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Week 12 fantasy options most helped and hurt by the blitz

ARLINGTON, TX - OCTOBER 09: A.J. Green #18 of the Cincinnati Bengals looks for a flag to be thrown during a game against the Dallas Cowboys at AT&T Stadium on October 9, 2016 in Arlington, Texas. The Cowboys defeated the Bengals 28-14. (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)

There were 17 blitz touchdowns in Week 11, the most since Week 6, and several could foreshadow the next generation of security blanket tight ends. O.J. Howard, Adam Shaheen, Tyler Kroft, Jesse James, and Ricky Seals-Jones all scored when their opponents brought extra pressure. All five are tight ends, and all five are less than 26 years old.

You’re probably familiar with Howard and Shaheen, since both were drafted in the first two rounds of the 2017 NFL Draft. With a 36.0 percent blitz target rate, Howard has a similar usage to incumbent Buccaneers tight end Cameron Brate (30.8 percent), but Howard is seeing his overall target share grow as the season progresses. Shaheen has just 8 targets on the season, but half have been on blitzes and half of those have resulted in touchdowns. That’s not much of a sample, but his 6-foot-6, 278-pound frame could make him Mitch Trubisky’s go-to option in the red zone in the coming years.

Better known as a blocker, Kroft has been a surprisingly effective fantasy option for Cincinnati with Tyler Eifert out for the season. He’s seen only 17.1 percent of his targets with a blitz, but it will be interesting to see what Kroft can become if he every truly escapes Eifert’s shadow. James inherited the job Heath Miller manned for the Steelers for more than a decade, and he has a similar size and role. It will be tough for him to become fantasy-relevant with Antonio Brown, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and Le’Veon Bell on the same roster, but he does lead the team with a 32.4 percent blitz target rate and is usable in certain matchups.

Seals-Jones is the biggest mystery of the bunch. He went undrafted out of Texas A&M, but he is a former 5-star recruit with great measurables at 6-5 and 243 pounds. Bruce Arians’ Cardinals have never produced a fantasy-relevant tight end, but their roster could be facing a marked change with the impending — whether in 2018 or 2019 — retirement of Larry Fitzgerald. I’m not sure I’d bet big on Seals-Jones becoming a part of that new look, but two touchdowns is an impressive debut.

It’s too early in each of their careers to know their future roles, but research I did over the offseason shows that many players provide security blankets for their quarterbacks against blitz-heavy teams while others see fewer targets. Here are the other players I recommend to use and avoid this week.

Players to target

A.J. Green, WR, Cincinnati Bengals

By his own lofty standards, Green’s 2017 season has been a bit of a disappointment. He has now played the same number of games this year as he did last year — when he missed a month and a half with a hamstring tear — and he’s 18 catches and 221 yards behind pace. That doesn’t mean you should ever sit Green, who is still the No. 3 fantasy receiver in standard scoring, albeit significantly behind DeAndre Hopkins and Antonio Brown. But it does mean that Green has fallen back from his perennial status as an overall top-10 player. I expect him to reassert himself in that class this week against the Browns.

The Browns have been surprisingly effective on defense this season, in particular against the run. They’ve allowed just 3.1 yards per carry, the lowest in football. However, the Bengals handled them well in a 31-7 victory in Cleveland back in Week 4. Green was moderately productive in that game with 5 catches and 63 yards — he also scored a touchdown, which buoyed his fantasy numbers — but since then, Green has consistently demonstrated that he gets the ball against blitzes. His 34.7 percent blitz target rate paces the team, and Brandon LaFell is his only teammate who sees more than a quarter of his targets against blitzes.

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