Geno Smith is back - for real this time! 🙄

Did you have an Upper Hand Fantasy newsletter on your Christmas list this year? If you did, then Christmas just came early. 🎄

What’s in store:

• Geno Smith will be back in Week 16 - for real this time 🙄. After being active but not playing against the Eagles, Smith is set to take the reigns Titans.

• Chris Olave practices on Tuesday. It doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s going to play, but it’s an important first step towards being active in Week 16.

• Combing through Zach’s initial QB rankings. Take a gander at Zach’s hierarchy of fantasy quarterbacks for Week 16.

• Time to panic about Dalton Kincaid? See why it might be a bit early to worry about the Bills’ rookie tight end.

• Seahawks QB Geno Smith set to make his return in Week 16 after missing last two games with groin injury

  • Smith missed Monday night’s tilt against the Eagles despite being listed as active for the game, much to the chagrin of his fantasy managers. With that game in the rearview and hopefully the injury, as well, Geno Smith will set his sights on a Christmas Eve matchup against the Titans. In Geno Smith’s last game action in Week 13, he had easily his best outing of the season while carving up the Cowboys defense for four total touchdowns en route to his first and only overall QB1 finish of the season so far. The matchup against Tennessee qualifies as neutral at best, but with his full complement of weapons at his disposal, Smith has an opportunity to build on his last performance as the Seahawks make a push for the playoffs. D.K. Metcalf, Tyler Lockett and co. would all receive slight upgrades with Smith back under center, although two solid games’ worth of production from Drew Lock should have fantasy managers feeling good about the prospects of their Seattle pass catchers regardless of who’s under center for the Seahawks the rest of the way.

• Saints WR Chris Olave gets in a limited practice on Tuesday after missing Monday’s walkthrough

  • The fact that Olave was able to at least practice in some capacity Tuesday offers some optimism that he’ll be able to make a return to the starting lineup on a short week, but he’s not out of the woods yet. Today’s practice report will be critical for fantasy managers hoping to start Olave in tomorrow night’s game against the Rams; a limited practice today would likely give Olave a solid shot at playing. Regardless, fantasy managers should be prepared with a backup plan in the event that Olave is ruled out at the last minute a-la Pete Carroll and Geno Smith, but there will be plenty more options available for fantasy managers to fall back on with this being the first game of the week as opposed to the last. If Olave suits up, expect him to be his usual self in an offense that’s called upon backups and veterans to pick up the slack in the game last week that he missed. If Olave doesn’t go, it could be another tough slog in the receiving department for Derek Carr and the Saints’ pass catchers.

• Falcons QB Desmond Ridder benched following abysmal outing in Week 15 vs Panthers, Taylor Heinicke to draw start in Week 16

  • What does this change at quarterback mean for you and your fantasy team? It means proceed as usual, because Arthur Smith is, in fact, still the head coach of the team. The differences between Heinicke and Ridder at this point are incredibly minimal, and the bouncing back and forth between the two passers that the Falcons have done over the second half of the season is as fruitless as trying to get the cool side of the pillow to stay cool. In this case, neither QB has been able to stay hot enough to pick up and maintain momentum in the Falcons offense, and at the end of the day, nothing changes for the rest of Atlanta’s skill players with Heinicke under center. Heinicke is a bit more willing to challenge defenses downfield, sure – but in three games of action this season, he’s thrown for just three touchdowns and one interception. Heinicke will be a desperate QB2 play this week against the Falcons with limited upside.

• Josh Allen threw the ball fifteen times last week because the Bills literally had no reason to. The good news for Allen? The Chargers are bottom five against QBs, RBs, and WRs on the season when it comes to allowing fantasy points. James Cook had a monster game last week, but his utilization overall didn’t change much from what we had seen. I’m looking at Allen to get back to being the focal point of the offense, and with the Eagles and Chiefs offenses in a funk and Dallas playing on the road, there’s only one real option to be the QB1 this week in my rankings. He should have a field day against the Chargers.

• Philly’s offense has been stuck in the mud since their big win against the aforementioned Bills in Week 12, putting up 19, 13, and 17 points in each of their past three games, respectively. Jalen Hurts has been relatively unaffected by the Eagles’ struggles thanks to his usual weekly helping of rushing touchdowns, but the weekly upside for him has been effectively stymied. He doesn’t have the cutting edge to challenge for the overall QB1 spot with the way the offense has been playing, and it’s true that he could have been playing through a real sickness that affected his play this past week – but there’s no sympathy in this cold game we call fantasy football, and the bottom line is that Hurts’ bottom line is what’s keeping him ranked as high as he is.

• Patrick Mahomes, Brock Purdy, and Lamar Jackson come in at 5, 6, and 7 respectively – Purdy and Lamar have tough matchups this week on paper, but this is an absolute marquee matchup on Christmas Day and it has the makings of a very high-quality game (i.e. the final score not likely being in the realm of something like 13-10).  The Ravens are allowing the fewest fantasy points to quarterbacks this season and the 49ers the fifth fewest – Purdy gets the edge over Lamar because I like his supporting cast a LOT more than I like Lamar’s. Mahomes comes in uncharacteristically low for the third or fourth straight week, and that’s because his supporting cast just isn’t doing enough for him to have any kind of upside right now. Kelce looks really surprisingly like a shell of himself, and Rashee can’t carry around the dead weight of Kadarius Toney and MVS while also giving Patrick Mahomes the upside to throw for three or four touchdown passes in a game. Mahomes is still a threat to be the QB1 any week, to be sure – but it would take everything falling perfectly into place in Kansas City’s offense for that to happen.

• Tua comes in at 8 followed by Jared Goff at 9 and C.J. Stroud at 10 – Dallas’ defense can be got and I would argue that Tyreek Hill essentially nullifies any statistics you want to throw at him or Tua. Tyreek Hill was able to get it done against the best pass defense on paper in the Jets on Black Friday, and having him back will be huge for Tua. Oddly enough, Tua hasn’t had the world-breaking upside you might think he would have with Tyreek Hill catching his passes, but this one could easily be a shootout between Dallas and Miami. Goff threw five touchdowns last week, but that’s probably not happening again. Regardless, he’ll be playing in a dome, and that means he’s squarely in play as a QB1 against the Vikings. C.J. Stroud has a tough matchup against the Browns, but as we’ve pointed out before, teams have been able to have their way against this defense as of late: the Browns are allowing the fourth-fewest fantasy points to quarterbacks on the season, but are middle of the pack over the last four weeks thanks to QB12, QB11, and QB8 performances in three of the past four games by Russell Wilson, Trevor Lawrence, and Matthew Stafford, respectively.

The Bills dominated the Cowboys Sunday afternoon in the rain, but unlike other games Buffalo has played well in this season, it required QB Josh Allen to do very little in the passing game. Allen was able to hand the ball off 39 times against Dallas, which ultimately led to very dismal production from the Bills’ top pass-catching weapons. Stefon Diggs caught four of five targets for just 48 yards on the afternoon, but perhaps the biggest hole in fantasy rosters in Week 16 came from Dalton Kincaid, who laid his first egg of the season while being held without a catch on just two targets on the afternoon.

Of course, the game script bears most of the blame for Kincaid’s quiet outing. When James Cook is averaging seven yards a carry on the ground like he was against the Cowboys, it doesn’t make sense to force the ball into the air. But Kincaid ran a route on just 68% of snaps in Week 15 – a far cry from the 84% he had been seeing since Dawson Knox originally went down with the injury. Knox also outsnapped Kincaid in this game 41-33, which has prompted concern for some fantasy managers heading into Week 16 with Dalton Kincaid.

While it’s not ideal to see Knox outsnapping Kincaid in any situation, this is far from a real reason for concern at the present moment in time. The ultra-positive game script the Bills were in called for more blocking than route running, and that’s exactly the capacity Buffalo used Knox in to drive his snap share higher than Kincaid’s. In reality, Kincaid ran a route on 13 of 19 dropbacks to just nine for Knox, indicating that in a more competitive game, Kincaid is still the primary tight end. While it’s also possible that the Bills were ramping Knox up in Week 14 and the split on snaps could hover closer to 50:50 moving forward than it did in Week 14, Kincaid has largely earned the benefit of the doubt as a TE1 start and should be inserted into lineups with confidence. We’ll have a much better idea of what to expect moving forward after Week 16 with the Bills TE room.