Is Jonnu Smith a Trustworthy TE1? | Week 12 Fantasy Football Quarterback and Tight End Rankings and Tiers: Studs, Sleepers, and Must-Starts (Ep. 1457)

Published Nov 21, 2024, 11:00 AM

Chris Welsh and Pat Fitzmaurice are here breaking down Week 12’s most interesting rankings and highlighting the expert consensus for Week 12. Tune in to hear them deliver key insights on CJ Stroud, Justin Herbert, Will Dissly, TJ Hockenson, and many more! Which players will win your matchup? Don't miss our deep dive into this week's rankings, must-start options, and value plays to dominate your fantasy matchup! 

Timestamps (May be off due to ads)

Intro - 0:00:00
My Playbook App - 0:00:28
QB Rankings - 0:04:33
Justin Herbert - 0:05:15
Jordan Love - 0:07:49
CJ Stroud - 0:10:55
Matthew Stafford - 0:12:51
TE Rankings - 0:14:05
TJ Hockenson - 0:14:56
Will Dissly - 0:16:40
Jonnu Smith vs. Tucker Kraft vs. Dallas Goedert - 0:19:15
Weekly Start/Sit Livestream - 0:21:15
Outro - 0:21:38

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Welcome back, friends. This is Fantasy Pros, the Fantasy Football podcast. I'm Chris Wels. That is Pat fitz Morrison. Today we've got quarterbacks and we've got tight end ranks for Week twelve. We'll be breaking down what the top twelve on Fantasy Pros ECR looks like for both of those positions and digging a little bit on some of our favorite plays, especially quarterbacks, some outside the top twelve plays. Thank you, guys, as always for hanging out. Make sure you guys are subscribed to the YouTube channel if you're listening on the pod or if you're on the YouTube, go to the podcast and make sure you check out all of our great tools over on Fantasy Pros. Get my playbooks, sink your league, get that advice. It's just about the playoff crunch. It's still a really important crunch here with bipocalypse happening this week, and you can get personalized information or right for your team when you sink your league, optimize lineups, top pickups. And I know trade deadlines are done, but we had the trade to analyze your that was out there saying which trade you could do.

But you still got waiver.

Assistant through the rest of the way through. So go and check out my playbook. It's not too late to sink your leagues plus on fantasy pros. On those We've got amazing tools out there. Are they going to play? Will they sit? You've got everything under the sun, So go and check it out today. Mister Pat Fitzmore, is you ready to talk about some quarterbacks and some tight ends?

I am.

Well, let me ask do you always go with bipocalypse or do you ever go with by mcgeddon.

Oh, I'm a bipocalypse guy. I think I've referenced that on our rank shows this week a couple times. But we do have to do buy mcgeddon right.

I'll mix in a by mcgeddon now and again, But I'm mostly by apocalypse.

I was about to say, are you a by geddon type of guy? I'm bipocalypse just flows it feels really nice, Yeah, it does. I wish we would not have them.

I don't know.

No one wants to apocalypse or bipocacy.

Yes, it's nicer to say the word than it is to actually experience it.

And I have to deal with this.

Especially when it's crunch time in all our leagues and not having players from six teams available to us is always a little maddening this late in the year.

It's sound like a little I think it's super man to have six in week twelve. When didn't we have like a week in the middle where there was none and then we had one week where there was two. It's we should have a concerted effort the NFL we row week we should there should be this concerted effort to get this done before the teams or Week twelve should be the final week. You're going to lose Derek Henry if you have them in week fourteen, which is crazy. I know they're not catering to fantasy football or anything like that, but I would think it would be pretty easy that you get this thing done by week somewhere between week ten and twelve. And also it's kind of an advantage for teams not fantasy, but you know Ravens to have a bye week in week fourteen and then what do you have three more regular season weeks. I mean, that's a that is I just don't see the point of that week ten, Week eleven, week twelve. Maximum these buys should be done.

Yeah, it's not like the nineteen nineties where the NFL tried to ignore fantasy football, like they realize it is a driver of interest in their product and for them to sort of not accommodate fantasy and like, does it really help the teams to have buys this late in the season. Don't you want most of the teams on their buys in the middle of the season.

It makes a lot of sense.

But yeah, obviously for us for practical purposes having bye weeks when as you mentioned Welsh FFPC, like this is the last week the regular season. The scott Fish Bowl playoffs start this week. I mean, I mean, yeah, it's gonna be if it's a blood bat.

Yet that's a blood bat the playoffs to start on bipocalypse with six out. It's nothing we can do about it, and more important to you know, stay attuned to waivers and the streams and also to our live streams by the way, so you know we can help you guys out there the tools my playbook. But like it put a pen in a reminder of really paying attention to the bye weeks and the scheduling when you're putting your rosters together, you know, I mean, sometimes you can't let it like you want to let take you off of Derrick Henry because he's going to be in Week fourteen. You don't want to be like, well, now want to draft him when he has been how he is. But it is something to pay attention to. I have one of my I think it's my FFPC team, that both of them look like they're locked to a playoff run Week fourteen, which is the championship round of FFPC. I swear to god, six of my guys are on by and it just happened to be that way that I've got this massive bye week happening in the championship and it's just, you know, we're limiting here. It's a brutal blow dealing with these playoffs, but it does create a lot of big questions and it pushes that to the quarterbacks and the tight ends. So let's talk about the quarterbacks. Here's your big board for the top twelve this week. When we take a look, We've got Jalen Hurts as the number one, Lamar Jackson at too, so at least we've got the core here at one. Two, Jayden Daniels, justin Herbert Kyler Murray. You're not hearing Josh Allen because part of my Apocalypse coming in at six, Jared Goff, Bo Nicks, Patrick Mahomes, Brock Purty, Baker Mayfield, Gino Smith, and Tua comes in at twelve, going up against New England. Two quarterbacks have a five star rating this week, that is Patrick Mahomes and Baker Mayfield according to Fantasy Pro's matchup ratings. And there's a couple of fours in there as well, that's at the tippy top. Let me ask you just really quickly, we don't put like a hyper focus on the Node Brainer dull quarterbacks. Justin Herbert comes in at four this week on ECR and I know he's played phenomenal and I know it's a great matchup against the Baltimore secondary, But does it feel it all a little russy last week where Russ was like six or seven, and it's like we're starting Russ over like absolutely, I mean not all we, but people are starting Russ over some big quarterbacks. I think Russ was going in someone bench Patrick Mahomes and the Discord Show for Russell Wilson. Do you would all think maybe Herbert at four feels like that if people are really gonna bench, you know, Patrick Mahomes or brock Purdy or anything like that, or is this the play because of the Baltimore secondary.

I think this is right Welsh, because the Pittsburgh offense is the leopard that's gonna change its spots. They're going to run the ball, even if it's against this pass funnel Ravens defense. The Steelers still ran the ball very aggressively. That's just who the Steelers are on offense, and they're not gonna get away from that. I think we've seen more of a sea change with this Chargers offense, like it's been a little more flexible. Like early in the season, they were very run focused and we saw Justin Herbert average like what one hundred and fifty passing yards or something over their first four games. They've really loosened the reins on Herbert and he's running the ball more aggressively lately too. So all of a sudden, it's just been this bonanza and we're letting.

We're seeing the Chargers.

Let Herbert be Herbert, and he is reminding us of what an incredibly talented guy he is with the way he can spin the football and put it in tight windows and use that mobility and speed. I know way back when wels in Justin Herbert's final college football game of his career, he ran all over my Wisconsin Badgers in the rose ball Like. He didn't beat us with his arm, he beat us with his legs in that game. And we're seeing some of both now. It's been pretty glorious.

And also i'd also say, if you want to have like a tie into this, if you haven't, the wide receiver rank show would probably be important because we have a heavy conversation about Lad McConkey and Quinton Johnston and that probably plays that role into this. But Justin Herbert probably the most eye opening of the ranks this week. The bye week's also playing a role. And if you guys jumping up, you know bo Nick's phenomenal matchup against the Raiders. He comes in at seven. I like that one. And you know, getting Baker Mayfield back in the top ten if he has Mike Evans back, is really key. But let's talk about a couple quarterbacks that did not make the top twelve that you might have some thoughts on, one of which is Jordan Love. Jordan Love is actually in your top twelve for this week. You've got him at twelve. Against the forty nine ers, his ECR pushes him outside of the top twelve.

Really like this.

As I mentioned in a previous show, if Nick but they said Nick Bosa has a chance to play. I don't think he does, and that takes away a heavy part of the pass rush. Noted in that forty nine Er game, the completion rate when Nick Bosa was out of the game was ridiculous and Gino Smith they were just getting stuff done as soon as Nick Bosa was knocked out. So I think that vodes very well for Jordan Love. I one thing we do on our Discord, we have a Discord podcast we do live podcasts. Out of Bounds is a Monday show two pm Eastern live on Fantasy Pros, Discord, fantasypros dot Com, slash Chat, myself, Bogman, and Piece of Pia. We did this game called the three to one one. We pick a three hundred yard passer, one hundred yard rusher, and one one hundred yard receiver. I took Jordan Love this week for the passer because I think he is going to slang on the forty nine ers because their secondary has continuously been their issue and if Ward is out, even better all of this preamble, I am setting you up to say I'm in agreement with you on Jordan Love probably needing to be a bit higher, though you have noted you know, the passing, touchdowns and a little bit in question, but talk anything through more. Jordan Love is a top twelve quarterback for you this week.

Yeah.

Well, while she laid out the reasons why I think the forty nine ers are maybe not that difficult to match up, not an easy matchup, but not a difficult one sort of neutral, I would say we've just seen big swings in touchdown variants for Jordan Love, and I think that sort of explains why maybe ECR is cooler on him this week than I am. Over his first five games, he threw fifteen touchdown passes.

Three a game.

He wasn't going to keep up that torrid pace all season. Well, he certainly hasn't. He's thrown one touchdown pass in his last three games. He's not going to be slumping like this all season, So you know, I would expect the touchdown expectation for him against the forty nine ers to be somewhere around one and a half or two. And yeah, I just the dude's averaging two hundred and sixty passing yards a game, like he is going to get his yards. He got him last week even though he threw fewer than twenty pass against the Bears, still one up with two hundred and sixty one yards. Wilsh like, I fundamentally still feel pretty good about Jordan Love.

I am not looking at your ranks of these top twelve quarterbacks that are on ECR, who got who was kicked out for you? If you're able to identify that, is it like to a Gino Baker who got kicked out of the top twelve for you? For Jordan Love?

Geno is one spot lower?

Okay, I mean I just we haven't we haven't seen a lot out of Gino really as a passer lately.

Also, worst star rating matchup rating according to Fantasy Pros in the top twelve. It's a B minus start sit grade but a two star matchup rating against the Arizona Cardinals for Genos.

And we and we know Geno's not going to you know, bail out fantasy managers with his running most weeks. But I don't think we want to talk about that more.

While yeah, I was about to say yeah, most weeks except last week. They sure did. That was pretty critical. Definitely moving on a quarterback that you do not like this week, maybe relative to consent is CJ. Stroud, And I think you've kind of been on this train for a little bit. I have a blind eye to ce J Stroud every week. I just want to be higher on him because I think he's a massively like talented, super smart quarterback. But it's just not coming into play with being able to get I mean, you know, Nico like a low line this week. At least he got him back.

You've got c J.

Stroud at seventeen. This is really signifying you want to make almost any other play, you might be better streaming. There's probably better streaming quarterbacks than twelve QB leagues for people this week than c J Stroud.

Yeah.

I think a lot of people just thought that the return of Nico Collins was going to magically transform Stroud back into like a no brainer quarterback one. And for me, the bigger concern is his offensive line. Like Nico certainly helps, but this offensive line is still a mess. And I don't think Stroud is fundamentally worse than he was in his outstanding rookie season. Well, he was due for some statistical regress in some categories that was inevitable. But I don't think it helps that Stroud has been under constant duress for like the last five weeks, with this pass rush constantly getting to him. He's probably just not feeling as comfortable in the pocket as he was feeling last season when he was just dealing all year. So it's kind of showing with the numbers. Two touchdown passes in his last five games, two hundred and ten passing yards per game over that span, a fifty six point eight percent completion percentage yards per attempt is under seven. So it's just a drop off that I think we can contribute to the poor protection he's been getting.

All I could think when you were doing that was the Simpsons, like stop it, he's already dead, just like beating it down, like all right, we got it is.

It's bad.

It's really rough. It makes me sad.

One more quarterback.

Let's talk about You're a little bit higher I think than consensus on Matthew Stafford, who you know, on paper has a tough matchup against Philly, but you know Pooka and Cooper Cup have just kind of revived that. The revived that offense and revived Stafford. What has you putting Matthew Stafford inside that top fifteen of QB and starting him oversee j strout.

The fact that he has Pukinakua and Cooper Cup back that makes all the difference watch. Since getting those two guys back from injuries, Stafford has thrown ten touchdown passes in four games, and his yardage totals in those four games two seventy nine, two ninety eight, two ninety three to ninety five, like he is constantly throwing for like big chunksy yardage and all game long.

Like.

Two of those games were actually pretty tough matchups against Miami and Minnesota. Didn't get a touchdown against Miami, but we remember that Thursday night game against the Vikings two hundred and seventy nine yards, four touchdown passes. I know the Eagles pass defense has been terrific lately, and that has become like a matchup to sort of yeah, kind of a matchup to Dread lately quite quite honestly, but I all always feel good about Stafford when he has both Puka and Kop at his disposal.

There you go, let's talk about some tight ends. A lot of quarterback questions in there. Remember that live stream that we got going on. I'll tell you about at the end of the show if you've got more quarterback questions and you might have some tight end questions. So let's get up the big board here. The top twelve at tight end for week twelve is Travis Kelce coming in at number one, Brock Bauers at two, Trey McBride, George Kittle, David and Joku. That's your top five, cade Aughton, will Disley, t J. Hawkinson, Hunter, Henry John Newsmith, Dallas Goddard, and Tucker Kraft. That rounds out your top twelve pretty good. This seems about right too, by the way, as far as like the weirdness of tight end, those core guys in the middle, there's some big questions. Are the core guys at the top, the solid guys that are bumped up in the bottom, and then there's some like core middle questions. So pretty much the first two questions are going to sent around that middle area.

T J.

Hawkinson though ECR eight, you've got him at twelve. I think we all have this really high expectation that he's going to like really really get going. We're not quite seeing it did not happen last week, and we were having tons of questions over the last three or four days about like, you know what Taysom mills on buy, but what he did? Who would you rather have rest of season? Taysom Hill or TJ Howkinson. I'm just not sure that Hawkinson is going to be involved in that range where he looks any different than John of Smith at this point, and I don't think that makes him a tear above. But what say you? Your rank maybe kind of signifies it. Maybe you'll agree with me, but we are more hyper focused obviously on week twelve here you've got him barely scratching in at top tight end twelve. What say you on TJ Howkinson?

I'm worried about the usage, and it's probably to the Vikings credit that they are bringing him back in sort of a It's been a slow roll out for Hockinson and he suffered a pretty catastrophic injury less than a year ago, so I totally get it.

He's not playing a lot of snaps.

His snaphare has been between forty five percent and forty eight percent in each of his first three games back, so it seems like they're putting a cap of like fifty percent snaps on him. And following that pretty religiously, fellow Vikings tight end Josh Oliver has more snaps than Hockinson over those three games, and in fact, since Hockinson has come back, Welsh Josh Oliver is tight end fourteen in Fantasy points per game. Hockinson is tight end twenty three. So the matchup with the Bears is really no better than average, possibly below average matchup. So I'm just not that enthusiastic this week about.

Hawk One thing that really jumps out and this guy ranks higher than Hawkinson this week, and also to me, tells that story when you get back to that like Taysom Hill conversation and you're trying to battle between like who are the guys that who's the core players? And then where the line starts. I really think the line kind of starts between like five or six, you know this week in Djoku and Auten are there, but number seven, those are the guys we're talking about. Will Disley. Will Disley comes in at seven versus Baltimore. We have had a cross shows. We've talked a bunch in the ranks about you know, just the secondary of Baltimore and what makes Justin Herbert so interesting. We've seen an uptick over the last two games in Will Disley, and I think a lot of people are starting to think, you know this. I don't know how they get everybody involved, and I don't know if Will Disley has as much of a ceiling as people are making it out to be, but I think you know what the game plan is going to be against Baltimore's passing the ball. Will Disley has seen enoughtick in targets. Do you buy Will Disley as a top I mean he's seven in here. Do you buy him as a top ten tight end? And over TJ. Hawkinson?

I do. I've got Disley.

Let's see if I have him seven or eight. So I'm pretty much right with the ECR on this one. Whils I have got Disley tight end eight against Baltimore.

Not a bad matchup at all.

And in fact, I think out of all the tight ends like Disley might have the best rest of season schedule of anyone. And it's funny this guy has been through the injury ringer throughout his career. He has had like a bunch of injuries, some of them pretty catastrophic, and he keeps coming back. And I don't know if if Will Disley ran the forty today, I'm not sure he could break five to two. And yet this dude just keeps finding seams and getting open and making plays, and Justin Herbert seems to really like him as his security blanket. Like the backs in this offense don't catch a lot of passes, Disley is sort of the security blanket dump off guy here, and yeah, I'm buying it, Welsh Like, I think Disley is a very playable streaming type tight end. But the thing is he keeps getting these great matchups and you can pretty much stream him through the rest of the season.

And he fully represents if you don't have the core guys, the Kittles, the McBride's, the Bowers, Yan Joku's Aughten. Well to see if anything changes with Mike Evans there, but Aughton kind of is maybe like the next He's if those were the one a's, there's like a one be of Auten and then the world opens up, and I think what people are saying is I will take the matchup in the short sample size to put Will Disley in at a very high level, and he is being ranked over guys like Hawkinson, Hunter Henry and this last one as far as tight end goes, I want to ask you, We're gonna get you a three way match here, John news Smith, Dallas Goddard and Tucker Kraft. That is ten eleven and twelve. Kraft has got the San Francisco forty nine ers, Goddard has got the Rams, and John new Smith has got the Patriots. But that is actually ranked out is the worst matchup of those three. Who's your favorite and how do you rank them?

John U ten, Goddard thirteen, Craft fourteen jet. I think John WU is a big part of the Dolphins to a preservation plan. It just seems like they want the ball out of two his hands quickly, and that favors John U at the expense of Tyreek Hill and Jalen Waddle.

Like you know, there aren't we.

Can't count on those plays every week, where like last week where people forgot that John new Smith was on the field and he was wide open and there was no one within forty yards of him, and he scored this long touchdown. But yeah, I mean like he is getting a pretty like the sort of usage we can hang our hats on Welsh and that was kind of always the issue with John who like this is the first time in his career really he's gotten that and I think he's trustworthy.

Goddard's the guy, like I don't know.

He's averaged nine point one half point PPR points per game in his first two games back from injury, but he's done it on eight targets. I know the matchup against the Rams looks pretty good. They've allowed the sixth most fantasy points to tight ends, but the Eagles just aren't throwing very much.

They're the run heaviest team in the league.

And Goddard chairs targets with AJ Brown and Davante Smith.

It's a tough one. There's some tough tight end questions there, but John hu taking the cake there and he's the tight end, or at least a tight end one where Goddard and Tuckercraft do not. For Pat fitz Morris, Oh those tight end questions, those quarterback streamers, they're all there for you. And I know there are a ton more that we probably toed around, didn't quite hit.

Well.

Guess what you can come and ask those questions right here Thursday, three pm Eastern where we do our start and sit question live stream. Make sure go to YouTube dot com slash Fantasy Pros. Make sure you are following us and you can either put notifications on specific shows like that one or just put overall notification And anytime we have any of these videos drop, you will be locked in. Friends. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Quarterbacks and tight end rankings for week twelve For Pat Fitzmorris, I'm Chris Welsh. Good luck in your week twelve and we'll talk to you next time right here on Fantasy Pros.

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