Top Waiver Wire Adds: Week 12! ➕

Coming up this week in the NFL: football games on Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Monday - plus, ZERO teams on bye! 😍

What’s in store:

• Can Tim Boyle save the Jets from a complete tailspin? Probably not. But with Zach Wilson asleep at the controls, it’s the best chance they’ve got.

• Devon Achane’s status is up in the air for Week 12. See what Mike McDaniel had to say about his RB’s health. Spoiler alert - not much.

• Tyler delivers a fresh set of waiver wire targets for Thanksgiving Week. Go out and add the gravy to your fantasy football turkey before indulging in the three F’s this holiday.

• Jahmyr Gibbs roars back on top of the running back position! 🦁 Montgomery or no Montgomery, Gibbs is getting it done for his fantasy managers over the past four weeks.

• Jets name QB Tim Boyle as the team’s starter for New York’s Week 12 matchup against the Dolphins

  

  • This is the face of the man that Garrett Wilson’s fantasy managers will be relying on this Friday to revive him from the dead against the Dolphins. The Jets situation at quarterback has officially crash landed after Zach Wilson’s all-time bad performance against the Bills this past Sunday, and it’ll be up to Boyle (7/14, 33 passing yards, 1 INT this season) to steer the offensive ship for Gang Green. Up until this past Sunday, Garrett Wilson was largely able to overcome the offensive struggles in New York with four straight games of 70 or more receiving yards, but the abomination in Buffalo took everyone’s favorite orphaned star WR down with it. With Boyle under center, fantasy managers should be starting only Garrett Wilson and Breece Hall this week while simultaneously tempering expectations for both very strongly against Miami.

• Seahawks HC Pete Carroll ‘unsure’ of whether or not QB Geno Smith will be able to play Thursday vs 49ers with an elbow injury

  • The short turnaround from Sunday to Thursday for the Seahawks couldn’t come at a more inconvenient time, with Geno Smith’s status now up in the air ahead of a high-stakes Thanksgiving showdown with the 49ers. For the most part this season, Geno has been a low-QB2 for fantasy purposes and offers little upside even in a loaded Seahawks offense, but his injury is much less about how it affects him than the way it affects guys like D.K. Metcalf and Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Drew Lock played a few drives of quite uninspiring football after Smith exited the game on Sunday, going 2/6 passing for just three yards and an interception in limited action – Lock under center would prove to be a real hindrance to both Lockett and Metcalf in the ceiling department moving forward. Fantasy managers should pay attention to reports out of Seattle regarding the QB’s health for Week 12, as both Metcalf and Lockett would receive significant downgrades without their startng QB.

• Dolphins rookie RB Devon Achane re-aggravated his knee injury from earlier in the season; Dolphins HC Mike McDaniel says ‘there’s a chance’ he will play and ‘a chance that he won’t’ on Friday vs Jets

  • This week on ‘That Helps Nobody’: Mike McDaniel tells us exactly what we already know just four days out from Miami’s Week 12 matchup against the tailspinning Jets. The fact that it’s the same knee injury that sent Achane to IR that he’s dealing with now is far from ideal, but it doesn’t sound like the general consensus about the injury this time around is that it’ll be something that will require an extended absence for the rookie to recover from. As of now, fantasy managers can hold out hope that he’ll be ready to suit up on Friday if they so please, but given the tough matchup, short turnaround, and the potential to give Achane an extended rest following the NFL’s first ever Black Friday game, it might not be a bad idea to have a backup plan in place if Miami would choose to hold him out in Week 12. As has been the case this season, any time missed by Achane would solidify a high-RB2 floor for Raheem Mostert while Achane is absent from the starting lineup.

• Zach Charbonnet (RB - Seattle Seahawks) - Charbonnet had already been gaining an increased role in the Seahawks offense prior to Week 11, seeing at least a third of the backfield touches in each of the three prior games, but he becomes a must-own option with the injury of Walker that was an "oblique strain that was legit," per HC Pete Carroll. That implies Walker will miss time, likely beyond the short week of Week 12 (Seahawks play San Francisco on TNF). Charbonnet is a short-term RB2 until Walker returns with the potential to capture the lead duties for even beyond that.

• Josh Downs (WR - Indianapolis Colts) - I genuinely don't understand why Downs is available in over 50% of leagues. After two games of injury (left in Week 9, limited snap count in Week 10) and a bye week in Week 11, Downs has somehow made his way onto waiver wires. He must be owned given his prior production and workload (4 straight games of 5+ catches, 6+ targets, 13+ points) leading up to his injury.

• Odell Beckham Jr. (WR - Baltimore Ravens) - OBJ had already been getting steam heading into TNF last week, drawing 7+ targets and 5+ catches in two of his prior four games while also tallying double-digit points in 3 of those 4 games, but his value takes a notable surge with the loss of Mark Andrews, now elevating Beckham to the potential top dog in the Ravens' receiving room. It was on full display in a 4-catch, 116-yard (15.6-point) performance (on 7 targets) in Andrews' absence.

• Jayden Reed (WR - Green Bay Packers) - The rookie WR simply keeps getting involved and being productive. Week 11 (4 catches on 6 targets for 46 yards; 3 for 46 and a TD on the ground) now makes it five consecutive games of 4+ touches for the WR with four 11+ point performances in that time span. The versatility in the rushing game is a new addition and one that could prove additionally valuable with RB Aaron Jones likely to miss time with a knee injury.

• Ezekiel Elliott (RB - New England Patriots) - Need a volume back? There are not many out there and while the offense isn't ideal, Ezekiel Elliott is one of the VERY few RBs available on waivers that can offer any resemblance of security. He had been pushing for work leading up to the bye (38+ percent snap share and/or double-digit touches in each of the four games leading up to the Week 11 bye) and that likely should continue going forward. With one of the more favorable schedules coming up (2nd-easiest remaining SOS, 4th-easiest playoff SOS), Elliott can offer some RB depth on the bench, even as the "RB2" in New England, while offering some potential as a handcuff should Stevenson go down.

Remember the days when putting Jahmyr Gibbs in your fantasy lineup used to feel like a method of medieval torture revived for those of us with the audacity to draft him as early as the second round in some drafts? Neither do we. It took an injury to David Montgomery to get Gibbs on the right side of the backfield utilization in Detroit, but what went around has officially come back around for Gibbs these past four weeks – and he’s been arguably the best fantasy running back in the league since Week 7.

In his last four games going all the way back to Week 7 (the first of two games that David Montgomery missed due to injury), Gibbs is the overall RB1 in fantasy points per game (26.3). His 8.5% explosive run rate per Fantasy Points Data also ranks first in the NFL among RBs with 50+ attempts in that same span, as well as his 5.64 yards per carry. For all intents and purposes, he’s been the fantasy RB1 over the past month and his high level of production has continued even with the return of David Montgomery.

The biggest thing that’s changed these past two weeks with David Montgomery back in the lineup compared to earlier in the season has been a new goal-line role for Gibbs. After handling just one such carry through his first six games this year, Gibbs has four goal line carries since Week 10 compared to David Montgomery’s three. That, plus a ridiculous 16% target share in the Lions offense, has Gibbs flying high into the stretch run of the season on an active four-game touchdown streak.