Input Volatility, Week 10
Game-by-game thoughts
Not going to lie, haven’t been nearly as plugged into fantasy this week as most other weeks, and for those who watch the Ship Chasing streams you know I drank a little bit more than a little bit last night, which means I don’t have great notes on the TNF game other than Ja’Marr Chase was ridiculous. I’ll probably have to go watch that game back before writing everything up on Monday.
Let’s just jump into the games today. As always, I offer these considerations solely because you guys have asked, and because I might have a thought about a different part of a range of outcomes in some cases, relative to what you’re seeing elsewhere. I don’t offer these thoughts because I think they will be explicitly great predictions, and it’s basically just me going game-by-game and throwing out what hits me.
Giants at Panthers
The Giants are what they are. It’s been fascinating how willing they’ve been to go with Tyrone Tracy, a fifth-round rookie who was the 13th player off the board in the actual NFL draft back in April. I’ve caught some flak for sticking too long with guys like Kimani Vidal but it’s always easy to point at cheap bets that don’t pan out as stupid after the fact. With Tracy, there’s a world where those same people are asking, “How could you chase an old rookie (he turns 25 in a couple weeks) with no draft capital who didn’t even play the RB position until two years ago?” And in that world, anyone who had drafted and held Tracy would seem extremely stupid, because you can’t really defend that after it doesn’t hit. Of course, in our world, he has two 20+ PPR games in his past four, and a third game where he rushed for 129 yards just before that. This matchup’s perfect for him to put up another strong day overseas.
Jonathon Brooks’ role in what seems like it might be his first active game is a huge volatility spot. The Chuba Hubbard extension was pretty bad for Brooks’ value, both in dynasty but especially in 2024, where it was an admission they really like Hubbard an want him around. I think we’re also experiencing a necessary rebound in RB contract values, which is good. Even though you can find players like Hubbard inexpensively, teams are willing to pay impact players. Anyway, Brooks probably isn’t ever in the big workload role we were hoping for this year, unless he plays very well right out of the gate and forces that. As for his value the rest of this year, hopefully he does play well in early limited opportunities.
Xavier Legette should get plenty of work again, and then Jalen Coker is the biggest volatility guy, where he’s made the most of his opportunities but it’s not clear how frequent those opportunities will be. One explanation a Signals reader offered was it’s more of an alignment thing, where David Moore is viewed as a traditional X and Legette and Coker are splitting routes somewhat in other roles. It definitely makes it tough to trust Coker in the short term that he was only at 55% routes last week, so he’s been a bench hold in deeper leagues for me where I think there are paths to him being consistently usable but Week 9 made Week 10 tougher.
Patriots at Bears
The Patriots’ pass-catching situation has obviously been pretty volatile all year, but my big volatility note is while Ja’Lynn Polk has sort of been relegated it seems, that’s likely more of a short-term thing and he’ll get another chance in a bigger role again before the end of the year, because high draft picks typically get multiple chances to fail, as we’ve talked about. I’m not saying that will come this week or even in the next few, but I doubt he’s in a bit role through the end of the year. For now, DeMario Douglas and Hunter Henry are the top targets.
There’s always volatility with TEs, and Cole Kmet has just one target in two games since the bye after multiple big weeks before it. I’m not sure at all how he fits into the offense right now, but I continue to think he’s good and given how productive he’s been, they should be using him more. Per the RotoViz AYA App, Caleb Williams has been at his best when targeting Kmet.
Bills at Colts
Keon Coleman is out this week, but Amari Cooper is questionable and could be back, and obviously they could use him. If they are both out, you have to think Khalil Shakir could get more downfield work, or that Dalton Kincaid might be able to have a strong game.
Everything I wrote about Ja’Lynn Polk above applied to Adonai Mitchell, where the role hasn’t been strong right now but I would’ve expected to see his routes tick up by the end of the year. In this case, with Michael Pittman out, you can expect the Colts will use the opportunity to get him quite a bit of work.