We are on to the last week of the fantasy football season, and if you are reading this, congratulations! You have something to play for. That’s awesome & is a successful season, no matter how week seventeen pans out. But, there are three pressing questions for fantasy football rosters with some marginal players, or with players who will potentially play without their quarterback next week. Let’s take the last look of the season at some pressing questions for week seventeen.
Can You Start Jerome Ford Next Week?
Jerome Ford is coming off of back-to-back good games, with 9 touches for 104 total yards and a touchdown in week 15 (18.4 PPR points) and 16 touches for 131 yards and a score in week 16. While he isn’t blowing the doors off the hinges with his touches, 16 touches this late in the season, with nobody behind him to reliably steal touches (he played 53-of-66 snaps), is something that you can bank on. However, his production is also nice, and he showed both his down-to-down usefulness and his explosiveness in this one. His first touch went for 66 yards, but even if you take that out, he still hung out just around 4.3 yards per touch with DTR under center.
So, next week, we are facing a potential Jameis Winston return, but can we trust Jerome Ford in our fantasy football finals? As someone who once rode Tim Hightower to a title, I can tell you that the name on the jersey doesn’t matter next week as much as the box score. And next week, they get the Miami Dolphins, who do not make for a difficult matchup. Their #15 rank against opposing running backs ranks as a better matchup than his last two games (the Bengals are #17, and the Chiefs are #32). The 49ers failed to do anything against Miami this week because they gave nearly all of their touches to a special teamer, but four running backs had double-digit days against them in the three weeks before that, including Isaiah Davis and Braelon Allen double-dipping two weeks ago.
Should We Start Anthony Richardson in Our Fantasy Football Finals?
It’s hard to say yet if Anthony Richardson is a good NFL quarterback. That isn’t because we aren’t sure, that’s because my mom told me not to tell lies, so it’s hard for me to lie and say that he’s a good NFL quarterback. In reality, he’s incredibly raw, not ready for the big show, and has been thrust into the spotlight far before he was refined enough to justify playing him as much as the Colts do.
That having been said, fantasy football isn’t necessarily about being a good real-life NFL quarterback, it’s about doing the things that produce a ton of fantasy points. In standard scoring leagues, rushing touchdowns are worth 1.5x as much as passing touchdowns, and rushing yards are worth 2.5x as much as passing touchdowns. So, Richardson isn’t the best NFL quarterback (he might be among the worst), but he does produce a ton of fantasy points through rushing the ball.
Since returning from injury, Anthony Richardson is averaging 20.4 fantasy points per game (4 points per passing touchdown leagues), but his passing lines are atrocious: 13.4/26.2 for 171.2 passing yards, 0.8 touchdowns, and a pick per game. But, you have to control for the rushing stat conversion: he is averaging 9 attempts for 51 yards, and a touchdown per game. If you convert that into passing statistics, that’s the equivalent of an additional 127.5 passing yards and 1.5 touchdowns per contest. So, if you give him 298.7 passing yards and 2.3 touchdowns per game, without any rushing, you certainly would be a bit more bullish on starting Anthony Richardson, and so am I.
Richardson gets the Giants in the fantasy football finals. While first-start Michael Penix failed to produce fantasy points against them, that had more to do with the defense and Bijan Robinson running roughshod all over them than anything else. The Giants allow the tenth-most fantasy points per game to quarterbacks, and rushing quarterbacks have a dang day against them: eight quarterbacks this season have at least 30 rushing yards or a rushing touchdown when taking on the Giants. The ones that didn’t: Sam Darnold, Deshaun Watson, Dak Prescott, Russell Wilson, Cooper Rush, Derek Carr, and Michael Penix. Not exactly a murderer’s row of mobility. Not only should you start Anthony Richardson next week, but the strong Indy pass rush combined with the pathetic Giants’ OL will give Richardson plenty of short fields, meaning you must start Anthony Richardson next week.
Are the Eagles Receivers in Trouble if there is no Jalen Hurts?
Jalen Hurts threw just four passes in the week sixteen game against the Commanders. He suffered a concussion and did his best “drunk guy trying to get into a bar at 2 AM” thumbs up to the ref to get around the concussion test, but it didn’t work. Kenny Pickett came in and did everything he could to let everyone know that Jalen Hurts is, in fact, a good quarterback. Pickett finished the game going 14/24 for 143 yards, one touchdown, and a pick. While that line is dreadful, the production from the receivers in the game was not. That is to say, only two guys had targets: of the 25 targeted passes in this game, 23 went to either DeVonta Smith or A.J. Brown. Those two guys feasted, with AJB finishing with an 8/97/1 line and Smith finishing with a yeoman’s 6/51. They ran the game through Saquon Barkley but came up short thanks to some last-minute Jayden Daniels heroics.
But, what about next week? The Eagles take on a familiar foe in the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys have been a team to attack this season (they allow the tenth-most fantasy points to wide receivers. But, as I write this, they are carving up the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ offense. As I was typing that sentence, Jourdan Lewis was ripping the ball away from Jalen McMillan. However, before the Sunday Night Football home tilt against the Buccaneers, the Cowboys were a team that just didn’t stop opposing wide receivers. In fact, in the seven weeks before that, they averaged allowing 33.5 PPR points to wide receivers. That was right in line with their season-long average of 34.5 PPR points allowed to receivers.
So, even if it’s Kenny Pickett, I am not particularly worried about A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. With Saquon Barkley taking rushing-only duties, and Dallas Goedert going on IR, the target distribution is extremely narrow. I would fire up A.J. Brown in any league next week, and I would consider DeVonta Smith a must-start in any 3WR league.
