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 Cincinnati Bengals players heading into their matchup with the Arizona Cardinals to help you craft a winning lineup.
Joe Burrow, QB
Joe Montana technically is “Joe Cool” but he played before fantasy was a thing, so I think we can recycle the nickname.
Playing into that label was his ability to elevate his game at the perfect time. If you’ve rostered Burrow at any point recently on a competitive team, what I’m about to tell you will not surprise you.
This man, despite various injuries to and around him, has at least three touchdown passes in eight of his past nine starts during the fantasy playoffs. If that doesn’t earn you nickname privileges, I’m not sure what does.
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Ja’Marr Chase was featured in a major way, and Tee Higgins didn’t look the least bit affected by the recent concussions. It’s taken patience, but we are back to the shootout Bengals at the perfect time: there’s no harm in counting on Joe Cool to get you to the finish line.
Chase Brown, RB
Samaje Perine was a pain in the early going for Chase Brown managers as the veteran saw all of the RB targets in the first half and added a four-yard rushing score across those first 30 minutes.
I would have spent less time stressing about Brown’s usage last week if I knew that he’d come out of the locker room looking like prime LaDainian Tomlinson.
He scored twice in 71 game seconds with a Quinn Ewers interception wedged between them, and he wasn’t done.
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With three scores in the third quarter, Brown racked up the points at a rare pace and likely flipped your matchup in the blink of an eye. The immediate nature of his points was overwhelming, but nothing he did was that much outside the range of what we’ve been seeing recently.
Brown has five touchdowns in his past three games and has cleared 10 PPR points as a pass catcher alone in four straight. Over the past month, he’s scored 30.7% above expectations, a whole new version of him from what we saw earlier in the year (14% below through Week 11).
Arizona has allowed the fourth most red zone touchdowns this season, giving Brown every opportunity to give you a seven straight top-13 finish at the position
Ja’Marr Chase, WR
Don’t you love it when a team leans into a strength?
The Yankees don’t try to bunt, and the Warriors don’t pound the paint. It sounds so simple, but professional sports teams have a way of overthinking things with a level of regularity.
The Bengals have been a lot of things this season, but I wouldn’t label them as “overthinkers”.
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Ja’Marr Chase saw the first two targets of last week against the Dolphins, and by the end of the first 15 minutes, he already had five receptions. The injury to Joe Burrow resulted in a slow run for their WR1 earlier this year, but he could set a career high for targets in a season this weekend and is very much back to being considered one of the three most feared at the position in the sport.
We need Burrow for Chase to be the 1.01 in August: I expect that to be the case and, for a second straight season, for him to very much be in that conversation (I’m likely to have a running back in that spot based on the scarcity of the position, but his name will be on the short list, that I can promise you).
Tee Higgins, WR
Over the past month, Tee Higgins has either been inactive due to a concussion or dominant, with no middle ground.
He lit up the Bills in the snow back in Week 14 (6-92-2), and while he only saw three targets on Sunday in Miami, he went 3-53-1 and was put in a position to leverage his size on two of those looks.
He was on the field for 62.3% of Cincinnati’s offensive snaps last week, and with no reports coming out of any sort of post-game complications, it stands to reason that he’ll be a full go in this spot against a Cards defense that is allowing the second-most red zone drives per game (3.9).
Higgins is currently my WR15 for this week, ranking in the Jakobi Meyers tier of safe options with legitimate upside.
Mike Gesicki, TE
Mike Gesicki scored in the fourth quarter last week, giving the Bengals a 31-point lead because 24 obviously wasn’t enough against the fightin’ Quinn Ewers of Miami.
It was odd to see him still in the game, but all points count the same, and the 17-yard score made up for an otherwise quiet day.
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From a fantasy perspective, Gesicki is what we want: a bad blocker that is only asked to run routes in a potent offense. The idea of that role is sound, but with Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins, and Chase Brown soaking up so much usage, there is no real path for the TE position to produce on a consistent basis.
I’ve got him ranked in the Hunter Henry/Oronde Gadsden tier at the position, and that’s easily outside of my top 12.
