The Baltimore Ravens will face the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 11. Here’s fantasy football start-sit advice for every Ravens skill player who has the potential to make a fantasy impact during the game.
Looking for more lineup advice? Head over to our Week 11 Fantasy Start-Sit Cheat Sheet, where we cover every fantasy-relevant player in every game.
Lamar Jackson, QB
The front-runner for the NFL MVP was nothing short of special on Thursday night, and his Ravens needed every ounce of it to earn the one-point win over the Bengals. Lamar Jackson is the first QB with three games of four passing scores and 30 rushing yards in a single season since himself in 2019.
Do you still have the weird desire to knock Jackson for the running? Stop it. He’s the first quarterback with multiple passing touchdowns and 280 yards through the air since 2020. He’s bizarro Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes is an elite talent whose team doesn’t need him to light up the scoreboard while Jackson is an elite talent whose team requires video game production.
A goofy late-season schedule makes the long-term evaluation a little weird if Baltimore’s seeding isn’t in major question (Weeks 14-17: bye, Sunday game, Saturday game, Wednesday game), but if there is a player that can overcome a less-than-ideal rest schedule, it’s Jackson in a spot like this.
The Steelers are obviously a great defense, but in 2024, great offense beats great defense. In Jackson’s two most difficult matchups this season:
Week 1 at Chiefs: 273 pass yards and 122 rushing yards
Week 9 vs. Broncos: 280 passing yards, 84.2% complete, and three touchdowns
Derrick Henry, RB
When this game kicks off, we will be 322 days removed from the last game in which Derrick Henry played and failed to reach the end zone. The Bengals defended him well on Thursday night (his fewest yards per carry in a game since Week 1), won the time of possession battle, and had no answer for Lamar Jackson (141.4 passer rating). And yet, 71 yards and a touchdown.
Najee Harris has impressed this season, right? Jordan Mason is the reason your fantasy team is sitting pretty right now, correct? Henry’s floor performance against Cincinnati is essentially what those two have offered on a per-game basis this season.
The Steelers have played against three different star running backs this season (Bijan Robinson, Jonathan Taylor, and Breece Hall), and they all cleared 100 scrimmage yards. This matchup isn’t ideal, and I couldn’t care less — Henry is, at worst, a fine starter and capable of breaking the slate against any defense in the NFL.
Justice Hill, RB
With Keaton Mitchell back (one offensive snap last week but on the field for the first time), you can officially move on from Justice Hill if you haven’t already. The idea of having a viable pass-catching back next to Derrick Henry is logical, but this team is too good for that role to get enough work to matter in fantasy leagues.
Mitchell’s return muddies the situation should the machine that is Henry somehow get hurt, thus eliminating your one primary reason for rostering Hill at this point. He’s a good player that matters to the Ravens — but not to fantasy managers in any format.
Keaton Mitchell, RB
Keaton Mitchell saw his first offensive snap of the season on Thursday after averaging 8.7 yards per touch in his shortened rookie season; then he was done for the night. His being active is good to see and makes this Ravens team even scarier, but for fantasy purposes, there’s no reason to get caught up in 2024.
Is he a name to keep track of in the summer? He certainly is. Many managers look at the stat line from the previous season when building out rankings, and those people might not even remember that Mitchell exists. We’ve seen Derrick Henry-centric offenses give significant snaps to a secondary running back in the past, but that happened when the game script dictated as much — that doesn’t happen these days in Baltimore.
Justice Hill has caught 90% of his targets this season, giving Mitchell no projectable path to meaningful touches, even if deemed fully healthy.
Diontae Johnson, WR
Not all Super Bowl contenders are created equal, and the 2024 trade deadline serves as a good reminder. The Chiefs, Bills, and Ravens all added a receiver with a strong NFL résumé — none of them for the same reason.
While DeAndre Hopkins was brought in to give the Chiefs upside and Amari Cooper to add a wrinkle for Josh Allen, Diontae Johnson was — a vanity move for the Ravens?
Ravens WRs route totals, Week 10:
- Zay Flowers: 33
- Rashod Bateman: 30
- Nelson Agholor: 19
- Tylan Wallace: Five
- Johnson: Three
OK, so maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but it would appear that the Ravens added talent without a clear picture as to how to use it. Johnson adds talent to a team that could win it all this season, but that doesn’t mean he’s a fantasy asset.
We were confident that the worst case for Johnson was the WR3 role in this offense, but in his second week with the team, he ranked fifth among the receivers in routes. Why would we think that changes? Forget moving ahead of Agholor or Bateman, Wallace turned his five routes into three catches, including a tightrope 84-yard score.
What’s the upside? You can’t justify playing him this week, and the skeptic in me wouldn’t rank him as a top-30 option in Week 12, even if he were to see a usage spike this weekend. That would make Week 13 (vs. Eagles) the most optimistic of optimistic cases for him to even garner lineup interest. That game profiles as a low-possession game with both teams more than willing to operate with a running clock. After that? Week 14 bye.
For me, Johnson is a luxury stash at best. If your team is loaded and you want to hold, that’s a viable approach. But if you’re begging and borrowing to win on a weekly basis, this isn’t a profile that you want to roster.
Rashod Bateman, WR
Rashod Bateman scored his fourth touchdown of the season on Thursday night, but he was again held under 60 receiving yards (eight times in 10 games) and none of the underlying numbers suggest that this is a fantasy asset moving forward.
Bateman’s usage trends by season:
- 2021: 16.6% target rate, 14.4% routes in slot
- 2022: 23.3% target rate, 10.0% routes in slot
- 2023: 16.5% target rate, 9.7% routes in slot
- 2024: 16.3% target rate, 7.2% routes in slot
He’s been great when given the opportunity this season (32.7% over expectation), but we have a track record of that not being who he is (first three seasons: 7.8% under expectation), and his involvement has more room to decline than improve (Isaiah Likely’s health and Diontae Johnson’s role).
I don’t think I’ll ever have Bateman ranked as a top-35 receiver, and if he’s never going to threaten your starting lineup, why roster him?
Zay Flowers, WR
The idea of banking on Zay Flowers is sound — he’s the clear WR1 in one of the best offenses in the league whose defense struggles to get consecutive stops. The process makes all the sense in the world, and that is why I am going to continue to rank him as a viable starter, but it’s been a wild ride.
The production is all over the place. That’s because his role is all over the place. This season, he’s posted an aDOT of under 5.5 yards in five games this season, but he’s also cleared 10.5 yards in four instances. We know that Flowers is a great YAC threat (up 38% from last season), but with the sporadic usage due to the dynamic that Derrick Henry brings to this offense, his fantasy value is anything but stable.
I don’t think there’s much you can do here. I’ve dropped him down in my rankings, but that doesn’t remove him from the third tier and a starter across the board. If I’m going down in my league, this is the type of player I’ll do it for, one where we see glimpses of the potential and are confident in his offensive environment.
Isaiah Likely, TE
The hamstring injury kept Isaiah Likely out of Thursday’s instant classic with the Bengals; hopefully, that pushed you to cut ties. I love the athletic profile and still think the 24-year-old has a promising future in this league. But in terms of chasing a 2024 fantasy title, this isn’t a profile to bet on.
Likely hasn’t reached 50 receiving yards since that standout Week 1 loss in Kansas City and has scored in just one of eight contests over that stretch. You can move on – if Mark Andrews were to get hurt, I’d spend every FAAB dollar left in my wallet. Nonetheless, burning a roster spot and hoping for a tight end injury to a fully healthy player just isn’t how I build out my team.
Mark Andrews, TE
Another week, another touchdown. Mark Andrews has scored five times over the past five weeks, flipping the script from the first month that had plenty of people asking if they could cut the former Tier 1 tight end.
The production is great to see, and he’s a top-12 guy moving forward. But you need to be aware that there is still significant risk in this profile. Andrews played a season-high 87.9% of the offensive snaps, a role that is nearly 30 percentage points ahead of his season mark. If that usage came with the roster at full strength, I’d be more encouraged. However, Isaiah Likely (hamstring) was inactive, so I’m not sure we can project it to sustain.
Andrews’ target rate has been hovering around 20% since the beginning of October, and that’s enough to be viable in an offense clicking on all cylinders. I’d just caution against assuming that we are out of the woods when it comes to the air balls.
Baltimore Ravens at Pittsburgh Steelers Trends
Baltimore Ravens
Team: Only twice in the 2000s has a team made the Super Bowl after starting the season 0-2 (the 2007 Giants and 2001 Patriots), something that seems more possible with each passing week for these Ravens.
QB: Has Lamar Jackson ended the MVP race before it started? He threw 457 passes last season – if we extend his pace from his past four games across 457 attempts:
- 331 completions
- 4,652 passing yards
- 57 passing touchdowns
Offense: Baltimore averages 2.94 points per drive, just ahead of Jackson’s first MVP season and 23.5% better than a year ago.
Defense: Only twice in the 2000s have the Ravens allowed a third-down conversion rate of 40%—through 10 weeks, their rate this season sits at 46.7%.
Fantasy: When this game starts, we will be 322 days removed from the last game in which Derrick Henry played and failed to reach the end zone.
Betting: The Ravens have covered their past eight road games played on extended rest (1-0 this season with a 10-point win over the Buccaneers as a four-point favorite).
Pittsburgh Steelers
Team: The Steelers are 7-1 against the Ravens from 2020. However, every game in that stretch has been decided by one score.
QB: Russell Wilson is averaging 10.9 yards per pass when blitzed this season (339 yards and three scores on 31 such attempts).
Offense: Pittsburgh’s first-down offense has the lowest yards per play (4.1, league average: 5.5).
Defense: The Steelers allow just 29.9% of opponent drives to result in points, which is the third-best rate in the NFL (only the Chargers and Vikings have been better).
Fantasy: That’s seven straight games with multiple receptions or a touchdown rush for Najee Harris.
Betting: The Steelers have covered four straight home divisional games (average cover margin: +13.9 PPG).