Romeo Doubs from the top rope! 🥊

What happens if Jordan Love would somehow walk into Levi’s Stadium and take down Brock Purdy and the 49ers? Just some food for thought on your Tuesday morning.

What’s in store:

• The wheels fall off of the Rams offense in Detroit. Two key contributors went down with injuries as LA’s season ended on Sunday.

• Kevin Stefanski backs Deshaun Watson as Cleveland’s 2024 starter. There’s a whole offseason to play out yet, but almost all signs are pointing towards the embattled QB being set to take the reins once again.

• Zach’s top takeaways: Wild card edition. It was a very busy weekend in the first round of the playoffs.

• Romeo Doubs keeps the life support on his fantasy stock plugged in with a huge Wild Card performance. Averaging 25 yards a catch on a 29% target share will make a difference for any receiver in the NFL.

• Rams RB Kyren Williams, TE Tyler Higbee exit Sunday’s wild card game vs Detroit with hand, knee injuries, respectively

  • The Rams couldn’t seem to escape the injury bug in Matthew Stafford’s return to Detroit, with the Rams quarterback also playing through a few dings he picked up while facing the Lions relentless defensive front 7. Kyren Williams had a difficult matchup going into this game on paper with the Lions being especially stout against the run, and it proved to be tough sledding all night as the breakout star managed just 61 yards on 13 carries before exiting with a hand injury. Fantasy managers shouldn’t expect that issue to linger at all in 2024 with Williams having the entire offseason to recover. On the other hand, Tyler Higbee suffered what is reportedly feared to be a torn ACL in the loss to the Lions, which creates a huge question mark regarding his availability by the time Week 1 of 2024 rolls around. The loss of Higbee could open things up for young TE Davis Allen going into next year, who flashed on limited work both during the regular season and in the playoffs. He’d have his work cut out for him earning targets with Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp existing in the same offense, but a full offseason as the potential TE1 could make Allen an intriguing player come draft time later this summer.

• Browns HC Kevin Stefanski asserts that QB Deshaun Watson will be the team’s No. 1 signal caller heading into offseason

  • The Joe Flacco hype train was short lived in the 2023 playoffs, with the Browns falling to the Texans in a not-so-competitive game that featured two costly Flacco pick sixes. With the veteran signal caller unlikely to run it back in Cleveland in 2024 - or elsewhere, for that matter - it seems like the Browns will turn the reins back over to Deshaun Watson for this offseason –and Kevin Stefanski’s recent comments reinforce that idea. Watson was hardly spectacular from a fantasy perspective in his limited action in 2023 (he averaged 15.2 fantasy points per game), but it’s clear that just about anybody can step in at quarterback for the Browns and make the offense serviceable at best (see: Cleveland beating San Francisco with P.J. Walker at QB). That might be some slight exaggeration, but Watson never built up the momentum in 2023 to demonstrate that he’s capable of re-ascending to the high-QB1 status of his early years – something that will keep his draft price low later this year.

Texans vs Browns

• Is this the best we’ve ever seen a rookie quarterback play in back-to-back games with the season on the line? C.J. Stroud has been absolutely surgical this season, but he’s saved his best football for the past two weeks - both in real life and in fantasy football. 5 touchdowns, no picks, 270 yards per game and 21 fantasy points per game in Week 18 and the wild card round – and the more impressive performance was this past weekend against the Browns defense. Cleveland was allowing the fourth-fewest fantasy points and second-fewest passing yards to quarterbacks this season, and C.J. Stroud pretty much said f**k them stats, I’m going ballistic. His final statline doesn’t tell the whole story of how the game went – he could easily have had five touchdowns this game if Joe Flacco didn’t turn into a pumpkin just in time for the playoffs. The bottom line here is that Stroud is easily a top-10 fantasy quarterback moving forward, and he’ll probably be flirting with top-5 here at some point this offseason. I mean, he’s 22 years old, just finished as the overall QB8 in fantasy points per game among QBs to start 10 or more games, and has been nails all season in the big games. He’s also elevating the players around him as a rookie - there are definitely going to be a lot of analysts that are going to plop him into their top-5 to be bold, and at this point… how bold is it?

• On the other side of the ball, there’s not a whole lot to analyze for the Browns. Joe Flacco isn’t going to be on the team come 2024, so there’s no need to pick apart what he did – especially considering a lot of the game was garbage time. David Njoku continues to be targeted at a high rate and led the Browns pass catchers in receptions and yardage – that’s the only takeaway that I had for Cleveland. The thing is, Njoku has been earning targets from every quarterback he’s played with this season: in five full games with Flacco, he has a 25% target share; three games with P.J. Walker, 20% target share; and in a handful of games spread out with Deshaun Watson where he was in and out of the lineup, 17%. He’s been a bit of a revelation at tight end this season and he’ll be drafted among the top-8 going into 2024, although Deshaun Watson at QB might be enough to push him closer to top-10 than top-5. 

Chiefs vs Dolphins

• The Dolphins did exactly what I anticipated them doing in the freezing cold, and that's to flop around on offense and not put up a lot of points. Let me remind you that Miami was busted deep touchdown to Tyreek Hill away from losing a 26-0 shutout to Kansas City in this one – that’s bad, but at the same time, we can’t take anything away from this game for Miami because the game script was beyond negative and the weather was unlike any we’re going to see again any time soon. Granted, the Chiefs defense played lights out and L’Jarius Sneed – our guy – he was giving Tyreek Hill fits all night, but this was a no show from the Dolphins offense and I don’t think anyone was really surprised that they struggled on that side of the ball. Raheem Mostert had 33 scoreless yards on eight carries, De’Von Achane had 30 yards from scrimmage on nine touches… like I said, take away that deep TD to Tyreek Hill that was pretty miraculous, and Tyreek Hill finishes the day with four catches for nine yards. Gross. It looks like Achane is probably going to be the guy next season, and Raheem Mostert is easily one of the prime touchdown regression candidates after scoring 21 in his age 31 season. Not sure that’s happening again at 32.

• As for the Chiefs, It was a very run of the mill game for them offensively. Patrick Mahomes played well, but not exceptionally well - just like he has all season. Rashee Rice led the Chiefs receivers in production - just like he has all season. And Isiah Pacheco got more than 20 touches on the ground and scored a touchdown - just like he has all season. The only thing that was new was Travis Kelce making a return somewhat, reeling in seven catches for 71 yards. No, this does not mean he’s back, and there’s no way for him to reclaim his perch as the undisputed TE1 in fantasy football - but it’s nice to see there’s still something left in the tank. 

  • By the way, since Rashee Rice’s route participation jumped to just about 70% in Week 12, he’s averaged a 28% target share and 20 fantasy points per game. He’s here to stay, and with Travis Kelce dropping passes left and right, plus the rest of the Chiefs receivers doing absolutely nothing to separate themselves at all as difference makers, Rice is going to be a very valuable piece of fantasy teams next season.

Through the first half of the 2023 regular season, Packers WR Romeo Doubs was making his money in fantasy football as a touchdown merchant for Jordan Love. His seven touchdowns through Week 11 were the third-most of any receiver in the NFL in that time span, and he was a very solid flex play thanks to scoring a touchdown in six of his ten games played. But since Thanksgiving, the emergence of promising rookie Jayden Reed and other names including Bo Melton and Dontayvion Wicks saw Doubs fall critically out of favor, posting single-digit fantasy points in five of Green Bay’s last seven games. The outlook was bleak heading into a wild card matchup with Dallas, but just as all hope appeared to have been lost, Doubs turned things around with a banner day in Big D.

After registering just a 17% target share over the course of the entire 2023 regular season, Doubs was the Packers’ lead wide receiver in targets, receptions, and receiving yards in Green Bay’s victory over the Cowboys this past Sunday. His 151 yards on the afternoon marked his first-ever 100-yard receiving game as a Packer, an achievement he was unable to complete in two full regular seasons in the NFL.

Doubs’ 29% target share was also his second-highest mark of the season behing only his 38% mark in Week 4 against the Lions, and his targets per route run skyrocketed to 38% - his highest mark on the season in that department. Of course, running wide open with no defenders within a fifteen yard radius of you on multiple occasions will undoubtedly lead to a huge fantasy day, but the fact remains that after showing next to no life in the Packers’ passing offense for the majority of the season, Doubs may have re-established himself with a role moving forward after a career day against the Cowboys. Jayden Reed is still the receiver to target in this offense moving into 2024, but Doubs has bought himself and his fantasy managers some time and won’t be an afterthought as he would have been had he put up a performance similar to what we had seen in the regular season.