Fantasy options to trust: Patriots vs. Ravens
Yahoo Sports’ Fantasy Football Live crew looks ahead to Sunday’s matchup between New England and Baltimore and which players could help fantasy managers the most.
Video Transcript
For this one, can we trust Zay Flowers?
And I think, from a fantasy standpoint, I don't think we give Flowers enough credit.
I mean, I know that I don't, because every time he plays the Bengals, I'm hoping that he underperforms and just winds up going for a touchdown anyway.
But despite him being undersized, he mostly runs a full route tree.
The gadgety parts to his game from his rookie season are gone, and the opportunity and Efficiency has remained.
He's seventh in yards per route run now.
Week three was the only game under 20% of the targets.
He honestly has a larger share of his teams air yards than Puka Nacua does.
But last week, we saw something from Lamar and Zay that we hadn't seen since the season opener.
And that was end zone targets.
He had one in the season opener, Didn't get another until Weeks 14 and 15.
And, like I said beforehand, Of course, he converted one of those for a score against Cincinnati.
So, I'm not worried about Flowers getting targets or even producing against the Patriots.
Even if you split up his efficiency from a yards-per-route-run standpoint by coverage, I mean, he's top 20 against man; he's top 20 against zone.
I mean, he can still be efficient regardless of what defensive concepts Mike Vrabel and The rest of the squad are gonna throw at him.
But we need to see less of Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely, and I mean honestly, even though I know this is gonna hurt Harmon a bit, less of Rashod Bateman once they get into the end zone.
Because that's where, that's where we can actually see Flowers pop off for some more Those games.
And so over the last six games, The Patriots, they have given up nine receiving touchdowns, which is the third most of any Defense during that stretch.
So if Flowers can swap out some of those empty Calorie targets for those money touches, I think he'll be back in the wide receiver two Conversation for Week 16.
I think I'm finally ready to give up hopes that Stefon Diggs is ever gonna become a full-time player for the New England Patriots.
That's not to say that he's not a good player for the Patriots.
Hes not a player who is helping this team.
He pretty clearly is.
However, from a fantasy football standpoint, we need him to be on the field a lot more than he Is to be somebody you can trust in your lineup.
And, you know, Back in Week 11, he ran a season-high 89% route participation.
The two games after that, he's below 30 yards receiving.
He runs a route on 54, then 61% of the dropbacks, and you think, Okay, they're going on this late Week 14 buy.
Now is the time they're really gonna unleash.
This 32-year-old wide receiver coming off the ACL, who's, again, Pretty clearly their best wide receiver in the room.
That wasn't the case, either.
He ran a route on 55% of the dropbacks, He turned in 26 yards receiving.
So, I'm just saying, I'm giving up trying to guess when this is gonna happen.
I haven't been able to get it right.
I don't think that.
Uh, we can know when or if this is going to happen.
Like, again, maybe in this game against the Ravens.
It's like that Week 11 game against the Jets.
It's like Week Four against the Carolina Panthers, which is funny that we're talking about those level of teams versus some of the Bigger games, uh, in the season.
He runs a route on 80% of dropbacks.
Maybe it happens, but you're not gonna know going into it, and that makes him pretty Difficult player to trust.
