Week 12 has officially passed us by in the NFL, and that means the 13th week of college football has also. It’s fantasy football time, and today we are going to be talking about weekly strategies, player insights, rankings, and projections. The main premise here is that you should be taking into account all of your player analysis and combining it with insights, rankings, and projections. You never want to leave out information in favor of another, just take it all in and make the best educated decisions you can make on each roster choice. Let’s get right into it by starting with something that many fantasy managers use these days, rankings, and not just generic rankings, but rankings for the season opener.
Weekly Rankings
Weekly rankings are awfully important to figure out the correct rosters to play each week in fantasy football, especially a Campus to Canton league.
College And NFL Rankings
College:
- Ashton Jeanty – Running Back
- Brashard Smith – Wide Receiver
- John Mateer – Quarterback
- Harold Fannin – Tight End
NFL:
- Lamar Jackson – Quarterback
- Saquon Barkley – Running Back
- Ja’Marr Chase – Wide Receiver
- George Kittle – Tight End
Look, RJ Harvey is an incredibly talented running back, but Ashton Jeanty makes it hard to put him at number one. Jeanty only had 19 carries this weekend and yet he still turned them into 169 yards and a touchdown. This season, he rushed for over 2,000 yards and scored 28 touchdowns. This stat line is just completely ridiculous from a fantasy football perspective, and unless he starts freefalling down the stretch, nobody will supplant him on this list.
After a season of great play on the football field, it is time that Saquon Barkley finds his way on the list. He took OFF this week against the Los Angeles Rams, taking 26 carries and turning them into 255 yards and two touchdowns. He also had four receptions for 47 yards, taking him over 300 yards from scrimmage on the day. He’s been right there with Derrick Henry this season for the best fantasy running back, but with a game like this, he deserves to jump up a spot.
Nick Nash finally had a bad game, catching just one ball. In his one poor outing, it’s time we highlight another player in his position, Brashard Smith. Now, he’s playing running back, but he’s listed as both a wideout and a back in fantasy football. So, here we’ll consider him a wideout. This weekend, he took 19 carries for 63 yards and a touchdown, and surprisingly got targeted just once in the passing game. This breaks a streak of back-to-back games with five targets. Still, getting the chance to play a back at receiver can open things up.
Despite coming off a bye week, I’m going to keep Ja’Marr Chase up here. Why? Well, that would be because no other top-tier wideout performed great this weekend. CeeDee Lamb had 10 catches but went for just 67 scoreless yards. Justin Jefferson was basically invisible himself. This means Chase is still leading the league in receiving yards and touchdowns at this point in the season. The Cincinnati Bengals are only heating up, he’s the best fantasy option right now.
At quarterback, John Mateer gets another week at the top. Mateer averages 36 points per game in fantasy and is the top-ranked option at his position. He can pass the ball effectively and run the ball at an equal level, a luxury to have on your roster. In each of the last five games, he scored over 34 fantasy points, and he had just under 40 over the weekend. Moving forward, he gets a Wyoming defense that has struggled to compete against the run. Mateer might run wild once again.
For tight end, Harold Fannin proved that he should be right back at the top of his position group. Coming off a bye week, Fannin had 12 targets, and nine receptions and turned them into 125 yards and a touchdown. It’s the fourth time in five games that he’s scored over 14 fantasy points. In three of those outings, he went for over 100 receiving yards. He also scored a touchdown in three of those five. Bowling Green relies upon him heavily to produce so that their passing game can thrive, and I don’t expect that to change now.
For the NFL, we’re going right back to George Kittle. It really doesn’t matter who is throwing the football to Kittle, he’s going to come away with solid fantasy football numbers. Almost every single week this season, he’s put up a great performance. With Brandon Allen at quarterback this weekend and Brock Purdy nursing an injury, people thought this would be the outlier. However, he still had six receptions for 82 yards and a touchdown on the afternoon.
Finally, at quarterback, we’re going to talk about Lamar Jackson. Jackson completed 16 of his 22 pass attempts for 177 yards and two touchdowns. He also rushed eight times for only 15 yards but scored a touchdown in the process. Similar to college, you want a quarterback who can get the job done through the air and on the ground. Lamar does that and then some. He’s having another MVP-caliber season despite adding Derrick Henry. I think he’s the best fantasy option in the league right now at quarterback.
Jersey And Bench (Start/Sit)
You all know the drill here, each week there will be players that you want to start, and players that you want to sit. Below are a couple of options and some background information on why you should do either of the following.
Jersey/Bench Picks
Jersey:
Brendon Lewis
C.J. Stroud
Tony Pollard
Darnell Mooney
Demond Claiborne
Bench:
Denzel Boston
Travis Etienne
Diontae Johnson
Blake Bosma
Cole Kmet
Let’s start with the jersey picks and begin with Brendon Lewis for the second consecutive week. Lewis seems to be a great start at the quarterback position due to his consistency. In each of the last five games, he has been able to score over 20 fantasy points. Last week, he was listed here with the hopes of keeping this trend up, and he delivered. Lewis gets UNLV this coming week, a matchup that could easily help him continue his strong stretch of play as of late.
Next is C.J. Stroud. Stroud hasn’t been very great in terms of fantasy football, but he gets a juicy matchup against the Jacksonville Jaguars this weekend. Stroud just had one of his best performances of the year for fantasy last weekend, mostly due to having Nico Collins available. The hope is that he can build upon that performance alongside Collins against a Jaguars’ defense that doesn’t generate much pressure against the quarterback, nor do they defend the pass very well. That combination bodes really well for the Houston Texans signal caller.
Tony Pollard was doubted the last couple of weeks thanks to Tyjae Spears getting back onto the field. Spears has been on and off the field due to injuries this year, but it hasn’t mattered much for Pollard. Pollard proved that he’s still capable of leading the backfield, dropping 22 fantasy points over the weekend. Now, he gets the Washington Commanders, a defense that gives up the most rushing yards to running backs this season. I like this matchup; he should be a must-start.
Darnell Mooney is another must-start this weekend against the Los Angeles Chargers for several reasons. Mooney has helped create a passer rating of 132 when the defense gives him split safety coverage, which is a scheme that the Chargers use at the second-highest rate in the league. To make things even better, the Chargers have given up the second-most yards and the most touchdowns to opposing wideouts going back to Week 8.
And the last of the jersey picks is Demond Claiborne. Despite having a relatively slow week, he turned 19 carries into 62 yards with a couple of receptions sprinkled on top to make it 13.6 fantasy points. In the four games before that, Claiborne had recorded at least 19 points in each of them. The Wake Forest running back has been wildly effective as of late, and he’s going to need to carry this offense if the team has any hope of taking down Duke in their final game of the season.
Flipping over to the bench picks now, we have Denzel Boston. Boston has had back-to-back underwhelming performances now. He scored less than five points in both matchups and had two receptions in each. While he could be due for a breakout game, I don’t see it coming this weekend because of the matchup. Washington is lined up to compete against the number-one-ranked Oregon on the road.
Next, is Travis Etienne. Though, you could easily make this same point for Tank Bigsby. I would just stay away from either Jacksonville Jaguars running back as long as they are both healthy. Split snaps between the two have rendered them mediocre at best, and now they face a tough Houston Texans defense that doesn’t often surrender many fantasy points to opposing backfields.
Diontae Johnson has been a wild disappointment since joining the Baltimore Ravens. Fantasy managers were hopeful that a trade from the Carolina Panthers would boost his value, though it hasn’t happened. He played only eight percent of the snaps for the Ravens last week and has just one reception for six yards since joining the organization. I don’t know if he’s struggling to get the playbook if the team doesn’t trust him, or if he’s had issues off the field. Something is clearly happening here, and until whatever that is gets resolved, keep him off your lineups.
It’s time to talk about Blake Bosma now. Bosma has been a popular name on the waiver wire lately, but I don’t see a strong performance this upcoming weekend. The Western Michigan Broncos tight end has had three straight games under three points, with two of them being under one point. He’s also failed to score a touchdown in any of those contests. Even in a more positive game script and situation, Bosma only averages six fantasy points per game.
Finally, we get to Cole Kmet. Kmet was almost invisible on the football field for a couple of consecutive weeks, then he got 10 targets a week ago. While some might think of this as a positive sign, I still don’t trust him due to the horrible inconsistency. Plus, Kmet and the Chicago Bears are going up against the Detroit Lions, a defense that has given up the least number of yards and touchdowns to opposing tight ends.
Projections
Projections are numbers that estimate how many fantasy points a specific player might get in a given week. They can vary depending on the situation or matchup and need to be monitored weekly to get a good understanding of what experts think of them.
Weekly Projections
College:
QB – Bryson Daily – 40.18 points
RB – Ashton Jeanty – 24.22 points
WR – Tre Harris – 19.55 points
TE – Harold Fannin – 12.39 points
NFL:
QB – Josh Allen – 25.21 points
RB – Derrick Henry – 16.56 points
WR – Ja’Mar Chase – 12.23 points
TE – Travis Kelce – 9.98 points
These are the players who are projected to garner the most fantasy points at their position in both college and the NFL. These numbers are calculated by basically estimating the stats that a player might have given their track record and upcoming matchup. If they have an easier matchup and are historically good against that specific team, the projections will be a little higher. If it might be a blowout, the projection might be even higher than that. The reason why it is important to understand these projections is that if you’re ever stuck wondering what to do, they could give you an idea of how a player might perform. Let’s say you can’t decide who to start between two wide receivers, but one is estimated to be 10 points more than the other. That number alone can indicate that the higher projected receiver could be in line for a significantly better day, and you can feel comfortable starting them over your other option. They aren’t guaranteed to be accurate every week, and they do change quite often, because, at the end of the day, they are simply projections, but it’s a good place to start making lineup decisions.
With all of that being said, it is critical to stay on top of your weekly strategies and pay close attention to rankings, and player insights. You never know when you might be caught up between two players and need to figure out how to break the tie in your mind. That is exactly where rankings and projected points play a factor, in helping lay all of the information out for you in an easy-to-read format. Each week is going to be an exciting time for everybody, so before we get ahead of ourselves, just remember to double-check your starting lineups and make sure that you’re happy with the players you have locked in at the moment. I heavily recommend you take some of our listed rankings into consideration, and also for you to check out other projections and rankings as well to get a clear vision of how each week might play out in both college and the NFL.