Fantasy Football Outlook: Nico Collins, Noah Brown, CJ Stroud, Robert Woods

Hello and welcome to the Week 11 edition of Hoppen to Conclusions! This is where I, Sam Hoppen, will share some of my favorite charts, which are designed to give you an overview of the NFL landscape. These charts, along with the commentary that I provide, aim to help you make start or sit, DFS lineup construction, betting picks, or any other fantasy football decisions. There can be a lot of noise in fantasy football analysis, but these charts have been carefully selected to give you some of the most relevant and useful decision points. Here are all of my fantasy football trends and takeaways for Week 11. Below we dive into a few notable players.

Fantasy Football Trends & Takeaways

Wide Receiver Usage

CJ Stroud has been absolutely phenomenal, but I’d like to shift your focus to the Texans’ wide receivers, who deserve a ton of credit for the way they’re playing. Tank Dell has seen the post-bye rookie bump as he’s averaging four more targets per game in the three games after the bye compared to the five games he played before the bye. He also has his three highest routes per dropback rates of the season in those games and has caught three touchdowns in the past two games. He should be a WR2 in leagues the rest of the way. Robert Woods missed two games following the bye due to injury, but he was at a 66% and 67% routes rate in the two games before the bye and then returned to a season-low 63% in Week 10. That’s likely due to the emergence of Noah Brown, who has exploded for 325 total receiving yards in the past two games. Both Dell and Brown are high-upside receivers who should continue to thrive even when Nico Collins returns to the lineup.
- Action: buy all the Texans receivers except Robert Woods
Ladies and gentlemen, Calvin Ridley and his fantasy managers are down tremendously. Ridley has run a route on 90% of the team’s dropbacks this year (most on the team) but has just a 20% target share (third on the team). This doesn’t tell the whole story, though. Among receivers with at least five games played, Ridley’s 6.8 targets per game average ranks 36th and he’s recorded more than four receptions in just three of his nine games played. Ben Solak of The Ringer wrote earlier this week that “Ridley is one of only two receivers leaguewide to face press coverage on more than 40% of his snaps … [and] he averages half as many yards per route run against press coverage.” If we’re looking for a silver lining, it’s that Ridley faces a Titans team this week that uses press coverage at the 24th-highest rate. You shouldn’t drop Ridley, but he’s become a WR3 with minimal upside.
- Action: bench and hold Calvin Ridley