If you needed a big Sunday night performance from Tom Brady and the Buccaneers offense to keep your fantasy football season alive in Week 15, you just lost and they certainly did as well losing Chris Godwin for the remainder of the season after hurting his knee and we’ll have to see when Leonard Fournette and Mike Evans can make it back to the field after suffering hamstring injuries. Teddy Bridgewater and Pat Freiermuth suffered concussions while wideouts Julio Jones and Sterling Shepard got hurt (how shocking). Patrick Mahomes put up a second straight strong performance and Travis Kelce caught two of his three touchdown passes. The connection between Tyler Huntley and Mark Andrews stayed strong as Andrews caught double digit passes for over 100 yards receiving for the second straight game. Aaron Rodgers and Josh Allen also fought off injuries to throw three touchdowns each. One of the biggest surprises of the week was Arizona getting taken down by the Detroit Lions. 

With still four games left to play this week because of the COVID craziness, here’s the latest Fantasy Football Stock Watch Report:

 

RISERS:

Antonio Brown, WR TB: This is a no-brainer as Brown’s suspension is over and the Buccaneers are without Chris Godwin for the rest of the season and Mike Evans and Leonard Fournette are dealing with hamstring injuries with both looking like they could miss multiple games. Remember, Fournette was catching passes as well. We’ve only seen Brown play in five games this year and even going back to earlier in the season, Brown was nearly matching Evans in team target-share. He received 11 or more targets in two of his last three contests. Tom Brady is the lone quarterback with at least 400 completed passes. He leads all quarterbacks in passing yards and he’s thrown the most touchdown passes. Brown goes from being potentially cut from the roster to the top quarterback’s top target elevating his production ceiling a ton. Beyond Brown and Rob Gronkowski, the Buccaneers are looking at a mix of Tyler Johnson, Breshad Perriman (currently on the COVID list), Scotty Miller and Cameron Brate.

D’Onta Foreman, RB TEN: Derrick Henry is still on the IR and while Dontrell Hilliard is also being utilized, Foreman has received more carries than him over the last few weeks. Hilliard and Foreman play a pretty even snap-share lately, but we saw Hilliard utilized in the passing game more against the Steelers in Week 15. Jeremy McNichols is also around but he is also utilized in the Titans passing game and with Julio Jones hurt again and A.J. Brown’s status for Week 16 in question, Ryan Tannehill may need to lean on Hilliard and McNichols more for short passes leaving a safe floor for carries for Foreman. Foreman has received no fewer than 13 carries in three straight games rushing for at least 4.9 yards per carry in two of those contests. Foreman has also exceeded 100 yards rushing in two of his last three games. Up next for Foreman and the Titans are the 49ers and they’ve surrendered 12 scores on the ground this season. 

Amon-Ra St. Brown, WR DET: D’Andre Swift is hurt and we don’t know when we’ll see him take the field again and since he’s been out, we’ve seen St. Brown’s target-share increase week after week since Week 13. St. Brown has been averaging 17.8 percent of the targets for the season and just received 42 percent in a surprising win over the Cardinals and he received 31 percent of the targets the week before against Denver. He’s received 25 targets in his last three matchups, scoring touchdowns in two of those games. He’s caught no fewer than eight passes in each of his last three weeks and the Lions are going up against Atlanta in Week 16. Atlanta has let up 17 touchdowns to wide receivers this season, which is second most in the league behind the Cardinals (who he just faced). Atlanta’s defense has also allowed 191 receptions to wideouts which is the fourth most allowed by any team. Even if Swift ends up playing, St. Brown will still be heavily utilized.
 

FALLERS:

Dak Prescott, QB DAL: Does Week 16 present a strong bounce-back matchup for Prescott? Absolutely, but we can’t ignore that he’s thrown as many interceptions as he has touchdowns in his last three weeks. Prescott hasn’t thrown two touchdown passes in a game since Week 12 and he hasn’t thrown three touchdowns since Week 6. He’s thrown for over 300 yards once in his last seven games. It’s not how often he throws passes because he’s throwing plenty of them, but he’s exceeded his 68.5 completion percentage one time in his last five contests. He has two running backs that handle all of the work on the ground meaning all of his production comes down to his throwing. After Washington, the Cowboys face the Cardinals who aren’t easy to throw on despite what Jared Goff did to them and then they end the season facing the Eagles which will very likely be a run-heavy offense engineered by Dallas. 

Chuba Hubbard, RB CAR: The Panthers have lost four straight games and have Tampa twice (even damaged) and the Saints on the schedule to end their season. Hubbard was dealt a bad hand in this situation because the Buccaneers and Saints are incredible at defending against the run and as long as Cam Newton is under center, he’ll continue to vulture carries and touchdowns from Hubbard. Newton ran the ball 25 times in his last two games while Hubbard ran the ball 18 times. Even if Sam Darnold ends up starting, the matchups are still awful for Hubbard and a few more carries likely won’t make a difference. Darnold himself ran in five scores in the Panthers first four games of the season. Hubbard runs for just 3.6 yards per carry and he won’t be thrown to at all as Ameer Abdullah has been active in the Panthers passing attack. Abdullah has out-snapped Hubbard in three straight games.   

Michael Pittman Jr., WR IND: Pittman’s stock dropping isn’t all on him as we’ve seen Carson Wentz throw more than 20 passes just one time in his last four games. He’s caught more than four passes once in his last four outings and the Cardinals aren’t the easiest to throw on and that’s who the Colts have next on the schedule. Pittman hasn’t hit the end-zone since Week 9 and while we’re not going to go crazy and bench him since he receives a team-leading near-24 percent target share, we may have to manage our expectations a bit regarding his production. Jonathan Taylor has run the ball 29 times or more in three of his last four games and the Colts are going to continue to lean heavily on him as Wentz has completed less than 64 percent of his passes in three contests during that stretch. Pittman has competition for targets in the Colts backfield as well between Taylor and Nyheim Hines.