Polarizing Fantasy Players: Week 11

Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hall-of-Famer Bob Harris and Gary Davenport have well over 40 years of experience as fantasy football analysts and three Football Writer of the Year Awards between them. They know their stuff—or at least that's what they tell themselves.

Each week during the 2024 season, Harris and Davenport are going to come together here at Footballguys to discuss some of that week's most polarizing fantasy options.

Week 11 is here, which means in most leagues, it's the final month of the season. The stretch run has arrived. The pressure has ratcheted up exponentially. Wins are desperately needed. Losses can be season-killers.

With that in mind, Harris and Davenport are focused on two things in Week 11—the stretch run and starting it off with a victory.

Quarterback Polarity

We'll kick off Week 11 with some positive and negative polarity. You can't use an obvious quarterback like Lamar Jackson of the Ravens, but which fantasy quarterback would you most like to ride into the stretch run with?

Harris: As NBC Sports' Matthew Berry pointed out this week, through the first four games of the season, Justin Herbert averaged just 22.7 pass attempts per game. But since coming off his bye in Week 5, Herbert is averaging 30 pass attempts per game, and since Week 8, he's QB7 on a points-per-game basis. He has three straight games with at least 19 fantasy points. Better still, as Yahoo's Dalton Del Don notes, Herbert's had the 10th most challenging QB fantasy schedule so far, but he has the sixth easiest rest-of-season with a handful of truly choice matchups that are ripe for exploitation -- including the Bengals, Ravens, and Falcons over the next four weeks. Del Don added that Herbert has also run more since the bye. With capable playmakers like Ladd McConkey and Quentin Johnston to throw to, Herbert is a player to add if available on your waiver wire.

Davenport: I can see how this is going to go—Harris names all the players I would have, and I either have to do the old bobblehead routine and just nod or go digging for another guy.

I don't know if Brock Purdy of the San Francisco 49ers counts as an "obvious" name or not. If he doesn't, maybe he should. Despite multiple injuries to his pass-catchers, Purdy is eighth for the season among quarterbacks and fourth in fantasy points per game at the position over the last month. Now, Purdy has a healthy Jauan Jennings and some guy at running back named McCaffrey, who is supposed to be good. The Niners are primed for another second-half surge—and I'd have no qualms trotting out Purdy as a weekly starter.

Conversely, who makes you nervous?

Harris: Coming off a tough game against a stout Pittsburgh defense, Jayden Daniels seems to be losing steam. The rookie, who entered Week 10 as an MVP candidate, did not have his best game against the Steelers, completing 16 of 33 passes for 194 yards. As ESPN.com's John Keim noted, Pittsburgh kept Daniels in the pocket by blitzing more than usual. The result: He was not as accurate. But it wasn't an isolated circumstance. As our Footballguy colleague Matt Waldman pointed out to me this week, Daniels is QB6 for the year but QB10 the past three weeks, and his completion percentage is down from 69 percent to 58 percent over that span. In addition, Daniels hasn't run as often or as efficiently over that three-game span as he did to start the season. Against Pittsburgh, he finished with just 5 rushing yards; his previous season low was 22. Some of the drop-off is intentional -- the team has called fewer designed runs since he hurt his ribs on Oct. 20 -- and some of it is how defenses have schemed to pen Daniels in the pocket.

Mind you, I'm not benching Daniels. But given the high-end production I became accustomed to early on, the trend makes me nervous.

Davenport: Baker Mayfield of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, on the other hand, makes me nervous moving forward. There's optimism that wide receiver Mike Evans will be back after the bye, but hamstring injuries that severe often linger, and without Evans and Chris Godwin the Tampa passing game has been much more inconsistent. Mayfield's last two games both rank inside his five worst of the year.

Running Back Shifts

With Christian McCaffrey back, the fantasy landscape at running back has shifted. Is there a fantasy RB1 you see set to fade at the worst possible time?

Harris: The Bears have lost three straight games, scoring a meager total of 27 points over that stretch, and are averaging just 277.6 yards per game, the third lowest in the NFL. They rank near the bottom of the NFL in points scored (24th), yards per carry (28th), yards per pass (30th), total yards (30th), third downs (31st), and yards per play (31st). Not surprisingly, they fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron this week. As NBC Sports' Zachary Krueger  suggested, it's hard to imagine this backfield seeing a significant shift with Thomas Brown now taking over as offensive coordinator. That probably means continued mediocrity from D'Andre Swift, who delivered 65 yards from scrimmage in a plus matchup against the Patriots. At this point, anybody looking for Swift to reprise the four-game stretch -- from Weeks 4 through 8 (the Bears were off Week 7) -- when he was RB4 and surpassed 100 yards from scrimmage and found the end zone in every game will likely be disappointed.

Davenport: He isn't a fantasy RB1, but by just about any conceivable metric, Tony Pollard of the Tennessee Titans has exceeded fantasy expectations—he's about the only Titans player who fantasy managers can start without needing six shots of Schnapp's first. But the return of Tyjae Spears ate into Pollard's workload last week, and the odds of a positive game script with the Titans aren't good from week to week. A few of my fantasy squads hope that Pollard maintains his value—but my confidence level isn't especially high.

Is someone a bit farther down the rankings set to surge?

Harris: For a player on the rise, it must be Denver's Audric Estime. The rookie running back had a season-high in carries (14) this past Sunday as the Broncos' leading rusher -- his previous high was five -- mainly working between the hash marks, where the Broncos have struggled to run. Over the last three quarters against the Chiefs, Estime played 24 of 41 possible snaps, Javonte Williams played nine (exclusively in passing situations), and Jaleel McLaughlin played three. Estime's 46 percent snap share was significantly higher than his previous 10 percent high; as Late-Round Fantasy's JJ Zachariason pointed out, Estime's 82.4 percent running back rush share was the highest from a Broncos running back this season. Head coach Sean Payton, who has never been a big Williams supporter, subsequently said that Estime will "continue to get more reps." While I'm not sure Estime has league-winning upside, expecting him to emerge as a reliable weekly contributor is reasonable.

Davenport: Writing that Nick Chubb of the Cleveland Browns could surge late feels lazy, but Harris done snagged Estime. And unfortunately, it's not like Chubb has looked like Chubb this season—three games in, he's averaging just 2.7 yards per carry. The reality is that Chubb may not be 100 percent until 2025, given how serious his knee injury was. But even if all we can get is, say, 60 percent of Chubb, that could make a big difference for RB-needy teams—especially in favorable matchups.