The search for truth – in life and, of course, in fantasy football – is a quest without end, and this year it’s going to take more than the usual twists and turns. Just when you think you know a team, a player, a matchup… the NFL will laugh at you.
Week 10 scored relatively low for fantasy purposes and the points didn’t necessarily come from the expected sources. I know I’m not the only one wondering what the heck happened to Sam Darnold and Justin Jefferson against the Jaguars. Likewise, what a pleasant surprise Kyler Murray versus the Jets turned out to be.
We support data-driven decision making here at Yahoo Sports, but even the most careful analysis of the most useful statistics can’t predict the outcome of every game. We’re going to zoom out this week to look at how the first ten weeks of the season have shaped and changed our perception of some of the most confusing teams in the NFL. We cannot be reactive and recalibrate our beliefs every time something unexpected happens. Instead, we will attempt to define a set point, an average or median level of performance, for a team, while still recognizing that there will be some error around that average.
Importantly, some of us may need to let go of our first impressions.
Memories from Week 1 linger in us for reasons I’ve discussed before: Primacy Bias and the rush of exciting and rewarding neurotransmitters in our brains that herald the long-awaited first week of real football. Others may have gone too far in the other direction and destroyed those first impressions the moment we received conflicting information.
There are a number of teams where our expectations for the season have more or less been met. Buffalo, Detroit, Baltimore and Houston were generally as fantasy-friendly as expected. New England, Las Vegas, Cleveland and Carolina have been about as bad as predicted, with a few bright spots for fantasy purposes (Chuba Hubbard, Brock Bowers, Cedric Tillman, Hunter Henry). Washington performed better than expected, which is always a pleasant surprise for fantasy managers who were able to select Commanders late in the draft.
Let’s see where we stand with some of fantasy’s more volatile offenses.
Minnesota Vikings
I was admittedly skeptical about how Sam Darnold would fare in Minnesota this offseason. I have it in a dynasty league, but this year I avoided Vikings in the rewrite. Other than the Christian McCaffrey saga, I’d say there wasn’t a bigger surprise through the first nine weeks of the season than Darnold.
Then week 10 arrived. In one of the best possible matchups by several metrics, Darnold threw three interceptions and zero touchdowns. He had another bad game, Week 5 against the Jets, where he didn’t score, but we attributed that to the Jets’ excellent pass defense. Only the Jaguars’ equally poor offense gave Minnesota four field goals to earn the victory.
There are angles to the Darnold argument. First, he’s finally reaching his full potential as the third overall draft pick of 2018. Second, Justin Jefferson and good coaching/game planning can hide or overcome a lot of QB mistakes. Three, he had one Real bad day, at least in part because this was the least in sync between he and Jefferson all season. The three interceptions, which could have been five according to Vikings reporter Tyler Forness, had more to do with poor execution and ball placement than poor decision-making.
I’m more inclined to believe Week 10 is the anomaly and move forward assuming Minnesota gets back into its fantasy scoring groove. It’s off to Nashville for the second of a three-game road stretch in Week 11. It’s possible the tougher matchup with a Titans pass defense that allows the fewest fantasy points to WRs and ranks bottom 10 for QBs will sharpen Darnold’s focus and ball placement to the point where Jefferson can bounce back, and TJ Hockenson can have another good outing as well.
I’m not going back to my doomsday scenarios for the season just yet.
Arizona Cardinals
The Cardinals sit atop the NFC West with a 6-4 record. After a high-scoring start to the season, they had a significant lull from weeks 3 through 7 before rebounding in the final three games.
What is the true identity of this team?!? No one has been more frustrating for fantasy managers than Marvin Harrison Jr.
Week 1: he’s clearly not ready for the NFL. Week 2: he is the draft’s best steal.
There’s that whiplash, and every week since then it’s been somewhere between downright awful (five games under five half PPR fantasy points) and just okay. He’s not quite a second-round production, but at least he’s healthy, right?
Considering the QB and TE fantasy landscape, both Kyler Murray and Trey McBride are every week starters, with a disappointing performance here and there, but no real cause for concern. James Conner remains a Zero RB poster child, despite both Murray and McBride stealing some goal-line scores (McBride’s came on a fumble – he still hasn’t caught a receiving TD this season).
The Cardinals have a bye in Week 11, but then get a pretty soft schedule: Seattle twice, Minnesota, New England, Carolina, LA Rams, San Francisco. The reason we came up with the premise of an average, an average, is that nature produces a lot of variation. No team, no player is completely consistent, but I believe in the Cardinals’ ability to keep their top four players fantasy relevant and I’d even bet we’ll see the worst of Harrison Jr. already seen this season. .
The heads of Kansas City
I’ll keep it short here, but these 9-0 Chiefs are not the kind of good team we talked about when we drafted KC players in September. Patrick Mahomes is climbing back into fantasy relevance as QB14 (QB3 in Week 9 and QB11 in Week 10). Travis Kelce is somehow a TE5, averaging just 10 fantasy points per game (on nine targets, 55 yards per game with just two touchdowns). Kareem Hunt is RB29, easily the best fantasy asset on this team right now. Xavier Worthy is averaging 4.8 targets and 27 receiving yards per game. These numbers make him starting in leagues that require five starting WR slots (too bad I don’t know of any). DeAndre Hopkins just joined the team and combined a great game (8-86-2 in Week 9) with a weak one (4-56 in Week 10).
KC plays its game of the year next weekend in Buffalo and then gets Carolina and Las Vegas, two of the most fantasy-friendly matchups, in Weeks 12-13. Start Hunt, start Kelce, but look elsewhere for your QB/WR production next week.
This is your classic example of a good NFL team that isn’t great for fantasy. It certainly takes some of the fun out of an undefeated season, but if you haven’t gotten rid of your Chiefs receivers yet, now is the time.
Indianapolis foals
I remember writing excitedly about new head coach Shane Steichen this season and thinking about how the Colts were poised to become the next Ravens or Bills. Those dreams have come to an abrupt halt. Anthony Richardson is currently being robbed of his right to develop and Joe Flacco is not the answer for the 4-6 Colts.
Fantasy-wise, they’ve both been bad (~12 fantasy points per game), and in real life, they’ve both been bad. Jonathan Taylor is the Colts’ only reliable fantasy starter. Despite seeing hints of relevance from Alec Pierce and Josh Downs, it’s impossible to trust either of them on a weekly basis.
We were wrong about Indy, Real wrong. It’s okay to admit it and move on.
Tennessee titans
This is more of a blunder for SuperFlex and Best Ball managers, who were uniformly high on the possibility of a Will Levis breakout in year two. This didn’t work out.
Or did it?
Is week 10 too late to make a comeback, Will? Against the Chargers, the NFL’s stingiest defense, Levis racked up 175 passing yards, 41 rushing yards and two passing touchdowns. It wasn’t high volume, but it was efficient, as Levis completed 78% of his passes with no interceptions. Calvin Ridley (5/84/2) was responsible for both TDs, but one came near the end of the fourth quarter and the game was out of reach.
Fantasy points aside, it’s worth noting that Levis was also sacked seven times in the loss, bringing the Titans’ average to 3.1 sacks allowed per game (T-sixth highest). Unfortunately, I think the arrows point more down than up for Levis, Ridley, and the Titans. Minnesota provides a tough matchup in Week 11 for running backs and quarterbacks, even though it is allowing more fantasy points to receivers than average. I suspect the pressure of the Vikings’ pass rush will be too much for Levis, and I think we’ll see him revert to a less efficient, more error-prone game. Start this week alone with Ridley.
New Orleans Saints
The Saints played with our emotions the first two weeks of the season. A wildly successful season opener with 47 points, followed by a 44-point victory over a Cowboys team we all thought would be a juggernaut on both sides of the ball, had us all eating po’boys and celebrating Mardi Gras- wore beads.
Weeks 3 and 4 brought us back to PB&Js pretty quickly as Derek Carr went from a 6:1 TD:INT ratio to a 1:2 ratio. The biggest pain was that it was Rashid Shaheed, not Chris Olave, who was the star receiver the first two weeks. Carr returned from an oblique injury in Week 9 and lost to Carolina (blame the NO defense for that), but is coming off his best game of the year after beating Atlanta in Week 10 (269/2 with no picks or sacks) .
Alvin Kamara is the no-brainer cog to start in this offense, but what about the receiver room? With Shaheed done for the year and Olave on IR until at least Week 15, it was Marquez Valdes-Scantling who came out of nowhere, catching three passes for 109 yards and two scores. It’s worth noting that he’s done this before with fantasy managers, and the three targets are concerning. I chase volume, not big plays. MVS is fast and has great secondary awareness, but he’s never been able to fill a Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, Stefon Diggs-type role, which is why he’s moved from team to team in his seven-year career.
Don’t overdo it thinking you’ll get 20 fpts/game in the future. The Saints have a nice upcoming schedule outside of the Week 12 bye: Cleveland, LA Rams, NY Giants, Washington, but then they get Green Bay and Denver in the fantasy playoffs. If your roster is decimated and you need a Week 11 win and can get MVS on the cheap (that’s a lot of ands), go for it. Otherwise, Kamara is the only fantasy player I trust for this offense.
