fantasy football

Week 15 Fantasy Football Rankings Plus Ask Mike

/ by Mike | Leave a comment

This is a post to discuss Week 15 fantasy football rankings. I will update throughout the week as the rankings are posted and changed, typically from Wednesday through Sunday morning.

Plus, feel free to ask your own fantasy football questions in the comments. Waivers, free agent add/drops, trades (although I am not a big trader), and start/sit are all fair game. I’ll try to answer as quickly as I can.

Didit Video Chat

Let me start by posting this again from Sunday. If anyone wants to talk one-to-one about the week 15 fantasy football rankings, waivers or start/sit decisions for their fantasy team, check this out:

Rankings Posted Wednesday

Another nice week last week! That is two in a row. Finished second for Week 13 in the FantasyPros Accuracy Competition. Last week, finished first! Did particularly well at RB (#3) and WR (#2), while TE was not good (#125). I blame Foster Moreau and the whole Las Vegas Raiders team for getting us off to an absolutely terrible start on Thursday. And I was not in on Evan Engram. Certainly happy with the overall results. Let’s keep it rolling through the playoffs.

Week 15 fantasy football rankings are up. The initial rankings I mostly use for waivers. Plugging in the league_id for my leagues on MyFantasyLeague.com, Sleeper, or Fantrax, highlights the rostered players to identify free agent acquisition targets. If you ever notice a player not marked correctly then let me know. It probably means the player_id for that player isn’t matched in my database.

Preliminary Rankings Commentary

Here are a handful of thoughts from last week and for the preliminary rankings.

  • I thought the quarterback injuries were bad the week before. Have we ever seen so many backup QB come into the game due to injury or other weirdness as last week? I need to check this. Baker Mayfield, Joe Flacco (x2), Jeff Driskel, Tyrod Taylor, Anthony Brown, Mitchell Trubisky, Brett Rypien, Josh Johnson, and Colt McCoy. Murderer’s row of QB talent that is. So more than a quarter of teams played more than one QB last week. Lovely.
  • Beyond the QB position, Tee Higgins played one snap. That hurts. Rhamondre Stevenson and DJ Moore left their respective games on the early side.
  • We think we know the health status of all of these players but it is tricky, and we don’t know as much as we think in some cases. Who trusted Mike Williams to return from injury so well? Remember the last time he returned, he quickly re-injured himself. All we can do is try to make educated guesses from the information available. Weigh the probabilities of different outcomes, decide the proper course of action, and hope for the best.
  • One of my worst comments last week had to be knocking Trevor Lawrence, who then went out and finished QB1 against the Titans. On the opposite end, Travis Etienne disappointed. He didn’t receive a single target. The Jaguars play the Cowboys this week, and the Cowboys underwhelmed against the Texans. Note to self, spend more time reviewing this game.
  • I felt Amon-Ra St. Brown would be a locked in Top 5 WR for the rest of the season, but you know what I didn’t like about Jared Goff’s big game last week? Spread the ball around too much. He’s using DJ Chark, Jameson Williams, Josh Reynolds, and even Kalif Raymond, plus a handful for the running backs. Amon-Ra, WR11 in prelim rankings.
  • I’m probably too low on James Conner, Isiah Pacheco, and maybe Brian Robinson to start the week. Perhaps too high on Alvin Kamara, Saquon Barkley, Stevenson (injured), and Joe Mixon. This is a tough time of year starting a more unheralded option over the name guy.

Keep checking in throughout the week to Sunday morning for ranking changes and updates here. Hit me up with questions in the comments, and I’d be happy to answer them.

Thursday Update

Going through each game, it is weird that even with more information on teams at Week 15 of the season, can feel less certain in some spots given injuries, match ups, and motivations. I hope to not get caught expecting more from some weak teams to be competitive and they end up getting blown out. Seahawks and Colts are the first two examples.

49ers-Seahawks

Look through the game log for each of these teams, and they really haven’t had a very tough schedule. 49ers have won six straight, five by double-digits, but a fading Bucs squad, a “losing it’s way” Dolphins team that refused to run, Saints, Cards, Rams. Ugly. Seahawks not much better, and they’ve been up and down, and fading defensively the last month.

Seahawks run defense is performing poorly, but it looks a bit overblown from the Josh Jacobs 300+ yard overtime game. I moved Christian McCaffrey and his testy knee down from #1 RB to #3. Jordan Mason up considerably to RB32. The 49ers want to get in and out of this game with a win and as unscathed by injury as possible.

49ers defense is strong, obviously. Geno Smith is highly motivated to make the playoffs. If this game goes the Seahawks way early, it will be because of a successful passing game for the most part. If this game goes the 49ers way early, Smith should pass a lot. Hard to move Kenneth Walker up much higher than where I’ve got him at RB21. That is higher than consensus, actually. Off some rest, and even catching passes out of the backfield, he is capable of doing okay.

Colts-Vikings

Here is another game where last we remember the Colts, they lost by 35 (!!!) to the Cowboys. Will the Vikings blow out the Colts? Not so fast. The Colts are coming off their bye to try to right the ship a bit. And interesting enough, the Vikings lost by 37 to the Cowboys back in Week 11. Certainly the Vikings have more on the line for this season, are and should be favored. But maybe it is closer than we would otherwise think. Shootout potential?

The Vikings secondary is bad. That supported an uptick for Matt Ryan and the receivers. I wonder if there is too much separation between Parris Campbell and Alec Pierce. Pierce out-targeted Campbell twice in the last four games, but the games he didn’t, Pierce was invisible. I like Johnathan Taylor in this spot, even though statistically the Vikings are good against the run. They weren’t Weeks 11-13, and a rested Taylor helps him redeem a below expectations season.

Vikings side, nothing too out of the ordinary here. Jefferson WR1, again. Kirk Cousins QB10. Dalvin Cook is tough to figure out why he isn’t performing better this season. Pushed him down a little but still Top 10 weighing opportunity, talent, and match up (potentially positive game script if this one does get away from the Colts). I could almost put the Tier 2 TE in any order, and T.J. Hockenson is in that group at TE6.

Another Thursday Update

Thursday Night Football kickoff is only a few hours away, so I cleaned up the rankings, removing some players who appear to be (at this time) on the wrong side of questionable. Took out Rhamondre Stevenson (added Damien Harris), Treylon Burks, Corey Davis, Jakobi Meyers, and DeVante Parker. Three Patriots, that’s not good. Might need a Mac Jones downgrade.

Players I’m still not sure suspect of them playing this week but are in the rankings for now include Jeff Wilson, Tee Higgins, DJ Moore, and Julio Jones.

Sunday Morning Update

Light on commentary this week as there is a lot going on here. Rankings are continually updated through inactives. Good luck all!

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