The Texans remain the talk of the town
CJ Stroud had another huge fantasy day - what a rookie year this kid is having. 47 yards rushing and a rushing TD on top of 300 yards passing and a TD… Tank Dell had a solid day, reeling in 5 catches for 50 yards and a TD… he also had a 58-yard catch called back due to penalty, so it easily could’ve been a much bigger day for Tank. The bigger day ended up going to Nico Collins, who led the Texans in targets for the 2nd straight week - this is why we follow target share guys. Last week, it was Tank with the big day, but we couldn’t forget about Nico because he saw the 30% target share… and this week the production followed the utilization. 25% target share for Nico Collins and a WR1 performance to show for it.
Like I mentioned coming into the week, there probably wasn’t going to be a whole lot of carries available for the Jaguars - Devin Singeltary and Dameon Pierce combined for 11 carries total, and they basically split carries down the middle. I also mentioned that the Jaguars allow their fantasy points to RBs through the air and that Singletary wasn’t involved in the receiving game, but he flipped that on its head and ended up catching 6 balls for 54 yards on 7 targets!
But one thing was the major difference here for these two backs in Dameon Pierce’s return - Singletary was on the field for 82% of snaps, he got all 3 of their goal line snaps, and he ran 32 routes to Pierce’s 4 - 76% route participation, 100% of third down snaps, 95% of 2 minute snaps. That is a huge development for Singletary if he’s going to be running that many routes. Mike Boone, who was the primary receiving back when Pierce was hurt, was also a healthy scratch in this game, and his job basically went to Singletary… so we could see Singletary have standalone value regardless moving forward.
Now… does this overall share get tighter moving forward between Piece and Singletary? Maybe… Pierce was a full participant in practice all week. But this is encouraging for Singletary for now, and the fact that they get the Broncos next week, Singletary is in play.
Not really sure what happened to Dalton Schultz in this game by the way - his routes were basically cut in half. He ran only 2 more routes than Brevin Jordan on less than 50% route participation… the last time this happened was in Week 4, but he bounced back… something to monitor, but not panicking or anything just yet.
Kyren Williams dominates in his first game back!
We’ve been talking about Kyren Williams all week long - he was a must start, and he ended up having a huge fantasy day in his return. As of right now he’s the #1 non-QB fantasy scorer of Week 12… 38 PPR fantasy points, over 200 yards from scrimmage and 2 TDs through the air. He caught all 6 of his targets… this utilization overall and the usage in the red zone is going to keep Kyren Williams propped up as a RB1 rest of season.
Let’s talk about Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua. Should we be worried? If this was a more competitive game and they really needed to throw the ball and make plays, I’d be more concerned… but this poor outing for both will have me moving these guys down the rankings a bit. This is two full games with Stafford now where Kupp just couldn’t get it done - only 2 games, just keep that in mind. We don’t have a huge sample size with Stafford and Kupp playing a full game each and not coming through, so I don’t want to overdo it here… but these two will likely take away from each other and we won’t see that funnel to either Kupp or Puka.
Kupp wasn’t 100% in this one, either… now, the concerns for me come from Kupp not being the epitome of health over the last two seasons. He’s getting older, so maybe that’s a factor… maybe… but I will likely have both of these Rams WRs as WR2s next week in a tough matchup against the Browns. I won’t be going out of my way to bench either, even in the very tough matchup next week - if I have other good options, fine, but don’t go digging too deep to replace them.