The fantasy football landscape shifts each week, bringing fresh opportunities and unexpected challenges that separate the prepared from the pretenders. Savvy managers know that last week’s performance tells only part of the story, and diving deeper into the underlying metrics reveals the accurate picture.
This week presents some intriguing decisions. Here’s insight about key Indianapolis Colts players heading into their matchup with the San Francisco 49ers to help you craft a winning lineup.
Philip Rivers, QB
Philip Rivers completed four of five passes against the scary Seahawk blitz and held his own at about as high a level as you could realistically hope for.
With that being the case, no Colt hit 35 receiving yards, he completed just three passes past the sticks, and the team averaged 3.7 yards per play.
This matchup is obviously different from going into Seattle, but even a 50% increase in his production doesn’t give us much to work with.
Rivers isn’t close to fantasy relevant and, at best, we are looking at one viable pass catcher with a minimum of three players vying for that role. The story is a good one, but the actionable for fantasy purposes is straightforward: downgrades across the board.
Jonathan Taylor, RB
Jonathan Taylor totaled 101 scrimmage yards last week, the first following the Daniel Jones injury.
At face value, that sounds good, but dig a little deeper and you’ll see why we continue to sweat his stock.
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It took the All World RB 28 touches to get to that yardage total and the limited TD equity came to fruition with him matching a season low in red zone touches (two). There simply weren’t holes presented for him and that projects as a lasting problem (two of his four worst YPC before contact games this season have come over the past two weeks).
On Sunday, just 4% of his carries gained 10+ yards, the second worst effort of his season. This 49ers matchup doesn’t worry me (29th in success rate against RBs this season) and that should allow the sheer level of volume to land JT among the top 12 producers at the position, but his path to Tier 1 production isn’t clear to me.
Alec Pierce, WR
Alec Pierce made a critical catch on the final drive.
That’s the good.
The bad was every other second of the game.
That was the only target that Pierce earned on 28 routes, the second time during this four-game skid in which he cleared 25 routes and only caught a single pass. He was capitalizing on highly variant targets at a crazy rate early in the season as Daniel Jones got off to the hot start, but those times are gone and this Rivers led offense obviously runs differently.
I don’t think the ribs injury was prohibitive in any way over the weekend: he’s a square peg in this round hole offense.
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The skill set of Pierce comes with upside, but in practice, that upside is hard to count on given how this offense is forced to operate these days.
Tyler Warren, TE
There is no shortage of moving pieces within this Tyler Warren profile.
You could argue that there is a rookie wall component to consider next to natural regression and inherit offensive risk that comes with the shift under center.
Realistically, was his performance last week that much different than expected?
Efficiency was the issue (50% catch rate), but his aDOT and target share were within the range of acceptable outcomes based on where he stood with Daniel Jones. Those rates are nice, but we are in the production business and that part of the equation hasn’t been there for the former Nittany Lion with just 101 receiving yards during Indy’s four game losing streak.
He’s a versatile weapon, but with him not having reached 50 air yards since Week 6, there’s a lot of risk involved with chasing the talent of Warren.
I’ve certainly cooled on Warren over the past month, but as a near touchdown underdog, at home in a spot that doesn’t come with weather risk, that’s enough to keep him positioned as a top 10 play for me.
