Fantasy Football

Alec Pierce saw a team-high 47-percent Air Yard Share in Week 11 and now faces a Steelers secondary that has been repeatedly exposed over the top (No. 2 in explosive pass plays of 20+yards allowed). His Anytime Touchdown scoring prop is sitting at +290 on FanDuel Sportsbook.

Pat Friermuth has been a security target for Pickett. His 22-percent Target Share is No. 3 best at his position just behind Travis Kelce. Friermuth has posted two top-four TE performances in his last five games to boot. To the detriment of his wide receiver team-mates, Friermuth has cleared a 30+-percent Target Share in two straight games.

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.

The Week 12 TNF Showdown features three matchups: Giants at Cowboys, Bills at Lions, and Patriots at Vikings. This year’s fantasy slate is chalk-full of talent. The Buffalo Bills high powered offense travels to Detroit to face a Lions defense giving up big plays at a high rate. The Dallas Cowboys face off against the New York Giants in a divisional matchup as Dak Prescott looks to continue his streak of top-10 performances. Finally, the night will be wrapped up with a sneaky shootout, where the New England Patriots and Minnesota Vikings both look to spark their offenses. This week I’ll be short and to-the-point, giving you the starts, sits, and picks for each of these matchups.

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.

What Pollard and Williams have been able to accomplish in part-time roles all season has been remarkable, even if they’ve admittedly ran hot. This type of game is always the ceiling scenario for Williams who is essentially the James Conner of 2o22 with his run of goal-line touchdowns. We’ve talked about Williams plenty here when D’Andre Swift missed games early in the season, and honestly, his role has hardly changed. The primary driver of Williams’s variance game to game has been script rather than who else is active around him. He is the primary early-down rusher with possession over 80-percent of work inside the five. The complimentary early-down and pass-down roles opened the year as entirely D’Andre Swift’s domain.

When the Patriots are able to run and do they want to run, Stevenson scores fantasy points. His 129 carries heading into Week 11 sat No. 13 and his 24 Red Zone Touches No. 2. Though he has only a modest 95.5 (48th-percentile) Speed Score, his 11.24 (69th-percentile) Agility Score has helped him to a 6.2-percent (No. 18) Breakaway Run Rate. But even when the Pats can’t run, Stevenson scores, anyway. He’s seen 49 targets on the year and a 17.1-percent (No. 5) Target Share.

Williams was cleared to practice this week. I am not sure when he will make his debut, but we are talking about a dynamic, exciting first-round draft pick who could be a Jaylen Waddle-like player in this league. He is a perfect addition for teams that are in great playoff shape and could use a high-upside hammer as a bench stash to put their teams over the top. 

The worst part of our beloved game is the frequency of injuries. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of such a fast-paced, contact-heavy sport. It’s something that is important to remember as we approach the first full week of the preseason. Luckily for the NFL players, they have access to some of the best doctors in the world and can usually return to form at least by the next season. Unfortunately for us fantasy players, it’s not always easy to know when a player will get hurt. To another degree, sometimes your roster isn’t big enough to plan ahead for an injury. This series, the Infirmary Report, will give you advice on the injuries that have happened every week during the season. Without further ado, here is the Infirmary Report: Post Week 11 of regular season action.