A pair of players turned in a pair of blitz touchdowns last week. The first was Jimmy Graham, who I had already mentioned two weeks ago looked primed to join Rob Gronkowski’s elite company of tight ends with three seasons of five-plus blitz touchdowns this decade. It’s Week 11 and mission already accomplished. Continue to roll with Graham in general but especially against blitz-heavy opposing defenses.
The other receiver with two blitz touchdowns last week was Robert Woods, who turned in one of the most productive overall blitz games of the year with 147 yards and 2 scores against Texans’ blitzes. After the Rams’ offseason that included trading for Sammy Watkins and drafting Cooper Kupp, I would not have predicted that Woods would be their most productive fantasy receiver, but that has been the case. He now leads the team in targets (57), receptions (39), yards (622), and is tied for the lead in touchdowns (4). He’s also now in the top 10 among all wide receivers with 86 standard fantasy points. That makes Woods a sneaky-good fantasy play in general, but in particular, deploy him against aggressive teams. He leads the team with a 35.7 percent blitz target rate.
Graham and Woods aren’t the only ones. 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 in Week 11.
Players to target
Marqise Lee, WR, Jacksonville Jaguars
Two weeks ago, Lee had his best fantasy day of the year in what I thought would be his worst matchup of the year against Cincinnati, the team with the lowest blitz rate in football at 17.2 percent. That success was not the result of the Bengals playing against type but rather Lee doing so. After a half season of catching more than 60 percent of his passes against blitzes — which was far and away the highest rate among fantasy-relevant receivers — Lee has started to see more non-blitz targets in recent weeks. You can really see that transformation in a chart of his four-game rolling blitz target rate from this year.
Naturally, I have some trepidation in recommending Lee this week against the No. 1 blitzing team, the Browns (45.3 percent). Is Lee the receiver that his full-season numbers suggest that he is? He’s still third among receivers with 30 or more targets with a 49.3 percent blitz target rate. Or is he the receiver he’s looked like in recent weeks with a more typical blitz target rate around 35 percent? I’m banking on the former, and I’m doing so in part because of my expectations for the game script. Yes, the Browns have yielded big leads this season which discourages passing, but believe it or not, they’ve been the best run defense in football allowing just 3.1 yards per carry. The Jaguars will likely need to pass to take advantage of the Browns’ weaknesses, and I think Lee will be the receiver who benefits most from that game plan.
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