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 Jacksonville Jaguars to help you craft a winning lineup.
Geno Smith, QB
We are at Halloween, and Geno Smith has as many multi-interception games as he does starts with multiple TD passes.
He’s misfired on eight of 11 deep passes over the past month and has more incompletions than completions inside the opponents’ 20-yard line.
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In short, he’s doing nothing at an average level, and we’ll need to see drastic improvement for him even to grace our streaming radar. We are past the point of asking Smith to produce for us and simply hoping that he can lead an offense that gets the few pieces we are invested in some production.
Ashton Jeanty, RB
Ashton Jeanty has seen his yards per carry before contact increase from 0.19 to 1.12 in October, still an underwhelming number, but certainly a step in the right direction for the supporting cast.
Despite the improvements up front, the sixth overall pick doesn’t have a carry gaining more than 13 yards this month and is averaging just 3.8 yards per carry in those contests.
Let’s call this what it is: an uneven rookie season.
We were expecting greatness, and that’s clearly not in the cards for Year 1. Some weeks, we see explosive runs. Other weeks, we see a handful of targets.
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Breadcrumbs are being laid, but not nearly enough for me to forecast top 10 value the rest of the way. Jeanty was overdrafted this summer, and the scar tissue from that could result in a nice post-hype price tag entering 2026.
We can cross that bridge when we get to it. For the rest of this season, Jeanty is to be viewed as a fine RB2 thanks to a stable role. The range of outcomes is broad, something that isn’t surprising for a strong prospect in an iffy situation, and should be accounted for as we move into the second half of the season.
Jakobi Meyers, WR
Jakobi Meyers was unable to work through a lower-body injury (knee/toe) for Week 7 against the Chiefs ahead of the bye.
Vegas’ top receiver started the season in strong form (10+ targets in both contests), but he’s averaged just 5.3 per game since, and due to the struggles of Geno Smith, the dip in volume is something that can’t be overcome (Meyers hasn’t finished a week better than PPR WR33 since Week 1).
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His status made it to the weekend two weeks ago, and that has me confident he plays this weekend: whether or not that matters to you is a different conversation.
Jacksonville’s defense was torn apart by Matthew Stafford (sans Puka Nacua) in London before their bye, but they’ve played mainly above expectations this season. I’d be looking for excuses to go elsewhere for my PPR flex, as I’m not going to bet on plus-volume until we see Smith turn a corner, especially with Brock Bowers penciled in for a strong share in his likely return.
Brock Bowers, TE
We haven’t seen Brock Bowers since September, and while the knee was obviously bothering him for three of his four games played, he was still just one of four TEs with at least four grabs in each week during the first month of the season.
Forget about the draft capital you spent on him. You’re not going to get a good return on that. But do you have a starter at the ugliest position in the sport? You do.
This offense is limited in various ways. While the Michael Mayer usage is likely here to stay, if we get anything close to a healthy version of Bowers, he’ll earn enough in the way of opportunities to make playing him far better than spinning the wheel of randomness on the waiver wire.