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Week 13 preview: Giants-Steelers could make or break playoff spots

Michael Salfino

Let’s preview this week’s NFL action by first focusing on the games that are expected to produce the most real and fantasy points before I go around the league to highlight the key players we should be watching and why. An important note every week: check the player’s status. There is so much injury uncertainty and Friday’s practice, which occurs after this is posted, is key.

[Week 13 rankings: Overall | FLEX | QB | RB | WR | TE | DEF | K]

Lions at Saints (O/U: 53.5): This is going to be a fun game. The Saints might have an extra win if they didn’t bench Mark Ingram ($22 but make sure he’s active), who leads the NFL in yards per carry on first down (5.95). First down is the most important down in football and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. This is obviously a great spot for Matthew Stafford ($33), but to whom will he throw? It’s a pretty diversified attack with only Anquan Boldin’s ($19) role seemingly consistent, and second-level at that. Marvin Jones ($19) is top 10 in the NFL at depth of target, but that makes him a boom-or-bust wideout. And Golden Tate’s ($19) short targets and lack of red zone dominance makes him suited more to PPR-heavy formats. But any (or all) of them plus Boldin can pop this week; it’s just not something you can confidently predict. Brandin Cooks ($25) had zero targets this week and that likely accrues in his favor this week; I’d be petrified if I was playing against him. Get him in your daily lineup, with Drew Brees ($40).

Redskins at Cardinals (O/U: 49.5): Kirk Cousins ($29) is on a 5,200-yard passing pace (640 attempts). Yet people still give him a ho-hum ranking, even for the rest of the season. Here’s what I told Scott Pianowski on The Breakfast Table Podcast this week: Any QB who is on pace for 600-plus attempts and who has a YPA over 8.0 in Week 13 is a top five QB FULL STOP. Now you want to rank him sixth or seventh, who cares. It means you’re playing him. But making a QB with such elite volume and efficiency a borderline weekly starter is just bad process. David Johnson ($41) has 11 straight games with 100-plus-yards from scrimmage to start the season and only one other back has ever matched or exceeded that: Edgerrin James (twice). Larry Fitzgerald ($26) is a top 10 wideout this year in fantasy. Remember Fitz runs mostly out of the slot and Josh Norman doesn’t like to go there. Play no one else on the Cards though.

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Giants at Steelers (O/U: 49): Home Ben Roethlisberger ($32) is almost always great. Road Ben salvaged a game-managing outing with three TD passes last week in Indy. This game should be wide open. The Giants are a dangerous team because Odell Beckham Jr. ($31) is unstoppable. But risking injury to him on punt returns is so dumb. Eli Manning apologized to Sterling Shepard ($15) for no passes last week so expect about 8-10 targets to Shepard in Pittsburgh. He’s a sneaky play. I think the market is ahead of itself on Ladarius Green ($11), who has that Christine Michael/Jeff Janis thing going where the production lags the love, badly. Yes, I know he had 60-plus yards last week. But I need to see more than two catches before I roster him in do or die.

Notes

— Matchups are a tier-tiebreaker, period. They should not be used radically. But Allen Robinson ($18) is tricky because what tier is he even in with such a bad QB? No way is he first tier like we thought. Second? Third? I’d play Marquess Wilson ($16) over him even though Wilson’s numbers are inflated by 54 attempts by Matt Barkley that will not repeat. Barkley actually looked competent, but Wilson’s market share was 20%. So is that going to be just seven targets this week, tops? Probably. My rule is that you never move a lower-tier player above a higher one because of matchups, but I am dying to bench Robinson this week.

— No one talks about yards per point, which is always 15-something yards per point every year, league wide. The Chiefs are requiring their opponents to gain nearly 20 yards per point though. The Falcons are the most efficient offense in this regard (fewest yards per point). What gives? The Chiefs, of course.

— Aaron Rodgers ($38) completed three of six deep passes last week. That’s helpful. He still leads the NFL in average target depth of incompletion though. So any YPA resurgence is going to require that he finds open guys downfield. I think Rodgers’ TDs are not as likely to regress given his pedestrian YPA as it would be in the other 9 out of 10 cases. But I’d still like to see that number climb if I owned him.

— Colin Kaepernick ($32) is a top 12 QB easily. Why are we fighting this. This should not even be a controversy. I said that here and on the podcast and on Twitter (@michaelsalfino) four weeks ago, and I don’t deserve any props because it’s just so obvious that a guy you project for 60 yards rushing and who is playing on an aggressive-pace team with a terrible defense has a 20-point floor.

— For the rest of the season, two guys outside the top 12 quarterbacks in consensus industry ranks — Dak Prescott and Kaepernick — should be in and Russell Wilson ($36) and Cam Newton ($30) should be out.

— Michael Crabtree ($23) and Amari Cooper ($31) have a lot of difficulty having success in the same game. And who has success seems largely random. It’s odd that an MVP candidate QB can’t support two receivers. I think it’s because of how they are deployed — both deep downfield (11.9 and 14.0 depth of target, respectively). They really don’t complement each other, with one focusing short and intermediate and the other intermediate and long, as is the case with many tandems.

— Jameis Winston ($33) and Mike Evans ($35) are hurt because coach Dirk Koetter throws the passing game out the window in the fourth quarter with the lead. They are the most run-heavy team in football in this situation. This helps Doug Martin ($18) a lot if the Bucs keep winning.