The fantasy football landscape shifts each week, bringing fresh opportunities and unexpected challenges that separate the prepared from the pretenders. Savvy managers know that last week’s performance tells only part of the story, and diving deeper into the underlying metrics reveals the accurate picture.
This week presents some intriguing decisions. Here’s insight about key Las Vegas Raiders players heading into their matchup with the Houston Texans to help you craft a winning lineup.
Geno Smith, QB
Geno Smith took a beating in Week 14 against the Broncos and an injury to his throwing shoulder ultimately kept him out last weekend.
Kenny Pickett made the start, but this is shuffling chairs on the Titanic. This Raiders offense has flaws left and right that marginalize their two high-end skill position players, thus leaving the quarterback position useless in our fantasy world.
With or without Smith, the Texans D/ST has the potential to be a week winner.
Ashton Jeanty, RB
How crazy is it that I’m looking at Ashton Jeanty’s nine-carry 35-yard performance in Philadelphia on Sunday as a win?
Man, this season hasn’t gone as planned.
In the shutout loss, Jeanty gained yardage on every carry he got. The game script worked away from him and averaging a tick over one yard per target is a problem, but there was a glimmer of league average blocking and it made me smile.
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If you spent up on Jeanty, you’re either not reading this, not reading this about that league, or just in it for my witty banter.
I appreciate you all the same regardless, so let’s try to appeal to all three of those situations.
If Jeanty cost you this season, do not use that as an excuse to make an error in 2026. We don’t yet know what this situation looks like for next season, obviously, and I don’t think we have enough data to say that Jeanty isn’t the generational runner we thought he was.
Of the bottom-5 teams in RB yards per carry before contact last season, four of them rank 16th or better in 2025 (MIami, Tennessee, New England, and Pittsburgh). Run blocking is a skill, but the difference between historically bad and league average is reasonably small and a tweak here-and-there can change things in a significant way.
Jeanty has been better than the traditional RB average before contact on just 44.5% of his carries this season, ranking him 42nd of 43 running backs. But stick with me here.
If we get him to league average in this regard, that’d be roughly an 11 percentage point bump. It may sound simplistic, but when Jeanty picks up 2+ yards before contact this season, he’s averaging 6.4 yards per carry (under two yards before contact: 2.3 yards per carry).
You’re not here to watch me spin numbers, so I’ll cut to the chase. An 11 percentage point increase works out to an extra 6-7 rush yards per game with an uptick in scoring trajectory. That may not sound like much, but I promise you that it is.
That figure is based just on his current volume, but if each carry is worth a little more, that gives each drive a little more hope at extending and extended drives mean more touches. More touches means more points.
It’s a complicated statistical argument that is simple in practice: a small improvement can have a large result. Think of it like cinnamon: a pinch more and the product changes.
After a slow start, Jeanty’s 17-game pace is for 90 targets. Everything you dreamed as possible for 2025 is still on the table for 2026 if this offensive line trends toward league average.
As for Week 16, he’s a flex at best. The Texans haven’t allowed a RB to hit a dozen PPR points in six of their past 12 games, a run that includes offenses in Jacksonville, Baltimore, and Kansas City that carry more ways to threaten this elite defense than what Vegas is trotting out there weekly.
TLDR: Consider benching Jeanty this week and consider reinvesting in 2026. Fantasy football can be complicated.
Brock Bowers, TE
I mean, c’mon.
The incompetence in Las Vegas becomes slightly more mind-numbing on a weekly basis and we need some serious changes heading into next season if Brock Bowers is going to project as a Tier 1 option at the position.
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He caught six passes against the Eagles during Sunday’s blowout loss and that’s great, but the Raiders are so aware that they have no hope with the forward pass, that Bowers was basically a gadget option that they had to force feed.
He gained 28 yards on those six grabs courtesy of a 2.0-yard aDOT. I guess the coaching staff deserves an ounce of credit for playing to their QBs strength (or his least impactful weakness), but if the roster is constructed in such a way that you’re scheming up your gifted TE looks within six feet of the line of scrimmage and hoping beyond hope that he can do something special with them, well, then we have a problem.
Things aren’t perfect in Arizona, but that offense is catered around creative ways to get Trey McBride chances to impact winning. This offense is just trying to not embarrass itself and that makes upside hard to come by.
It’s also not working. This is a mess on all levels: Bowers (and Jeanty for that matter) is better than his stats suggest and will be an interesting discussion point when we start preparing for 2026.
You’re playing Bowers because of the position, but if he played receiver, we’d be having the same tough conversations we are having surrounding Justin Jefferson.
