10 Fantasy Football Thoughts: Derrick Henry is an absolute monster

Week 12 brought with it some incredible fantasy performances from Patrick Mahomes, Tyreek Hill and Derrick Henry that are almost expected at this point, but there were also some real letdowns in prime matchups that could have really hindered your chances at a playoff spot.

Josh Allen, Stefon Diggs and Justin Herbert come to mind with their lacklustre games in a matchup that really could have proven to be fruitful. This is the beauty (or in some cases, lack thereof) of fantasy football – just when you think you’re in the clear, the fantasy gods pull you right back into the muck and the mud of a fantasy playoff race.

On a personal note – the Philadelphia Eagles and Seattle Seahawks are in my black book now. This did have fantasy implications all-round, but for me, it was a bad beat on a bet. Like so many others, I thought that Seattle at minus-6.5 was a lock. I almost turned off the game because there was absolutely no way that Philadelphia was going to drive the field and score, and even if they did, they would never go for two points because it doesn’t make sense.

Carson Wentz may have won some fantasy weeks with that Hail Mary pass which somehow ended up in the hands of Richard Rodgers, but that and the decision by Doug Pederson to go for a needless two point convert cost lots of people money – and I feel that pain.

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1. A Legendary Performance

We all know what Patrick Mahomes is capable when he steps on the football field and if you have him rostered on any of your fantasy teams, consider yourself lucky, but doesn’t it feel like we just seem to be scratching the surface with him?

He finished with 467 yards and three touchdowns, good enough for a QB2 finish behind Deshaun Watson and made everything seem completely effortless. With that performance, Mahomes sits less than one point behind Kyler Murray for top spot among fantasy quarterbacks.

His consistency, however, is what makes him incredible.

In 24 of 42 starts, Mahomes has over 300 passing yards, and in 20 of 42 starts he has three or more touchdowns.

Think about how unbelievable that is for a second. In more than half of his starts, he throws for over 300 yards. That type of consistency is mesmerising. Don’t forget that he’s also only thrown 20 interceptions over the course of his career.

With that consistency also brings with it the reliability of his top weapons, Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce.

Hill had an epic line of 13 catches for 269 yards and three touchdowns against the Tampa Bay secondary, who has been getting cooked over the last few weeks through the air. It was as if the defenders didn’t exist.

After being silenced by the Bills in Week 6, Hill has turned 63 targets into 43 catches for 637 yards and nine touchdowns in five games.

I know, it’s almost unfathomable.

With Mahomes keying on Hill and Kelce, both could have multiple weeks that could help vault you to a championship.

2. Well, that wasn’t ideal

I’ll be the first to say that I was looking forward to seeing the tire fire that was going to be the game between the Saints and Broncos with all the Denver quarterbacks being ineligible.

I love chaos. It’s fun.

But in this instance, I felt legitimately bad for Kendall Hinton. He was a salesman just a few weeks prior to his first NFL start and it showed.

If you started him thinking you were going to be smart, then that one is on you. At this point in the season, unless you are just trying to dress a lineup out of respect for the league, I hate to say it, but you deserve what you got starting a guy like that!

Poor Hinton completed just one pass for 13 yards and threw two interceptions resulting in negative fantasy points.

If he was the reason why you lost your fantasy week, I don’t really know what to tell you!

3. The Gronky Tonk Man gets his groove back

There was a time where I was very skeptical about Rob Gronkowski’s return to the NFL after being a shadow of himself at the end of his tenure in New England. His reunion with Tom Brady seemed like it was just a favour that was being done for both of the future Hall of Famers.

I can’t say I saw this coming.

Gronk turned back the clock with a six-catch, 106-yard performance and looked very good in the process. It was his first 100-yard performance since Week 14 of the 2018 season against the Miami Dolphins.

Since Week 5, Gronkowski has accumulated 28 catches for 417 yards and four touchdowns after a really slow start. This is not the Gronk of old, we understand that, but he’s been serviceable at the tight end position and continues to get looks from his buddy Brady, especially in the red zone.

He has 16 red-zone targets on the season and that is second to only Mike Evans on the team who has 20. By that metric, it’s showing that Gronk is a threat to score every single week in addition to his average of six total targets per game since Week 5.

4. The curious case of Alvin Kamara (and his usage)

We knew that the New Orleans offence was going to change with Taysom Hill at quarterback and not Drew Brees — that much was a given — but I don’t think we saw Kamara becoming an almost non-factor in PPR scoring.

I’m not saying that you can’t be starting Kamara because that’s beyond crazy, but his usage with Hill at quarterback and the re-inserting of Michael Thomas into the lineup has everyone perplexed.

Before we get into these numbers, there’s a chance that all of this could mean nothing because game script in these games could have lent themselves to resting Kamara in favour of a bruiser like Latavius Murray.

Kamara was out-touched 14-13 in the first game with Hill under centre, and then this past week was out-touched 20-12. I will never worry about Murray getting more rushing attempts than Kamara because the latter will make the most of his rushing attempts generally speaking, but the fact that he has one catch in those games is a concern.

Prior to these last two games, Kamara was averaging 7.4 receptions per game with Brees at the helm. We don’t expect Brees to be back before the end of the fantasy playoffs, which could mean trouble for Kamara’s usage in the passing game.

Maybe Jameis Winston is the answer to this problem!

5. King Henry, the sort-of fantasy enigma

Derrick Henry is an absolute monster. There’s no other real way to describe it. He’s big, he’s fast and he may be one of the strongest players across the league, so it’s not really a surprise anymore when he rushes for more than 150 yards and barrels his way into the endzone at an incredible rate.

With all that said, isn’t he one of the hardest players to trade in a fantasy league? It’s a sentiment that has been shared by multiple people who have tried to deal him. You want to have him on your team if you’re an opposing manager, but the price always seems to be one that no one wants to pay.

Admittedly, I’m one of those people that has been offered Henry in trades, but I’ve never pulled a trigger on a deal. I’ve always said I just don’t like him as a running back. Maybe I’m waiting for the wheels to fall off or maybe I’m waiting for defences to just find a way to stop him.

All Henry has done this season is average 23.3 carries for 114.3 yards, 1.3 receptions for 8.5 yards and 1.1 touchdowns. Monster may not have been the appropriate term because that might be underselling him right now.

What was more impressive about his 178-yard, three touchdown performance was who he did it against. The Colts defence has been great all around this year, so it shows just how incredible Henry’s performance has been. Henry has two 100-plus yard games against Indianapolis this year, but other than those the Colts haven’t allowed more than 72 yards to any opposing running back. Some of the running backs that they have faced include Dalvin Cook, Aaron Jones, James Robinson and Kareem Hunt.

Henry is the NFL’s version of Hercules.

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6. Antonio Gibson shows his star power

It seems that we are starting to see an ongoing trend with rookie running backs in that they are starting to get workloads that make them fantasy viable, and Antonio Gibson is no different.

Washington head coach Ron Rivera spoke glowingly about Gibson in the pre-season as a “Christian McCaffrey-type” running back and we all winced at the comparison. While I don’t believe that he has the same talent level as McCaffrey, it certainly looks like he’s going to be able to handle that type of workload.

Over the last three weeks, Gibson has handled at least 17 touches and has rewarded fantasy managers with six total touchdowns. Imagine that running backs are better with more touches – what a concept!

Gibson profiles like David Johnson in terms of body type at six-foot-two, 220 pounds, and as we know is shifty and does catch the ball well out of the backfield. If you drafted Gibson and held on for that potential in redraft leagues, you’re being rewarded with a potential league winner. If you’re in dynasty and keeper leagues where you don’t have him, good luck trying to trade for him.

Gibson, along with D’Andre Swift and J.K. Dobbins, could push themselves into the back end of the first-round conversation for next year’s draft by the end of this season.

7. Now what in Detroit?

There were a lot of things that led to the dismissal of Matt Patricia and Bob Quinn in Detroit, but we don’t need to spend much time on that here.

What we know is that Darrell Bevell is going to be taking over the reins as the interim head coach until the end of the season. How will that affect the Detroit playmakers the rest of the way?

I anticipate that Swift will continue his role as the primary running back who is used in both the run game and the pass game, which we saw before a concussion sidelined him for this past week. In Bevell’s previous stints in Seattle and Minnesota with talented players like Marshawn Lynch and Adrian Peterson, we saw those offences finish in the top-10 in rushing yards and attempts in seven of 12 years. Bevell likes to hand the rock to his bell cow backs.

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As long as Matthew Stafford is healthy, I don’t see too much deviation in the passing game, in part because the defence has been so bad and they’ll have to throw the ball, but also because in Bevell’s tenure (just over a season and a half) in Detroit, the team has ranked 10th (last season) and 11th (this season) in passing touchdowns and 10th (last season) and 13th (this season) in passing yards.

The one player that I believe takes the biggest step forward in an offence that is more in line with Bevell’s previous offences is T.J. Hockenson. We’ve seen him make Visanthe Shiancoe a relevant tight end during his time in Minnesota and also had successful years with Jimmy Graham, which included Graham’s best yards per reception season of his career in 2016.

Maybe now we won’t have to wait until the third quarter of almost every Lions’ game for Hockenson to be relevant.

8. Deebo Samuel puts on a show

Talent has never been the issue with Samuel, but injuries have. With that being said, when he’s healthy, he is one heck of a receiver. He runs angry every time he gets the ball, he creates plenty of yards after catch and he is used literally all over the field in an offence that has a tendency to allow for plenty of explosive plays.

This was all evidenced in Samuel’s 11-catch, 133-yard performance this past weekend against a very good Rams defence that hasn’t allowed much since Week 4. With George Kittle out for the rest of the season, Samuel becomes the focal point of the passing offence alongside Brandon Aiyuk, as both offer similar traits in the passing game. The benefit here is that the 49ers likely won’t be on the positive side of any blowouts, so throwing the ball at a decent clip will have to continue to be in the plans.

In his last three games, Samuel has notched double digit fantasy points in PPR formats with at least five targets and five catches in those games. Not only has he been solid when healthy, but he catches nearly everything that gets thrown his way, with 22 catches on 24 targets in those last three games.

The fantasy schedule is also very promising for Samuel who finishes up with Buffalo, Washington, Dallas and Arizona who have all given up big games to top wide receivers this year.

9. Another rookie running back gets it done

As mentioned with Gibson above, there’s a trend going on around the NFL with talented rookie running backs finally getting to show their worth.

Cam Akers is the newest addition to that list.

There has to be a reason why the Rams selected Akers in the second round after drafting Darrell Henderson in the third round the year before, right? Maybe it’s because he’s a better running back? What a concept!

The Florida State product has a very respectable 4.8 yards per carry this season, but like a lot of his rookie counterparts, he hasn’t been given the type of usage that gives you a ton of confidence in him as a fantasy starter. He’s been given double digit carries just twice this season and has yet to play more than 33 per cent of the team’s snaps in a game.

On Sunday against a very respectable San Francisco defence, Akers showed his ability when he ripped off a 61-yard run and finished with nine carries for 84 yards and a touchdown. It’s that big play ability that should give him more playing time than Henderson or Malcolm Brown, but what do we know?

What’s more curious to me is the lack of usage in the passing game. Akers had 30 receptions last year at Florida State (and maybe out of necessity with the lack of talent on the Seminoles offensive line), but has just three catches this season with the Rams. That workload has fallen in the hands of Henderson and Brown, who have 19 and 13 respectively.

This looks like a complete change in offensive philosophy with Sean McVay, who gave Todd Gurley 81 targets in 2018 resulting in 59 catches. It remains to be seen if this offence goes back to relying heavily on the running backs like years past, but considering the offensive success they had doing that, maybe it might be time to go back to it and let Akers loose.

10. The Weekly “Mike Tolbert Vulture Awards”

Every week those who cheer for chaos (like myself) are rewarded with the non-fantasy starter touchdowns and in a year like 2020 where all we have seen is chaos, this type of fun chaos is very welcomed.

Here are this week’s winners:

C.J. Prosise did have five rushes for 12 yards against the Lions, but did his damage through the air with his one catch for two yards and a touchdown, stealing one from Duke Johnson. It was a very un-Happy Thanksgiving for anyone rostering Johnson with that vulture.

Brandon Powell gets on this list for the second time this season with his two catches for four yards and a touchdown in Atlanta’s thrashing of Las Vegas. That seems like a pretty tidy piece of business for Powell, who has recorded a touchdown every 3.5 catches this season.

Jacoby Brissett is going to be on this list a lot going forward if Philip Rivers is the quarterback in Indianapolis, as evidenced by his four carries for three yards and count ‘em, TWO TOUCHDOWNS. That is a vulture line if I’ve ever seen one.

Adam Shaheen wanted to continue the trend of Miami tight ends grabbing touchdowns, while actual fantasy relevant players watch after his one catch for seven yards went for six. He and Durham Smythe are causing real problems in the vulture community.

Marcedes Lewis has a knack for getting into the endzone, but that doesn’t help anyone in terms of fantasy purposes. The Packers tight end got himself into the endzone on one of his two catches which totalled 16 yards. His season line is pretty incredible with seven catches for 56 yards and three touchdowns.

David Moore is a bit of a vulture himself, but has had some pretty good weeks so I wouldn’t usually consider him for this weekly award, but his line of one rush for one yard and three catches for minus-six yards and a touchdown is literally too chaotic to not have in here. Imagine scoring a touchdown, having no fumbles and still finishing with less than six fantasy points. It’s unheard of.

Don’t forget to check out Matt’s “Love ‘Em, Leave ‘Em” picks for the weekend games on Twitter @MattSN590 every Friday!

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