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 Philadelphia Eagles to help you craft a winning lineup.
Geno Smith, QB
If this is the end of Geno Smith’s career as a starting QB, it’s been a bumpy ride.
His foot injury entering Week 14 wasn’t enough to be mentioned on the final injury report. Still, he banged up his shoulder during the loss to Denver and is currently iffy moving forward.
It shouldn’t matter to you.
You’re playing Brock Bowers regardless of the QB play, and that’s not going to change. Smith has just two games with multiple passing scores since September and has been sacked more than three times per touchdown toss this season.
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Things need to change in Vegas sooner rather than later if we are going to get value out of their two-star players. Perhaps we will get a glimpse into what is possible moving forward by the end of 2025.
Ashton Jeanty, RB
Over the past three weeks, Ashton Jeanty has averaged 0.72 inches per carry before first contact with one of his 42 attempts, gaining 10+ yards.
That’s a problem.
That’s a sign of roster construction malpractice, but that’s more of an offseason topic.
The role is there, and with 38 targets over his past six games, the acknowledgment of his versatility is too. There’s just a lack of offensive infrastructure, and we are seeing just how much value that has in our game.
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Jeanty remains a viable starter because he won’t be scripted out of this game, and we just saw the Eagles get beat up by the Chargers’ RB tandem. With Philadelphia playing an overtime game on Monday night, there’s some fatigue potential to at least consider, but that’s getting a little cute for me.
Jeanty is a fine RB2, and I don’t think the ceiling is all that high, not the type of analysis I thought I’d be giving for a player with this level of pedigree and draft capital.
Brock Bowers, TE
I look forward to the offseason research piece on whether the fear of a bad offense outweighs the talent of a play more often than not. I have Bowers in a league, and it seems like every Sunday, I’ll turn my attention to the Raiders game, see two stuffed runs and a sack, and ask myself why I thought spending up on a player attached to this nonsense was a bulletproof plan.
By the end of the day, however, Bowers typically hits his quota of one highlight play, and it usually has some nice fantasy value attached to it.
Michael Mayer (ankle) was inactive last week against the Broncos, though he could return. Bowers capped Vegas’ masterpiece of a first drive on Sunday with a 15-yard score, but he managed just 31 yards the rest of the game with the Smith/Kenny Pickett duo unable to find consistent chunk plays, as per usual.
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Bowers is great, and I think there’s a world in which Jeanty is too: this offseason is going to be critical in terms of roster construction when it comes to their respective 2026 ADPs. As for this week, you just keep plowing through.
You don’t have to watch the game to get credit for the fantasy points, so I’d suggest something more fun for your Sunday afternoon.
It’s a long list of things that are more fun than watching the 2025 Raiders play football.
