last three games, Robert Woods has had 7, 7, and 6 targets. During this stretch, he managed a 6-69-0 stat line against Jaire Alexander and the Packers has SIX red zone targets total. Woods’ season has been a disaster as a whole, but that’s why he’s still available in 60-percent of Sleeper leagues.

Amari Cooper is this week’s Air Yards value play! Cooper has exceeded expectations this season finishing as a weekly WR1 almost 50-percent of the weeks in which he plays. He has seen 573 Air Yards through his past four games after seeing 245 Air Yards last week. While Deshaun Watson will be taking over for Jacoby Brissett as quarterback after returning from his suspension, Cooper’s stranglehold on the Browns’ receiving game should not be affected. Fire up Cooper without hesitation in DFS this week.

Rachaad White’s 3.6 true yards per carry is nothing to write home about, and that number is so low in part to how beat up the Bucs’ offensive line has been. But luckily, they get the Browns and the league’s worst run defense according to Football Outsiders’ run defense DVOA metric. White looks like an RB1 option this week if Fournette can’t go. Both would be RB2s in the event Fournette can go.

I sought a correlation between Bengals pass-catchers. My educated guess was Hayden Hurst would eat against a Steelers secondary that would primarily be focused on WR1 Tee Higgins. Instead, Higgins stomped all over the stat sheet in a 37-30 shootout with nine receptions on 13 targets for 148 yards. Hurst logged just two receptions on three targets for 28 yards. We paired this duo with a CeeDee Lamb alpha game, but the Cowboys ran all over the Vikings and didn’t need Lamb to take over to win 40-3. The third-year wideout finished with a season-low five targets, producing five receptions for 45 yards. Blah.

50-percent of Sleeper leagues are starting D.J. Moore with the Carolina Panthers getting ready to face the Denver Broncos and their tough secondary. Moore is top-10 in targets (82) and Air Yards (920), but his season has been hindered by the plethora of pernicious Panthers passers under center.

Gabriel Davis has averaged over 100 Air Yards and 7 targets the past four weeks. How a wide receiver ranked inside the top 25 scorers at the position in fantasy points per game is priced below $5,500 is unknown to me. He is also playing in a game with the highest projected point total not just on the Thanksgiving slate but on the entire week. If you loved Will Fuller on Thanksgiving two years ago against the Lions when he scored 35 plus fantasy points in Detroit, you are going to love Gabe Davis like your favorite pie. Get him in every lineup on Thanksgiving!

Potentially Tampa Bay’s new starter, Rachaad White has 33 touches over his last two games. He has at least three receptions in five games this season, with 6.8 (No. 22) yards per reception. Leonard Fournette left last game due to injury, but even before that, Fournette was ceding opportunities to White. Young and shifty with 84th-percentile or higher Speed and Burst Scores, White has the chance to boom this week.

With four top-10 TE finishes in his last five games, Juwan Johnson has become an established start option at TE. His production has been touchdown-dependent, however, with five touchdowns in his last five games. The 49ers limit TE touchdowns, so it will be harder for Johnson to hit paydirt this week.

We approached our Sleeper play via correlation and game-stacking in a Jaguars vs. Chiefs contest that was projected by Vegas to be the highest-scoring game of Week 10. While the offenses did not live up to that hype, we picked out the alphas and nearly smashed the three-legger. Christian Kirk was the Jacksonville No. 1 again. He put up a season-high nine receptions on 12 targets for 105 yards, including two touchdowns. On the other side, Travis Kelce led the Chiefs in receiving. Kelce had six receptions on seven targets for 81 yards and the receiving touchdown we needed. However, despite throwing for 331 yards on 35 pass attempts, Mahomes only needed 26 completions to get there. This ruined a 5x profit parlay cash for us by just one pass. Sheesh.