NFL Fantasy Stock Report: Week 13
All rankings and scores based on .5 PPR scoring
Stock Up
Michael Pittman: I personally wasn’t super high on Michael Pittman this offseason and boy was I wrong. He was a late 6th-round pick and the WR34 in fantasy drafts and is currently crushing his spot as the WR17. I obviously wasn’t expecting Anthony Richardson to get hurt but I was projecting their offense to struggle as they grew with their new quarterback while leaning heavily on the run game. Richardson’s accuracy inconsistencies didn’t give me much hope for a possession receiver like Pittman especially as he learned the NFL game.
With Gardner Minshew at the helm they are slinging the ball(averaging 36.6 passing attempts per game since taking over in week 6) and Shane Steichen has them playing way better than I ever thought they would. Pittman just posted his best day of the season with 22 fantasy points, 11 catches on 16 targets, 105 yards, and the game-winning touchdown in overtime. He’s been insanely consistent this year tallying single-digit fantasy points in just three out of twelve games. All three of those games came in the first five weeks of the season so he now has seven straight double-digit games. He’s tied for second in the league in targets with 127 and in fourth in the league in receptions with 87. The Colts defense has been fairly vulnerable at times leaving the offense playing comeback. Pittman’s target reliability and consistent production have gotten him to weekly WR2 territory and he’s done it while only scoring four touchdowns this year. Keep riding him into the playoffs.
Chris Olave: Chris Olave had a really weird stretch of games where things seemed off. He suffered a concussion in week five so I’m not sure if that had anything to do with it but it just felt like he and Derek Carr just couldn’t get on the same page(as we saw in the Jaguars game). Thankfully he is a target machine in the Saints offense so his receptions helped keep a nice floor but the ceiling everyone was expecting out of a guy you drafted at the second/third round turn was starting to look out of reach.
He racked up all three of his single-digit fantasy point performances in a five week stretch but has since really turned things around. One thing a lot of people in the fantasy community kept preaching about Olave this year was air yards. Even during his slump the targets kept coming and on they kept coming deep down the field. He now has three straight games with 94 or more receiving yards and I honestly think his ceiling is higher with Jameis Winston playing quarterback for them if Carr misses any time. Either way he has climbed back up to WR16 so things are rounding up for Olave.
Derrick Henry: The Derrick Henry we all know and hate is on his way back. Since their week seven bye, he has hit both 17 carries and 75 yards in four games. His two down weeks were against the Jaguars and the Buccaneers(4th in defensive rushing EPA/Play) so that’s understandable. The Titans know their only shred of hope is through Henry and Mike Vrabel is playing for his job so I expect a heavy workload to finish the fantasy season. He is currently the RB6 and I honestly don’t think I would’ve believed you had you told me that before I looked it up. He’s been kept afloat by touchdowns with eight this year, including four in the last two weeks.
Henry gets the Dolphins this week which could easily get out of hand quickly and script Derrick Henry out of the game but they are 28th in defensive rushing EPA/Play. For any hope of the Will Levis experiment working out they need to pound Henry and get the threat of the running game going early. After the Dolphins he has two games against the Texans. I at least expect the first one in Tennessee to be a competitive game and the Texans are also 15th in fantasy points per game allied to running backs so it isn’t a total death matchup. He also gets Seattle in week 16 who are 29th in the league in defensive rushing EPA/Play and give up the 5th most fantasy points per game to running backs. I think Henry will be a big playoff contributor.
Stock Down
Josh Downs: From weeks three to eight, Downs had at least 13.1 fantasy points in five of six games. In those five games he saw a total of 41 targets and he caught 31 of those balls for 371 and two touchdowns. He really looked like he was on his way to being a huge staple in this new, quick-paced Colts offense. However he hurt his knee in week nine against the Panthers and only saw 25% of the snaps the following week against the Patriots. They had a bye after that and he has returned to his regular amount of snaps(around 70%) but his production hasn’t been there. He still saw 13 targets against the Buccaneers and only caught five passes for 43 yards.
This past week against the Titans he saw five targets catching three of them for 14 yards The Buccaneers are 26th in defensive passing EPA/Play and the Titans are 30th so the matchups have been there for him. It looks like the Colts offense is going to flow through the running game and then Michael Pittman so I don’t have much hope for another option in their passing game to be reliable down the stretch. If you drafted Downs then bravo. He’s been a great value even if you got him off waivers and I still think he is a fine start if you have injury issues but I’m not projecting the guy we saw earlier in the season to return.
Terry McLaurin: Terry McLaurin was a fifth-round pick this year and was drafting as the WR21 and I thought it was totally reasonable. I didn’t think the Commanders would be great but with Sam Howell as the starter I was looking for a ton of passing and garbage time opportunities. Those were both right but things have been rough for McLaurin. He has only been a weekly WR21 or higher only three times this season. Entering week ten he had been incredibly consistent despite only getting in the end zone twice with two single-digit fantasy point games. Since then he hasn’t even hit double digits and just posted a goose egg this week on only three targets. He is on bye this week as teams are making their final push for the fantasy playoffs and his playoff schedule is the Rams, Jets, and 49ers. McLaurin still stands as the WR28 but I expect that to dip greatly by season's end.
Patrick Mahomes: I honestly can’t believe I’m doing this. Mahomes was almost the unanimous QB1 this offseason and was being taken at the end of the first round. His floor remains around 15 points but this is Patrick Mahomes we’re talking about here and 15 points just doesn’t cut it from him. Thanks to that floor he is still the QB8 but that’s unacceptable from him and he’s hurting your team because when you take a quarterback that early you are behind the eight ball if he’s not in that top tier of guys.
The Chiefs receivers have left an absolutely ungodly amount of points on the field and, outside of Raschee Rice, they don’t have a single starting caliber wide receiver. Mahomes has one weekly QB1 finish since week eight and I honestly would expect him to be a weekly QB1 in all of those games except one. The stock is definitely down for Mahomes but if anyone can flip the script in an instant it’s him and after losing the number one seed this weekend they are going to be hungry.
