The Week 3 NFL Dashboard
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Ravens at Jaguars
After a very poor showing against the Chargers, the Jaguars return home to face the Ravens this Sunday. The Ravens-Jaguars game has a sneaky-high over/under of 47.5 points and Baltimore is currently a one-point favorite.
Baltimore Ravens
Writer: John Proctor
QB – Joe Flacco
Flacco attempted only 33 passes in Week 1, throwing for 258 yards and one touchdown. Unfortunately, the Ravens’ starting running backs are averaging only 3.2 yards per attempt this season, and Flacco was forced to carry the load in Week 2. He attempted 45 passes, throwing for 302 yards and two touchdowns. As long as the running game continues to struggle, Flacco should rack up pass attempts. This week he finds himself in a dream spot against the 25th-ranked passing defense, per Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) metric. With his reasonable DK salary ($6,100) this week, Flacco is currently the second-highest rated quarterback in Adam Levitan’s Player Model.
RB – Terrance West
The musical chairs at the running back position continued on Sunday. West carried the ball 11 times, while Justin Forsett received 14 carries. Most beat writers expected West to handle the red-zone work, but he has yet to receive a carry inside the 10. Without red-zone work, West has little touchdown upside and will be difficult to use in most formats. However, the Ravens seem intent on giving West lots of opportunities; a breakout week is always possible.
RB – Justin Forsett
Much like West, Forsett’s weekly usage is going to be incredibly difficult to predict. While he received 14 carries on Sunday, he averaged 2.6 yards per carry. Encouragingly, Forsett saw five targets in the passing game and should continue to be the passing-down back in Baltimore so long as Buck Allen is inactive on Sunday. His 2015 average of four targets per game seems like a reasonable projection for him going forward, which gives him a slightly higher floor than West’s. The lone positive for these backs is that they face the 26th-ranked rushing defense, per DVOA. Forsett has a two percent Bargain Rating on FanDuel.
WR – Mike Wallace
Wallace is off to an incredible start this season, scoring three touchdowns in two games. Wallace owns only 16 percent of the Ravens’ targets, but look for that to increase as early as this week. The Jaguars are allowing a +1.8 Plus/Minus on FD and just allowed Travis Benjamin to catch all six of his targets for 115 yards and two touchdowns. The FantasyLabs ownership projections expect Wallace to be less than 10 percent owned.
According to the FantasyLabs Matchups tool, Wallace should run the majority of his routes against Davon House. After two weeks, House ranks as Pro Football Focus’ 86th-best cornerback in the NFL.
WR – Steve Smith
A week after looking like he could barely move, Steve Smith hauled in three passes for 64 yards in Week 2. Smith boasts a 95 percent Bargain Rating on DK and could prove to be a major value if he can combine Week 2’s efficiency with Week 1’s target share. Wallace is getting the buzz — his projected ownership is at five to eight percent compared to Smith’s two to four percent range — which makes the latter intriguing in large-field GPPs.
WR – Breshad Perriman
Perriman has seen only seven total targets this season, but five of those came last week against the Browns. He shouldn’t be on your radar in Week 3 despite his minimum salary, but he is a guy to monitor and see if his role continues to grow in this offense.
WR – Kamar Aiken
A favorite of NFL.com’s Matt Harmon’s Reception Perception (and most of the fantasy community), Aiken has been a major disappointment so far. He has averaged 1.5 targets per game over the first two weeks and has made little impact. Unlikely to have much value this week, Aiken probably needs an injury to see fantasy-relevant volume.
TE – Dennis Pitta
Football fans everywhere cringed when Pitta took a helmet to his hip on Sunday. Then we all let out a sigh of relief when he hopped right back up. Of Flacco’s 45 passing attempts in Week 2, 12 of them went to Pitta. That kind of volume is incredibly hard to ignore at the tight end position. Pitta is currently the fourth-highest rated TE in Adam Levitan’s DK Model; with DK’s full PPR scoring, Pitta looks like a great value for Week 3.
Jacksonville Jaguars
Writer: Ian Hartitz
QB – Blake Bortles
Bortles finished 2015 with the fifth-most DraftKings points per game among all quarterbacks but ranks 13th through Week 2. This drop hasn’t been due to a lack of opportunity, as the Jaguars have called the most pass plays in the league, per playerprofiler.com. Bortles’ problem seems to lie in his efficiency. He’s completed 11 percent fewer deep balls and averaged just 0.38 fantasy points per drop back. Still, Bortles has a nice matchup with the Ravens and has historically performed well with similar implied team totals:
As our Trends tool shows, Bortles has posted a +9.16 Plus/Minus with 83.3 percent Consistency in his six games with a similar Vegas score. The Jaguars’ passing attack will look to get on track against a Ravens defense that has forced a turnover on just 0.54 percent of their plays in the last 12 months – the worst mark in the league.
RB – T.J. Yeldon
Yeldon has now been the Jaguars’ undisputed bell-cow back for two consecutive weeks, but the results have been underwhelming: He’s averaged just 2.4 yards per carry and 2.7 yards per target, rates that aren’t even in the top-45 among all running backs. Yeldon has still averaged 14.35 DK points per game, but his 0.67 fantasy points per opportunity speaks to his overall ineffectiveness. Part of the issue could be his struggle in making defenders miss, as his juke rate has dropped by over 15 percent in 2016. The potential return of Chris Ivory, combined with a matchup against a Ravens defense that finished 2015 in the top-five in Plus/Minus allowed to RBs, may make it hard for Yeldon to improve in Week 3.
RB – Chris Ivory
Head coach Gus Bradley said last week that he is “hopeful” Ivory will return to the team in Week 3. There’s been no update since then and he will likely be a game-time decision. The uncertainty around Ivory’s snap count makes him a very risky play, although he costs just $3,900 on DK. If he plays, his fantasy production will largely be dependent on whether the Jaguars are able to feed him goal-line carries.
WR – Allen Robinson
Robinson was consistently great in 2015, scoring a touchdown or gaining at least 80 receiving yards in all but two of his 16 games. This season has been a different story, as he has not yet met either of those thresholds. Robinson has been a far less efficient receiver, averaging three fewer yards per target compared to last season. His 1.08 fantasy points per target mark ranks just 61st among all wide receivers. This ineffectiveness has led to Robinson’s salary dropping by $600 on FanDuel since the season opener, although he’s priced at $7,900 with a 94 percent Bargain Rating for Week 3. He has the third-most FD Pro Trends among all WRs and has a good matchup against a Ravens defense that finished in the bottom-six in Plus/Minus allowed to the position in 2015.
WR – Allen Hurns
The Jaguars offense has sputtered through two games, averaging five fewer points than they did in 2015. Hurns’ salary has decreased by $600 on DK since the season opener, although he’s on pace to exceed his 2015 yardage and usage totals. His current average of 7.5 targets, 4.5 receptions, and 69.5 yards would be good for a 120-72-1,112 line over a 16-game season – all increases over his 2015 line of 105-64-1,031. Hurns has yet to score a touchdown, but he didn’t score in the first two weeks of 2015 either. He’ll look to exploit a Ravens secondary that doesn’t have a single cornerback graded higher than 42nd by PFF.
WR – Marqise Lee
Lee gained a career-high 75 receiving yards in Week 2 against the Chargers, although he’s still a ways away from earning a large enough role in the offense to be a consistent fantasy option. Still, his 1.52 fantasy points per target mark is a step in the right direction, and he costs the DraftKings minimum against the Ravens’ suspect secondary.
TE – Julius Thomas
The preseason talk surrounding Thomas becoming a larger part of the Jaguars offense in 2016 has not come true thus far. He’s averaged 0.66 fewer targets per game compared to last season and has remarkably not been targeted once in the red zone. Thomas has done his part, averaging 2.38 fantasy points and 11.2 yards per target, the fourth- and fifth-highest averages among all tight ends, respectively. He did run 50 routes in Week 2 – eight more than the next closest tight end — but he’ll need more attention from Blake Bortles in order to cash in on those opportunities. Thomas has a tough matchup against a Ravens defense that finished in the top-five in both average fantasy points and Plus/Minus allowed to tight ends in 2015.
News Updates
After this piece is published, FantasyLabs is likely to provide news updates on a number of players herein mentioned. Be sure to stay ahead of your competition with our industry-leading DFS-focused news blurbs:
