Welcome to The Forward Pass. This piece offers a few usage notes from Week 11 and makes forward-looking statements about Week 12 and beyond.
1. Michael Thomas Is Dominating Targets — Except Where They Matter Most
Saints wide receiver Michael Thomas is following up his standout rookie season (75.8 yards per game) with a strong sophomore campaign (75.3 yards per game). In Week 11 he led the team with 11 targets, six receptions, and 91 yards as quarterback Drew Brees attempted the most passes (41) he’s thrown since the London game in Week 4. But even with his heavy volume (9.4 targets per game) Thomas has hit salary-based expectations in just three of 10 games. How is it that Thomas is getting usage and yardage but not returning value? He’s not finding the end zone. Last year he scored nine touchdowns, sporting a high 7.44 percent touchdown rate. This year he has two scores on a 2.13 percent mark.
While it would be normal to expect touchdown progression in the final six weeks of the season, Thomas has significant impediments: He’s been targeted only three times inside the 10-yard line. Last year he had a team-high 11 such targets. The main problem is that Brees is attempting fewer passes near the goal line. Last year Brees had a league-high 3.9 attempts inside the 10 per game; this year, that number is 1.8. Thomas is likely to be popular in Week 12 on account of his volume and role in a high-scoring offense, but he’s not getting high-leverage targets because the Saints are using running backs Mark Ingram and Alvin Kamara near the goal line. Thomas has a tough matchup versus the Rams defense, which is top-five against the pass in Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA). Buyer beware.
2. The Lions Are Roaring
In the Week 12 Vegas Report (out Tuesday), you’ll see that the Lions have hit their implied Vegas total in eight games (the league’s second-highest mark). Unfortunately for them, one of the games in which they failed to hit expectations was against the Vikings, whom they face in Week 12. The Vikings just limited the explosive Rams to seven points, and they’ve held opponents below their implied Vegas totals in seven of 10 games. (Only the Steelers have a better mark with eight.) The Lions are in for a tough game on Thanksgiving Day — as I write this the game is a pick’em — but afterward they get to close out the season with five winnable matchups against the Ravens, Buccaneers, Bears, Bengals, and Packers. At 6-4, the Lions are very much in the playoff race.
A win against the Vikings will give the Lions a good chance to make the playoffs and even compete for the NFC North title, as they’d have the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Vikings. Head coach Jim Caldwell is 33-25 in his three-plus seasons with the team and has taken them to the playoffs twice, but he’s often regarded as a mediocre coach. (Never mind that when the Lions went 77-163 in the 15 years before Caldwell’s tenure mediocrity would’ve been a blessing.) A win against the Vikings will go a long way to cementing Caldwell’s job security with the franchise, which would be good for quarterback Matthew Stafford, who has improved under Caldwell. In his five years without Caldwell, Stafford averaged 6.5 adjusted yards per attempt (AY/A). With Caldwell, he has a 7.3 AY/A.
3. An Ice-Cold Six-Pack of Defense
In their most recent games the Patriots have faced the floundering Buccaneers, the Josh McCown-led Jets, the Falcons in the fog, the Chargers in Foxborough, the Brock Osweiler-shackled Broncos, and the Raiders in Mexico City, so we should be careful not to weight too heavily their recent performances — but after allowing 32 points per game (PPG) in their first four contests the Patriots have held opponents to just 12.5 PPG over the last month and a half. Not one of those teams has scored even 18 points. Amazingly the Pats have prevented six straight opponents from hitting their implied Vegas totals.
In Week 12 the Patriots face the Dolphins, who are second to last in the league with 15.7 PPG. The Pats have opened as season-high -17.0 home favorites. Per our friends at Sports Insights and Bet Labs, the last team to be favored by at least 17 points was the Pats last year in Week 16 against the Jets, who scored just three points. Favorites of 14 or more since 2003 are 84-6 straight up in the regular season. In Week 12 the Pats will be popular, and the Dolphins almost certainly won’t.
4. Blaine Gabbert Might Not Be Horrible (When Throwing to Larry Fitzgerald)
Although Gabbert was horrible early in his career with the Jaguars, averaging a 4.8 AY/A, he was tolerable in 2015-16 with the 49ers, putting up a 6.0 AY/A and rushing for 25.6 yards per game. In his 13 starts with the 49ers, Gabbert was a great cheap quarterback play in daily fantasy, averaging 17.07 DraftKings and 16.50 FanDuel PPG with +2.72 and +3.77 Plus/Minus values at less than 1.0 percent ownership. Even though the 2017 Cardinals are probably the most talented team Gabbert has quarterbacked, and even though in Week 11 he was playing indoors in a bad-weather slate against a Texans team allowing top-three fantasy marks to opposing quarterbacks, Gabbert was owned at less than 3.5 percent. That’s too low.
Gabbert won’t play against weak opponents or throw three touchdowns every game, but he at least has wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, who at 34 years is playing as well as he did at 30. Gabbert connected with Fitz for 91 yards and a touchdown on 9-of-10 passing. Last year in Chip Kelly’s offense, Gabbert was most efficient (5.9 AY/A) when throwing to slot receiver Jeremy Kerley. It’s possible that Gabbert’s “slot synchronicity” with Fitz will be more than a one-week occurrence. In Week 13 the Cardinals host the Jags and their No. 1 pass DVOA defense. The matchup is horrible for Gabbert, but at least Fitz in the slot will avoid cornerbacks Jalen Ramsey and A.J. Bouye. Fitz needs only 52 yards to pass Isaac Bruce on the all-time receiving list and claim the No. 4 spot. Even against the Jags, Gabbert could feed Fitz.
5. The Bills Are Bad — But You Probably Already Know That
Since trading run-stopping defensive tackle Marcell Dareus to the Jags on October 27, the Bills have allowed opponents to score 37.25 PPG. Most painfully, they’ve allowed them to rush for 173 yards and three touchdowns per game. The Bills visit Arrowhead Stadium in Week 12, where the Chiefs might try to get back to old-school smash-mouth football after losing in Week 11 thanks to needlessly pass-heavy play-calling that resulted in three interceptions and no touchdowns. After rushing for over 100 yards in four of his first five games, rookie running back Kareem Hunt has since failed to hit that threshold. Even though he just disappointed against the Giants with only 77 yards and no scores at a slate-high ownership rate, Hunt will likely be popular in Week 12 with his league-best matchup.
Research the Week 12 games for yourself with our Tools and Models.
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Matthew Freedman is the Editor-in-Chief of FantasyLabs. He has a dog and sometimes a British accent. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he’s known only as The Labyrinthian.
