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 Indianapolis Colts to help you craft a winning lineup.
Geno Smith, QB
The Raiders got their brakes beaten off in Week 3 against the Commanders. In that game, Geno Smith hooked up with Tre’Quan Tucker for three scores, and those three passes accounted for 27% of his September fantasy points.
Yikes.
This season, when pressured, Smith has turned 57 dropbacks into just 249 yards, 12 sacks, zero touchdowns, and three interceptions. Through the first two weeks of this season, the Colts ranked dead last in non-blitz pressure rate (16.3%). But over the past two weeks, that number has increased to 42%, which is the fifth-best rate.
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Smith shouldn’t be considered a viable option in any single-quarterback format, and, to be honest, I wouldn’t be excited about firing him up as a QB2 this week.
That’s saying something when you consider that there are only 28 teams in action this week.
Ashton Jeanty, RB
It looked good on paper.
The pedigree didn’t go anywhere.
The script worked.
There is no better feeling in this world than when everything points in a direction and it plays out as suggested.
OK, so maybe I live in a sheltered world, but it makes me happy when that happens, and it certainly did for Ashton Jeanty against a Bears defense that entered last week as the worst pre-contact unit in the league.
The 155-yard, three-touchdown performance jumps off the screen, and as good as it was, it was only baby steps in the right direction. His 0.71 yards per carry before contact was well below the league average, but his rate through three weeks was -0.04.
He caught his first two touchdown passes of his career, but those were the only two targets he earned, matching his average through three weeks.
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This Raiders situation is far from fixed, but guess what?
The Colts are coming off their worst pre-contact defensive performance of the season and have replaced the Bears as the worst such unit in the league.
Repeat?
Jakobi Meyers, WR
Jakobi Meyers finally fell flat last week, catching four of seven targets for a season-low 30 yards against the Bears. There is always the risk of games like this when he’s relying on a random number generator at the QB position, but I’m willing to write off last week as a fluke.
The Raiders finally got Ashton Jeanty going in the loss to Chicago, and with Geno Smith offering up three INTs for the second time in three weeks, I don’t blame them for limiting how often the ball was put in the air (21 pass attempts).
They were able to execute that plan because the score was tight throughout, but that’s going to be a more difficult ask this week. Meyers has seen 33 passes thrown his way through four weeks, and I trust that level of involvement to get him back inside the top 30 performers at the position this week with relative ease.
I have Meyers just ahead of other chain movers in Deebo Samuel and Keenan Allen, both of whom, in my opinion, come with more target variance every week.
Brock Bowers, TE
We thought that Geno Smith coming to town would add stability to the quarterback position, and that seems to be like a Smith pass … inaccurate.
The veteran QB has been spotty at best through the first month of the season, and Brock Bowers has felt the brunt of it.
Of course, the lingering knee injury has to be at least mentioned, but in a favorable spot (vs. Bears) and with Michael Mayer sidelined (concussion), it wasn’t unreasonable to expect the second-year star to break out of a funk.
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We weren’t so lucky. Bowers has caught 4-5 passes in every game this season, and that’s meant just 38-46 yards in three straight (2024 averages: 6.6 catches and 70.2 yards). His aDOT is up a full yard, and his slot usage has taken a step back, breadcrumbs that we don’t love to see.
That said, you can’t really overreact. A handful of catches per game holds value at the position, and if Smith can turn things around, Bowers still has an apparent path to being a top-five performer at the position moving forward.
