In what should be a fun game, the Los Angeles Chargers fantasy football preview deals with the ascension of Joshua Palmer up the ranks, while the Kansas City Chiefs fantasy outlook is based on them (hopefully!) labeling their rookie as their WR1.
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Los Angeles Chargers at Kansas City Chiefs
- Spread: Chiefs -5.5
- Total: 48.5
- Chargers implied points: 21.5
- Chiefs implied points: 27
Quarterbacks
Justin Herbert: The former Oregon Duck has been held under 230 passing yards in three of five games this season, but I’m willing to cut him slack. He lost RB Austin Ekeler to an injury and then lost WR Mike Williams for the season with an ACL ailment.
Per the Week 7 Cheat Sheet, Herbert has thrown multiple touchdown passes in his past five games against the Chiefs, and with an aDOT that is up 31.3% from last season, I’m willing to bet that his best is yet to come.
MORE: 2023 QB Fantasy Football Rankings
I’m comfortable starting Herbert in this spot, understanding that Ekeler is going to look better with time and that WR Joshua Palmer should be able to build on an encouraging Week 6.
Patrick Mahomes: Mahomes seemed to struggle on Thursday night, and still, he finished with a season-high 306 passing yards to go along with over 25 rushing yards for the fifth time this season.
Over his past three games, he has managed just four touchdown passes on 111 attempts – a rate well below his career average. Worry not, he’ll be just fine. He’s as good as anyone at the position this week and moving forward – especially against a secondary he lit up for five touchdowns and zero interceptions across two games a season ago.
Running Backs
Austin Ekeler: The former All-Pro missed more than a month and returned to face one of the most elite defenses in the league with a quarterback nursing a hand injury – blame yourself for thinking he’d put up an elite stat line last week, not Ekeler.
I’m not reading into his 1.9 yards per carry against the Cowboys. Instead, I’m encouraged by the fact that the Bolts were comfortable in getting their featured back 18 touches in his return to action.
The Chiefs’ defense is far better than we thought they’d be this season, but they are still a bottom-10 unit in terms of yards-per-carry-allowed, and Ekeler cannot be scripted out of any contest. He’s easily a top-five back for me this week. He’s also on the short list of players with a reasonable path to project as the top scorer at the position for Week 7.
Isiah Pacheco: Week 6 against the Denver Broncos wasn’t a work of art with a 3.9 yards-per-carry average, but even on a down day in terms of efficiency and overall offensive performance, Pacheco got you 12.8 half-PPR points.
He caught six passes on Thursday night, which matches his total from his three games prior, and he had a 15-yard carry for the fourth time in five games. The efficiency will come, so the fact that he got 16-of-18 carries reinforces the idea that he is a top-15 back the rest of the way.
The hard-nosed runner gets an extended work week to prepare for a shaky Chargers run defense on short rest. I’m considering his Week 6 stat line a floor of what you can expect on Sunday.
Jerick McKinnon: McKinnon had a day-making catch nullified by a block in the back, which continued his underwhelming campaign. He has just seven carries through six weeks. That wouldn’t be a problem if he was handling the lion’s share of the work in the passing game, but he’s not. Pacheco has at least matched his target count in four of six games, leaving little meat on the bone for McKinnon and making him a player you can move confidently from at this point.
Wide Receivers
Keenan Allen: I’ll take the under on his 143-catch pace, but with 10 targets or a touchdown in four straight games, his value as a WR1 is going nowhere. He has seven straight games against the Chiefs with 90 yards or a touchdown, and if forced to say, I’d predict he will extend that streak to eight on Sunday.
I really wanted #Chargers Quentin Johnston to be a thing, but another week with limited routes.
Josh Palmer – 44 routes
Keenan Allen – 43 routes
Gerald Everett – 26 routes
Austin Ekeler – 26 routes
Johnston – 21 routes— Corbin (@corbin_young21)
Josh Palmer: I like to pay attention to how teams come out of their bye, with the thought being that they have extra time to focus on their game plan. After the Week 5 bye, Palmer saw seven targets against the Cowboys and had a few receptions wiped away by accepted penalties.
Palmer has seen at least seven looks in three straight games, and it’s easy to forget that he caught at least five balls in five of six games in the middle of last season when his usage was ramped up.
With Allen and Ekeler being so involved, the target upside is only so high for Palmer, but last week was encouraging. I have Palmer ranked as a low-end WR3, landing him in the same tier as both Viking and both Broncos receivers.
Quentin Johnston: We hoped the rookie would push Palmer for the WR2 role in WR Mike Williams’ absence, but that seems like nothing more than a pipe dream in the short term. Johnston was on the field for just 47.2% of Los Angeles’ offensive snaps last week, and, to be honest, it felt like less, as he only earned two targets and no catches.
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I’m not giving up on him just yet, but it does appear clear that the Chargers aren’t confident in his readiness to be a regular contributor. I’m giving him this week to prove he’s worthy of stashing. If Sunday looks anything like last week, he’ll be on the Week 8 chopping block.
Rashee Rice: The target upside remains limited for Rice, but this kid proves every week that he is ready for more work. He caught all four of his targets against the Broncos, including a late 28-yarder that is his longest catch to date.
Everything in his profile is trending in the right direction, but it’s just a slower process than any of us want. Rice will be firmly in the Flex mix for a third straight week, and while he has produced, he’s been walking a thin line due to his required efficiency. The rookie carries risk, but I believe the role upside outweighs it, especially with six teams (at least five fantasy viable receivers) on bye.
Marquez Valdes-Scantling: Valdes-Scantling’s one target against the Broncos was more of a throwaway, as Mahomes was scrambling and looking for somewhere to go with the ball in the red zone. He caught the pass, but he never had a chance at coming down in bounds with it, continuing his baffling fantasy season.
He easily leads this receiver room in routes, and in theory, that should be good enough to be of interest to us in an offense built around the best player in the game. Not so much. Despite living on the field, he’s yet to earn more than three targets in a single game and has given us zero reasons to keep him rostered at this point.
Skyy Moore: The receiver we thought had the best chance to take over the WR1 in Kansas City this preseason had 70 receiving yards and a touchdown in Week 2 against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Since then, he has 75 receiving yards total in four games.
You can hold onto him if you are stubborn about having a piece of this offense, but there are no indicators in his profile that a breakout of any kind is on the horizon.
Tight Ends
Gerald Everett: Everett nearly doubled the snap count of Donald Paham last week, and while the 6’8” backup tight end is identified as a red zone threat, the fact that they ran Everett in motion and got him the short touchdown was encouraging.
By no means is Everett a must-start, but he is a cheap way to get exposure to an offense I trust. That’s an outlook I’ll embrace in the TE position.
Travis Kelce: Mahomes looked Kelce’s way nine times on Thursday night, and every time, Kelce made the play. The connection between these two is second to none right now, and it resulted in Kelce being responsible for over 40% of Mahomes’ yards in the Week 6 win.
The production was as expected, but it was the fact that he looked healthy that was the most noteworthy. Now we know – no defense can stop Kelce, and neither can the turf in Minnesota. His kryptonite has to be out there somewhere, but until that discovery is made, Kelce is about as safe of an option as there is in fantasy sports right now.
Should You Start Joshua Palmer or Rashee Rice?
This is a close one, and both are viable Flex plays this week, but I’ll roll the dice on the player with a path to WR1 work as a favorite over a talented receiver who checks neither of those boxes. Both Palmer and Rice are WRs I want to invest in moving forward, but in a Week 7 situation, I’d rather bet on Mahomes with extended rest over Herbert on a shortened week.
Should You Start Gerald Everett or Luke Musgrave?
Everett’s scoring last week was great to see, but Donald Parham was still heavily involved in the red zone and without elite yardage potential, which puts Everett in a low-floor fantasy role.
MORE: PFN Consensus Rankings
Musgrave, on the other hand, holds a short target role in an offense that, healthwise, is moving in the right direction. With Green Bay coming off of their bye, look for the rookie to be reasonably involved and own the edge here in receptions. Give me the floor that comes with Musgrave over the minor edge that Everett possesses.
