Will Mark Andrews suit up for the Divisional Round?

We’re winding all the way down to the end of the season, and the number of games we get to watch each weekend continues to dwindle. This is the last week of the season with more than one game on any given day 😢.

What’s in store:

• Mark Andrews no sure thing to play tomorrow – but he’s got a shot. He’d have a pretty favorable matchup against the Texans, too. 👀

• A reunion brewing in the Windy City? One of the Bears’ most recent interviews might pique your interest 🐻

• Faraz’s Chiefs/Bills preview. Find out what you need to know heading into the rivalry game this divisional round weekend.

• A record-setting season for rookie wide receivers. 📊 It wasn’t just Puka Nacua getting it done in a big way in 2023.

• Ravens TE Mark Andrews’ status for Saturday’s divisional round matchup vs Texans ‘still up in the air’, per HC John Harbaugh

  • Andrews has been out of the Ravens’ starting lineup since Thanksgiving and a return for Baltimore’s postseason push has always been a possibility for the playmaking tight end. Now that we’ve made it to the divisional round, Andrews is trending in the right direction ahead of their matchup with the Texans, but he has said that he won’t go unless he feels like he’s all the way there and ready to contribute fully to the team. It’s worth mentioning that he’s been able to get in a few full practices this week, so it’s certainly not a long shot that we see him take the field on Saturday. That being said, the Ravens have operated as an offense just fine in his absence, with both rookie WR Zay Flowers and TE Isaiah Likely stepping up to the plate to shoulder the load in the passing game. There’s a chance Andrews could take things down to the wire before determining whether or not he plays in the divisional round, so fantasy managers should stay tuned to any updates on his status over the next 24 hours to have the best idea of his availability.

• The Chargers interviewed former Titans HC Mike Vrabel and former Stanford HC David Shaw for their head coaching vacancy

  • The interviews come a few days after the Chargers opened their coaching search with an interview of Michigan HC Jim Harbaugh. While Mike Vrabel has expectedly garnered plenty of interest among the league’s teams with head coaching vacancies, the addition of David Shaw to the short list of potential candidates came somewhat out of left field. Even with these two interviews being announced on Thursday, the clear favorite to take over the Chargers’ job remains as Jim harbaugh, who is currently listed at -225 odds by DraftKings sportsbook to be on the Los Angeles sideline this fall. With Brandon Staley out and a very talented roster to work with LA, Jim Harbaugh landing with the Chargers would open a whole new path of possibility for Justin Herbert and the rest of the Chargers’ offensive weapons for fantasy football.

• The Bears are expected to interview former Cardinals HC Kliff Kingsbury for their vacant offensive coordinator position

  • Could the Bears be tipping their hand a bit with regards to the direction they want to head in with No. 1 overall selection in this year’s draft? We’re still three months away from it, but the fact that the Bears are interviewing Kingsbury off the couch just hours after Caleb Williams declared for the 2024 draft certainly suggests that the Bears are strongly considering the signal caller out of USC. Kingsbury spent the 2023 season at USC with Williams as a senior offensive analyst and QB coach and oversaw Williams’ excellent final college campaign. Chicago could reasonably pull strings to bring both the star quarterback and his coach to the Windy City as they execute a changing of the guard at quarterback, which would make a change of scenery for the embattled Justin Fields a foregone conclusion. Nothing is set in stone and it’s just an interview as of the writing of this newsletter, but the connections between the coach and the quarterback are too obvious to ignore.

• We already know Chiefs/Bills will be another instant classic… the last five meetings between these two teams have been in Kansas City, but this will be Patrick Mahomes’ first career road playoff game. They met in Week 14 earlier this season in a game the Chiefs thought they won the game on a trick play, but Kadarius Toney was called for offsides. Bills won 20-17 in Kansas City. Stefon Diggs was shut down by L’Jarius Sneed and company; Diggs had zero production on 5 targets against Sneed (shadowed on 65% of his routes) and finished the day with 4 catches for 24 yards overall.

• With Diggs being unable to get going in the passing game, Buffalo pivoted to targeting James Cook, who couldn’t be stopped. He finished the game with 5/83/1 receiving on top of his 10/58 on the ground. Cook will be a key factor for the Bills offense this Sunday, as the Chiefs are allowing the 5th most yards/carry to RBs through this past game. It’s a matchup to take advantage of.

• It’s also worth noting that the Chiefs were short handed in that earlier game; they were missing Isiah Pacheco and their starting LT Donovan Smith, who will both be suiting up on Sunday. Having Isiah Pacheco back will be key for the Chiefs, as the Bills are bottom-10 in yards/carry allowed to RBs, receiving yards/game, and yards/reception. The Bills didn’t really have an answer for Travis Kelce and Rashee Rice in their Week 14 meeting, either… Rice went 7/72/1 and Kelce led the team in receiving with 6 catches for 83 yards. We haven’t seen Mahomes on the road in the playoffs, and the Bills have opened as 2.5 point favorites.

2023 was a banner year for the rookie wide receiver in the NFL, headlined first and foremost by Rams WR Puka Nacua who set records for the most receptions and receiving yards by a first-year pass catcher in league history. The spotlight has rightly been placed on Puka all year long, as he established himself as a dominant wide receiver from day one in LA – but as out friend over on Twitter David J. Gautieri points out, it wasn’t just one or two receivers that made names for themselves in their rookie years.

Gautieri did the heavy lifting for this week’s stat of the day, bringing to light the fact that a record-high SEVEN rookie wide receivers tallied 60 or more receptions in 2023, a record for the most rookie receivers to cross that threshold in the same season. As mentioned earlier, Puka Nacua is the only wide receiver on the list to catch at least 100 passes (he snagged 114), but the rest of the receivers all contributed to their teams in their own right and were statistically significant in their first year in the NFL.

Chiefs WR Rashee Rice took a while to get his feet underneath him in 2023, but once he did he was off to the races: from Week 12 on, Rice was third among all receivers in total receptions with 43. Even Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who had to deal with competition from D.K. Metcalf and Tyler Lockett, was able to join the 60+ receptions club over a well-known Chargers 1st round pick in 2023…