Kyren Williams Crushes it in Return! 🌟

Two 35+ fantasy point performances from Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts in the driving Philadelphia rain is just bonkers.

What’s in store:

• Chris Olave is forced from his best game with a concussion. I mean, we had to see that one coming, right? It was too good to be true.

• The Texans backfield shows signs of continuity. Good news for Devin Singletary, bad news for Dameon Pierce.

• What is going on with Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp? 🤨 They both had quiet games against the Cardinals while Kyren Williams dominated.

• Rashee Rice has a career day in the wake of last week’s drop fest. Could he be an important piece of starting lineups down the stretch?

• Saints WR Chris Olave exits game against Falcons on Sunday with concussion after stellar first half

  • Of course the fantasy gods would choose the game where Olave had his third-highest point total on the season through one half of football to cut his time on the field short. Olave was en route to what likely would have amounted to his best outing on the season before he was forced out of the game, but the injury shouldn’t be considered long-term given that it is, in fact, a concussion. Most players this season have been required to miss one week of action while they clear the concussion protocol, and that should be the understanding that fantasy managers move forward with regarding the second-year WR. There is an off chance that Olave could clear the concussion protocol within a week, as players like Alexander Mattison and Brock Purdy have done this year, but the odds in that scenario are long and managers would be better off prepping their lineups this week as if Olave will be unavailable for Week 13.

• Patriots WR Demario Douglas exits game against Giants on Sunday with concussion

  • The only functional piece of the Patriots passing attack was clotheslined while returning a punt against the Giants and suffered an apparent concussion as a result of the play. Despite the piss-poor play of Mac Jones and Bailey Zappe over the past few weeks, Douglas has found a way to cut through the brine and remain, at the very least, a fantasy-relevant starter at the wide receiver position. He easily led all Patriots pass catchers on the day before he exited with nine targets of which he caught six for 49 yards. With Douglas out, the next man up in the offense would be Devante Parker – but considering the turmoil under center and the increased reliance on the Rhamondre Stevenson in this game, fantasy managers would be best off leaving all of New England’s pass catchers on their bench this week except in the most desperate circumstances. The Patriots do have a favorable matchup against the Chargers next week, but it’s hard to trust anyone on the offense after they managed to fart out just 7 total points against a bad Giants defense.

• Browns rookie QB Dorian Thompson-Robinson exits game Sunday against Browns with concussion

  • DTR was piecing together his strongest fantasy performance of the season, albeit in a losing effort, against the Broncos before being forced from the game with a head injury. Since being named the starter after Deshaun Watson’ season-ending shoulder injury, DTR has been a distributor of the ball, with no clear favorite target in the offense emerging besides TE David Njoku, who has paced Cleveland in targets in each of the past two weeks. While it remains to be seen whether or not DTR clears the concussion protocol before the Browns’ Week 13 matchup with the Rams, fantasy managers should expect P.J. Walker to reprise his both role under center from earlier in the season and his role on the waivers as an unclaimed quarterback. In three starts this season, Walker has thrown for just one touchdown to five interceptions while completing 50% of his passes and finishing outside the top-24 quarterbacks in each game. The Browns receiving weapons will continue to have low fantasy ceilings and shaky floors the rest of the way regardless of which player is under center barring a drastic improvement from DTR in the last six games of the season.

The Texans remain the talk of the town

• CJ Stroud had another huge fantasy day - what a rookie year this kid is having. 47 yards rushing and a rushing TD on top of 300 yards passing and a TD… Tank Dell had a solid day, reeling in 5 catches for 50 yards and a TD… he also had a 58-yard catch called back due to penalty, so it easily could’ve been a much bigger day for Tank. The bigger day ended up going to Nico Collins, who led the Texans in targets for the 2nd straight week - this is why we follow target share guys. Last week, it was Tank with the big day, but we couldn’t forget about Nico because he saw the 30% target share… and this week the production followed the utilization. 25% target share for Nico Collins and a WR1 performance to show for it.

• Like I mentioned coming into the week, there probably wasn’t going to be a whole lot of carries available for the Jaguars - Devin Singeltary and Dameon Pierce combined for 11 carries total, and they basically split carries down the middle. I also mentioned that the Jaguars allow their fantasy points to RBs through the air and that Singletary wasn’t involved in the receiving game, but he flipped that on its head and ended up catching 6 balls for 54 yards on 7 targets!

• But one thing was the major difference here for these two backs in Dameon Pierce’s return - Singletary was on the field for 82% of snaps, he got all 3 of their goal line snaps, and he ran 32 routes to Pierce’s 4 - 76% route participation, 100% of third down snaps, 95% of 2 minute snaps. That is a huge development for Singletary if he’s going to be running that many routes. Mike Boone, who was the primary receiving back when Pierce was hurt, was also a healthy scratch in this game, and his job basically went to Singletary… so we could see Singletary have standalone value regardless moving forward.

• Now… does this overall share get tighter moving forward between Piece and Singletary? Maybe… Pierce was a full participant in practice all week. But this is encouraging for Singletary for now, and the fact that they get the Broncos next week, Singletary is in play.

• Not really sure what happened to Dalton Schultz in this game by the way - his routes were basically cut in half. He ran only 2 more routes than Brevin Jordan on less than 50% route participation… the last time this happened was in Week 4, but he bounced back… something to monitor, but not panicking or anything just yet.

Kyren Williams dominates in first game back!

• We’ve been talking about Kyren Williams all week long - he was a must start, and he ended up having a huge fantasy day in his return. As of right now he’s the #1 non-QB fantasy scorer of Week 12… 38 PPR fantasy points, over 200 yards from scrimmage and 2 TDs through the air. He caught all 6 of his targets… this utilization overall and the usage in the red zone is going to keep Kyren Williams propped up as a RB1 rest of season.

• Let’s talk about Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua. Should we be worried? If this was a more competitive game and they really needed to throw the ball and make plays, I’d be more concerned… but this poor outing for both will have me moving these guys down the rankings a bit. This is two full games with Stafford now where Kupp just couldn’t get it done - only 2 games, just keep that in mind. We don’t have a huge sample size with Stafford and Kupp playing a full game each and not coming through, so I don’t want to overdo it here… but these two will likely take away from each other and we won’t see that funnel to either Kupp or Puka.

• Kupp wasn’t 100% in this one, either… now, the concerns for me come from Kupp not being the epitome of health over the last two seasons. He’s getting older, so maybe that’s a factor… maybe… but I will likely have both of these Rams WRs as WR2s next week in a tough matchup against the Browns. I won’t be going out of my way to bench either, even in the very tough matchup next week - if I have other good options, fine, but don’t go digging too deep to replace them.

The Chiefs came out of last weekend’s abomination of a loss against the Eagles on Monday Night Football looking to prove that they weren’t going to let the same mistakes haunt them from that fateful drop-filled night, and for the most part, they addressed those issues with bravado against the division rival Raiders yesterday afternoon. Mahomes was able to complete just under 80% of his passes on the day while tossing for 298 yards and two scores – one of which landed in the hands of a potential weapon in the making in WR Rashee Rice.

Rice ran the second-most routes of any receiver on the Chiefs besides Travis Kelce, while also pacing the team in targets with 10 on the day – easily a career-high for the SMU product. Rice repaid Patrick Mahomes and his fantasy managers for their trust in him against the Raiders with eight catches, 107 yards receiving, and a touchdown en route to his first WR1 finish of the 2023 season.

What’s more – Rice’s 24.7 PPR points rank him as the first Chiefs WR of the 2023 season to finish within the top-12 wide receivers on a week. Granted, his uptick in work did come as a result of Mecole Hardman and Kadarius Toney either starting the game out of the lineup or leaving the game during with an injury, but Rice’s performance qualifies regardless as easily the most promising performance we’ve seen from a Kansas City pass catcher not named Travis Kelce all season long. With little to no competition at all from other WRs in the Chiefs’ WR room, Rice could cement himself as a long-term piece of the Chiefs’ passing attack if he’s able to stack strong performances over these next few weeks.