Welcome to Week 12 of the 2024 National Football League season. If you're a full-season fantasy football manager, we've got some good news and some bad news.
If you're a DFS player, same.
And if you're both, we're sending prayers.
Welcome to Byemageddon, a week of massive upheaval as six teams will be doing whatever they do on their weeks off while everyone else, us included, grinds it out toward the holidays and impending fantasy playoffs. That, paired with the standard array of injuries that always seem to surface this time of year, certainly makes it an interesting week for fantasy and DFS combatants.
That's the bad news. So what's good?
With six teams out and a billion injuries, at least we wont' have as many tough lineup decisions to make. For those of you who do have difficult decisions to ponder, kudos to you. That means you've put in the time and effort necessary to be competitive under any circumstances. For those who are in that situation, we'd also venture to guess that their teams are still in the running for the postseason.
Hopefully, that's where most of us are as we head into the Week 12 main Sunday slate, and at least for the DFS players, having six teams sitting out means it will take less time to put in the work necessary to build winning lineups. That doesn't necessarily make the DFS lineup decisions any easier, but at least it cuts the workload a little.
Of course, with injuries and byes we also are presented with new names and faces to consider. But as we've written here before, a starting opportunity doesn't necessarily equate to starter production. The key in these situations, for DFS at least, is to determine which of the lower-priced players will outproduce their price tags and provide us with an opportunity to load up with more top-tier players who also are likely to outproduce their salaries.
For full-season managers, we always suggest avoiding these players in most cases unless, of course, you have a Byemegeddon emergency. If that's the situation, plugging in an Ameer Abdullah against a tough Broncos defense is absolutely fine.
As more important divisional games ramp up in the final weeks of the season - and as weather becomes colder and more unpredictable - many player performances decline. This may have nothing to do with how the players are actually performing, but instead is a result of the circumstances they face. In a world of recency bias and knee-jerk reactions, more casual and cynical fans may turn their backs on players they otherwise might otherwise plug in without thinking after a few weeks of lower production.
As they say, one person's trash is another person's treasure.
If we can take advantage of this tendency, there are games to be won and money to be made. In some full-season leagues we've grabbed players such as Anthony Richardson. Jaylen Waddle, Jerry Jeudy, Taysom Hill, Justin Herbert and Michael Pittman off the waiver-wire trash heap. Every one of those players has either helped us win games or money or will in the future.
Richardson, Herbert, Waddle and Pittman are worthy of consideration in all formats this week. Jeudy has emgered as wither WR 1A or 1B in Cleveland and is seeing double-digit targets most weeks. Hill had an explosive all-around performance last week. And Pittman is an immensely talented receiver who had a big season last year and has seen 15 targets over the last two weeks with Richardson at the helm for the Colts.
Jayden Daniels is another player many folks have soured on for no real reason other than the bogus media narratives that are pushed on us every week. Three weeks ago everyone was saying that he was a lock for Offensive Rookie of the Year and a possible MVP candidate. Now, after suffering a rib injury and facing two of the top defenses in football, those same people are telling us that the league has figured him and Kliff Kingsbury's system out and that he has a long way to go. Any MVP talk, they say, is preposterous at this point - as if they never mentioned that possibility to begin with.
Good. Good. More for you and me. I'm going to a fantasy football fire sale and you're coming with!
Since most fantasy football participants use these types of media narratives when making their weekly lineup decisions, that gives us an opportunity to take advantage of the misinformation.
Daniels has some of the top matchups in fantasy football the next two weeks as the reeling Dallas Cowboys and Tennessee Titans head to DC, with the New Orleans Saints, Falcons and Cowboys on the horizon beyond that. Washington still is in the hunt for the NFC East title, especially considering the upcoming schedule, and would be in the playoffs if the postseason began today.
The rookie has far outperformed anyone reasonable expectations thus far, despite the difficult past few weeks, and his team is far better than anyone could have predicted. This may not be the Commanders' year in terms of making a deep playoff run, but next year might be, and every game Daniels wins and every situation he faces provides a learning experience that speeds up his development. A playoff game or two would be enormous for him and the Washington franchise in terms of establishing a winning culture and fast-forwarding the organization's return from the depths to NFL prominence.
Not only is Daniels facing a prime matchup against Dallas this week - and other teams in future weeks, for all the full-season managers out there - but he is in a situation where his coaches want to get him back on track and build his confidence. The Commanders need to win the games they should win to lock up a postseason berth and stay in the division race.
There are six games left, with a bye also looming in Week 14 for Washington. The Commanders push for the postseason begins Sunday, and they will need their prize rookie franchise QB hitting on all cylinders for the team to maximize its potential. He will be given every opportunity to succeed, and head coach Dan Quinn will do everything in his power to send a message to the Dallas team he used to coach.
Jayden Daniels is the highest-priced player on the board this week for a reason. We can let the price, the media narratives and his subpar performances against really good teams push us in a different direction this week in DFS and full-season, or we can see that he has best matchup, the highest floor and the highest ceiling of any QB on the slate and take full advantage of that while others ignore him.
The choice is ours, but not playing him in full-season and not trying him in at least one DFS lineup would be a huge mistake.
Below please find our suggested pool of players for this week's DFS lineups. As always, it is based on the FanDuel main Sunday slate but is transferrable to most other platforms:
Pay-up Quarterbacks
Jayden Daniels
Jaylen Hurts
Volume Value Quarterbacks
Patrick Mahomes
Tua Tagovailoa
Geno Smith
Bo Nix
Jared Goff
Baker Mayfield
Best Value Quarterback
Anthony Richardson
Pay-up Running Backs
De'Von Achane
Joe Mixon
Core Running Backs
Brian Robinson
Kareem Hunt
James Conner
Value Volume Running Backs
Rhamondre Stevenson
Josh Jacobs
Bucky Irving
Value RB2/Flex
Tyrone Tracy
Austin Ekeler
Ameer Abdullah
Core Wide Receivers
Amon Ra-St. Brown
DK Metcalf
Pay-up Wide Receivers
AJ Brown
Justin Jefferson
Tyreek Hill
Value Volume Wide Receivers
Marvin Harrison Jr.
Courtland Sutton
Josh Downs
DeAndre Hopkins
Jakobi Meyers
Calvin Ridley
Jaxon Smith-Njigba
High Ceiling Value Wide Receiver
Jameson Williams
Super Value WR3/Flex
Jaylen Waddle
Michael Pittman
Romeo Doubs
Nick Westbrook-Ikhine
Rome Odunze
Noah Brown
Darius Slayton
Adam Thielen
Core Tight End
Trey McBride
Pay-up Tight End
Travis Kelce
Value Tight Ends
Hunter Henry
Zach Ertz
Jonnu Smith
Super Value Tight Ends
Theo Johnson
Luke Schoonmaker
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