Lucky week thirteen! Thanksgiving games! The Panthers beat the Rams! Other wildness! Three developments in week thirteen had me scratching my head for fantasy football purposes, so let’s dive into what piqued my interest this week as we wrap up week thirteen and dive into week fourteen… the last week of the fantasy football regular season!
Is the Michael Wilson Ride Over?
Michael Wilson dazzled the last two weeks without Marvin Harrison Jr., posting 31 targets, 25 receptions, and 303 total yards across the two contests against the 49ers and Jaguars. MHJ returned this week, and Wilson finished with only three catches for 36 yards. This has folks wondering if the ride is over for Wilson, as Harrison returned and Wilson immediately dropped down to the unstartable ranks.
While that is an unfortunate development, the Michael Wilson usage still has me encouraged to start him as a WR3, especially given his advanced metrics. While Wilson finished with only 6.6 PPR points, he did so on seven targets, which tied him with Harrison Jr. for the most for Cardinals’ receivers on Sunday. He also had several encouraging under-the-hood metrics for his usage. He played on 57 snaps on Sunday (93.4%) and led the Cardinals in routes run, with 43 routes on 45 drop backs (95.6%). A 16% target per route run rate isn’t ultra-efficient, but we lean on the Arizona offense for volume, not efficiency.
The unfortunate turn here is the upcoming docket: the Rams and the Texans are the next two teams up for the Cardinals. Both teams rank in the bottom five in my per-target matchup model, which means that it’s likely that you shouldn’t start Wilson outside of desperation for the next couple of weeks. Should he get through that two-step, the Falcons (ninth in my model) are up the following week.
The Michael Wilson ride isn’t over, but it’s likely shelved for now, unless you need him for the last round of byes next week.
Is AD Mitchell a League-Winner?
Adonai Mitchell broke out for the Jets in week thirteen, posting eight catches for 102 yards and a touchdown, leading the team in targets, catches, yards, and scoring their only receiving touchdown of the game. He beat the Falcons over the top for about half of those yards, and the touchdown, which is discouraging for John Metchie bag holders, as the Falcons have been one of the league’s best at stopping long passes, ranking in the bottom-five in yards per target allowed, and bottom-three in catchable target rate, and bottom-eight in rate of contested catches allowed. That is to say: they’re good at this.
But here’s the thing about deep passes. Just one thing has to go wrong for that whole thing to go out the window. That’s precisely what happened in week thirteen against the Jets, which allowed AD Mitchell to get open downfield.
As you can see here, this play was likely DOA if the Falcons’ defender had not straight-up fallen after going step-for-step with Mitchell 98% of the way to the end zone. So, I am not particularly trusting this outcome.
I’m also not trusting this outcome because of Adonai Mitchell’s legendarily terrible hands. Before this game, he had 15 catchable targets per PlayerProfiler.com’s metrics, and he dropped two of them. That is a 13.3% drop rate on catchable passes this year, which is astronomical. If we can’t trust the deep ball, and his hands aren’t good enough to make the short game viable, I can’t find a path forward for Adonai Mitchell, so I won’t be rushing out to add him to take advantage of his upcoming schedule.
Are the Tennessee Titans Hands-Off?
The Tennessee Titans finished week thirteen with three puny points, all of which came on a field goal (that’s how this works) on the first drive (that’s not how you want this to work). But Chimere Dike had a huge game last week! We can trust him, right? Tyjae Spears had six catches this week. Can we trust him, right? No, and no.
The Tennessee Titans are astronomically terrible, truly apocalyptic, especially for fantasy football purposes. Players come and go, but they do not have enough consistent value distributed in the correct places for you to trust them for fantasy football. Over the past five weeks, Gunnar Helm has led the team in startable games, with two top-twelve games under his belt. But they came three weeks apart, so nobody is starting him. Dike is tied with Helm, but ashe was WR14 five games ago and WR10 last week. Unfortunately, he was WR131 this week and WR73 two weeks ago.
Unfortunately, there is no reason to have a Tennessee Titan on your roster if you play in a twelve-team league. Over the last five games, here is the outcome from any given playable Tennessee Titan:
| Player | Week 13 | Week 12 | Week 11 | Week 9 | Week 8 | Average |
| Cam Ward | QB21 | QB4 | QB18 | QB26 | QB17 | QB17 |
| Tony Pollard | RB45 | RB31 | RB44 | RB28 | RB34 | RB36 |
| Tyjae Spears | RB36 | RB35 | RB34 | RB25 | RB12 | RB28 |
| Chimere Dike | WR131 | WR10 | WR73 | WR51 | WR14 | WR55 |
| Elic Ayomanor | WR84 | WR74 | WR50 | WR42 | WR64 | WR62 |
| Chig Okonkwo | TE19 | TE20 | TE12 | TE41 | TE13 | TE21 |
| Gunnar Helm | TE17 | TE8 | TE19 | TE44 | TE10 | TE20 |
As you can see, we have one startable game for Ward, three startable games among the running backs (none since the Bye), two startable games among the wide receivers (one since the bye), and two startable games among the tight ends. Only Tyjae Spears, in the two weeks before the bye, had back-to-back startable weeks, and none of these players rank inside the startable ranks in their position. You can hold onto Chimere Dike, as he has two top-fifteen games under his belt, but the Titans are too much of a mess on offense to keep around other than that.
