Wow do we have a great slate ahead of us here in Week 6. I’m not sure whether it’s because we’ve got a few less games this week, or because we’ve got some historical data under our belt, or because I’ve just had more time to dive all the way in this week, but I am feeling GREAT about Week 6.
Your first reaction may be, but wait JBB you’ve got hardly any Bills, Chiefs, Seahawks, or Cardinals in The Flowchart this week, how can you feel good about it? It’s true, I spent a good majority of the week trying to figure those two games out, but when I sat down in front of the spreadsheets and really looked through projections, I found that those games weren’t really separating themselves as much as the Vegas O/U would suggest.
Of course, I’ll be trying to find angles there in smaller fields and messing around with versions of Mahomes and Allen stacks. For purposes of The Flowchart this week, I wanted to try and highlight other games we have the ability to get access to which don’t compromise on the projection/ceiling side of things. Let’s get to it!
Game Stack
Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers face a Pittsburgh Steelers defense who just gave up 424 yard passing and 4 TDs to Josh Allen just a week ago. In addition, they are going to be without safety Minkah Fitzpatrick as well as their Top 3 cornerbacks Cam Sutton, Ahkello Witherspoon, and Levi Wallace. And finally, after not breaking 300 yards passing during the first 3 weeks of the season (while most of his receiving corps was on the mend), Brady has posted back-to-back games of 52 passing attempts and has turned in 385-3-0 and 351-1-0 stat lines. Wheels up for the GOAT on Sunday.
Figuring out who to pair up with Brady is always a bit of a challenge. I’m going the safe route and locking in Chris Godwin this week who projects as a great value, but is likely not going to make many cash builds as other values have popped up throughout the week. In general, this might make this game come in a tad bit overlooked since most of the field will not be seeing Bucs players pop up a ton in their optimizers.
George Pickens is clearly a player who won’t be priced down below $5000 for much longer this season. I want to keep placing bets on him as he continues to grow in this offense. An additional option you can consider this week at relatively the same price is Chase Claypool, who has had a very down year this year but would any of us be surprised to see him turn in a 100 yard and 2 TD performance on Sunday?
Double Stack and TE Correlation
A lot of people might look to Leonard Fournette’s 10 receptions last week and call that an outlier, but I beg to differ. In Weeks 2-4 Fournette averaged a 17% target share, but as we documented above the pass volume was just a lot lower. In Week 5 Fournette accounted for a 22% target share (11 targets) which isn’t that crazy of an outlier from where he was trending. I wouldn’t be shocked here if Fournette sees another 6-8 targets to go with the lion’s share of the rushing load.
Mike Evans was put on this earth to score touchdowns and he clearly has multiple score potential in this game given the depleted secondary of Pittsburgh. I think Evans has a really good chance at getting lost in the sauce this week since he is sandwiched between DK Metcalf and Marquise Brown, both of whom should garner a lot of ownership. That’s a big green light for me with Evans.
Wrapping in some correlated Tight Ends to The Flowchart, we’ll start with Robert Tonyan. Not many people are talking about this game after Green Bay put up a stinker last week in London, however Tonyan is projecting very well at a cheap price tag and let’s you get off some of the other tight end chalk. Breece Hall is a very interesting player, because on a normal week he would probably be extremely popular after almost hitting the double 100 yard bonus last week. However, due to all the RB value popping up, Hall’s ownership should be a bit more tempered and that’s great news against this porous Packers run defense.
On the flipside, we’ve got Irv Smith Jr. of the Vikings in a matchup against the Dolphins that I think has really sneaky shootout upside. The Dolphins are projecting to roll out their third-string QB this week, which makes me excited to pair up a cheap Irv Smith with Raheem Mostert, an RB they should look to load up with dumpoffs to help out the rookie QB. I am definitely going to make sure I have some good exposure to this game when lineups lock on Sunday.
By playing Hall or Mostert, we stay within the narrative of multiple cheap RBs this week, but play at least one of them who shouldn’t garner nearly as much ownership as the cash game studs. This makes me especially excited this week because we aren’t giving up a TON of value going to these guys. They could easily outscore the more owned guys and we would immediately have a leg up on the field.
Play a Chalk RB
I talked about both Rhamondre Stevenson and Eno Benjamin in the Cash Game article, so make sure to read that for my thoughts on them. I view them as the safest chalk of the week. On the more expensive side, I’ve got two RBs that carry very similar offensive situations in Week 6.
Alvin Kamara is fresh off of a 103 yard rushing 91 yard receiving week where Taysom Hill scored 3 rushing touchdowns. If even one of those go to Kamara we are talking about him a lot more this week. The Saints are without Michael Thomas, Jarvis Landry, and Chris Olave is Questionable with a concussion. Shouldn’t be a whole lot in Kamara’s way here against the Bengals.
Speaking of teams who have no healthy WRs, we have the New York Giants and their stud RB Saquon Barkley. This season, Barkley has been trending around a 40% usage rating which is absolutely absurd for an RB in this year of our lord 2022. The list of Giants WRs who are out this week is a mile long and Saquon is clearly the best chance that Brian Daboll and Daniel Jones have against the Ravens in Week 6. Load up on Barkley.
Fill in a Stud WR
One of the great things about paying down for Brady instead of Allen or Mahomes and focusing on fitting in the Bucs WRs rather than Stefon Diggs or Travis Kelce, is it really allows us a lot of salary to fill in some stud WRs here with our final selection. I will fire through these quickly, because many of them don’t require much of an explanation.
If playing Benjamin, you can fit in Justin Jefferson. In the lineups that have Mostert and Irv Smith already, you now have a lot of exposure to a sneaky blowup spot.
If you decide to go with Stevenson, then you have the ability to slide in Ja’Marr Chase in the stud WR spot. It does seem like the entire industry is talking about Chase, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see him come in chalky, but if Tee Higgins is ruled out he should of course be a great play.
If you play Kamara, then you can go ahead and take your pick of stud WR in the Seattle/Arizona game. I prefer Marquise Brown, just because I think the Cardinals are going to win this ball game, but I can’t fault you for playing DK Metcalf as an option as well.
And finally, if you pay up for Saquon, you’ve still got plenty of room for a couple of studs. Gabriel Davis will likely be a tad bit overlooked in the Bills/Chiefs matchup but he did uhhh…score 4 TDs in that game last year…and scored 2 TDs last week. Should be fine! Allen Lazard has been pretty quiet in fantasy circles this year, but we know he is still Aaron Rodgers #1 WR and he also provides some leverage off of Romeo Doubs this week. One last thing you can do in Saquon lineups is pivot off of the Pittsburgh bring-back and add in Devin Duvernay as correlation in that ballgame. Look at the NYG/BAL rosters this week. There’s like 4 dudes who are going to score points, so might as well snag 2 of them.
That wraps it up! I hope to see you at the top of the leaderboards this weekend.