Week 16 Fantasy Football Recap: Jonathan Taylor Dominates the Semifinal Slate

Welcome to the last week of the fantasy football season! I hope you advanced at least one team to Week 17 and the championship round. Whether you’re here to look ahead to the trophy-decider or just tilt a close loss in the semifinals, we are going to take a look back at last week’s action, plus a look forward to a surprisingly ugly DFS slate. Let’s get started!

Top Performances

Jonathan Taylor: 39.8 Half-PPR Points

I’ll get into this more a bit later on, but the Colts have officially leaned all the way into the running game. On Sunday, Taylor saw a massive 29 carries, racking up 218 yards and three touchdowns. He failed to reach double-digit receiving yards for the sixth straight game (in fact, he didn’t record a single target), but that simply doesn’t matter if he is going to perform like this on the ground. Heading into another very soft matchup with the Giants, JT is obviously a must-start and a smash play. 

Jayden Daniels: 34.42 Half-PPR Points

Speaking of must-starts, this was Daniels’ fourth straight top-seven finish, three of which were top-two outings. He is contributing with his legs and just threw for five touchdowns on an elite Eagles defense. Heading into a matchup with the Falcons’ leaky secondary, one of the best picks of the 2024 fantasy season has a chance to cement himself as a playoff hero as well.   

Justin Jefferson: 31.4 Half-PPR Points

After a season of being slightly overshadowed by his former LSU teammate Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson came through when it mattered most with a WR1 overall performance in the fantasy semifinals. He caught 10 of 13 targets for 144 yards and two touchdowns, running riot over a Seattle defense that had played well in recent weeks heading into Week 16. Jefferson gets another theoretically tough matchup with the Packers this week, but you don’t need me to tell you he is an absolute lock-button must-start.  

Biggest Duds

Trey McBride: 3.5 Half-PPR Points

After an incredibly consistent season (especially considering his lack of touchdown scoring), McBride dropped his biggest dud of the season in the week where it hurts the most. After seeing double-digit targets in each of the last four games, the third-year TE saw just four looks on Sunday, catching only three for 20 yards. So much for Kyler Murray promising to get him a touchdown.

Once again, there really isn’t any actionable advice I can give about this. McBride is still an elite must-start tight end in any managed format, and I wouldn’t even take this game as a reason to fade him in DFS. At the end of the day, this is just the nature of the game we play — every player has bad games. 

Brian Robinson Jr.: 1.1 Half-PPR Points

In a week where his quarterback was the second-highest-scoring player on the slate, you’d normally expect Brian Robinson to also have a solid day. That’s especially true once we consider that he is seeing improved usage with Austin Ekeler on IR. Instead, Robinson dropped his worst outing of the season. 

To be fair to Robinson, he did actually generate 5.1 Half-PPR points … he just gave four of them back with lost fumbles. Even still, 10 carries for 24 yards and two receptions for 17 yards on three targets isn’t exactly an inspiring stat line. Luckily, Robinson will be in a position to bounce back next week against the Falcons. He also did still see solid usage, including a 67% RB rush share and a backfield-leading 35% route participation rate. This game wasn’t great, but B-Rob is still a solid RB2 option if you managed to survive this outing to make your fantasy football championship.

Khalil Shakir: 3.2 Half-PPR Points

I don’t know if anything illustrates how frustrating this Bills passing offense has been for fantasy this year better than Shakir having his second-worst game of the season in the same week where he has arguably his best usage of the year. Even with Amari Cooper in town and Keon Coleman and Dalton Kincaid back healthy, Shakir easily led Buffalo with an 85% participation rate in Week 16, his highest mark of the season. He also saw a solid 21% target share (six targets) and a 33% air yards share. But he caught just two of those targets and turned them into just 22 scoreless yards, resulting in the mediocre finish you see here.

Going forward, I’m actually more bullish on Shakir after this down week than I was before. For most of the season, he’s had great efficiency on only okay usage. This week, he saw very solid usage, but the efficiency didn’t come through. Hopefully he can put those two pieces together in Week 17 (and beyond) to become an actually reliable fantasy receiver. For now, though, this was just one data point, so don’t move him too far up or down your rankings — he’s still a high-variance flex option. 

Sneaky Storylines

The Colts Lean Into Anthony Richardson’s Strengths

With their playoff hopes on the line, Indianapolis posted an absurdly low 19% pass rate, 27% below their expected mark. The only other team to have posted mark anything close to that far below expectation was the Packers in Week 2 … with Malik Willis under center. The thing is, this was the right decision: The Colts’ offense averaged 0.10 EPA per play on dropbacks vs. 0.25 EPA per play on rush attempts. Anthony Richardson is still too inaccurate to operate an NFL passing offense, but the combination of him and Jonathan Taylor makes for a dynamic offense on the ground.

For fantasy, this is obviously great news for JT’s value and terrible news for the Colts’ pass-catchers, who are all entirely unstartable. Especially heading into a very winnable matchup with the Giants, I wouldn’t be surprised if Richardson attempts even fewer passes than the 11 provided on Sunday. As for his own fantasy value, I think this is actually a positive for Richardson. He’ll need a rushing TD to provide any sort of value with his low passing volume, but he has an excellent chance of getting one. 

D’Onta Foreman’s Loss Was Jerome Ford’s Gain

Ford finished his first game following Nick Chubb’s injury with 21.6 Half-PPR points. He saw a 73% RB rush share, a 79% snap share and a 15% target share, all very solid numbers. However, I think there are plenty of parallel universes where his workload wasn’t quite so pristine. If we take a look at the Browns’ very first drive of the game, they subbed out Ford (admittedly after he had just broken off a long run) to give D’Onta Foreman two straight goal-line carries. However, the veteran bruiser fumbled on his second attempt, and he didn’t even play another snap for the rest of the game.

Would Foreman have been heavily involved if he hadn’t lost that fumble? Only Kevin Stefanski knows. But we have seen Foreman cut into Ford’s usage a few times already this season, even starting over him in Weeks 2 and 5 (back before Chubb returned from his first injury). Of course, there are multiple ways in which this doesn’t matter. Maybe Foreman was never going to be very involved and Ford was just tired after his big run, or maybe Foreman stays in the doghouse for more than one week. But with how bad this offense looked under Dorian Thompson-Robinson, Ford will need to maintain a workhorse role to be a startable fantasy option. Don’t assume he is a solid play without Chubb just based on this one outing.

Breece Hall is Back

I’m sure this one hasn’t gone under the radar for anyone actually rostering Hall (if any of those people actually made it to the playoffs), but I’ve hardly seen it mentioned elsewhere: After missing one game with an injury and playing a heavily reduced role in his first game back, Hall was back to being a workhorse in Week 16. He posted a 79% snap share and a 74% RB rush share while racking up six targets on a 64% route participation rate. Isaiah Davis and Braleon Allen were reduced to splitting the very small slice of the backfield pie left behind. 

For this season, the implications of this development are obvious: Breece is back to being a must-start, while Davis and Allen are useless. But I also want to point out a larger-scale takeaway that is going overlooked. Just a couple of weeks ago, large sections of the fantasy community were absolutely convinced that Hall was going to be shut down for the season, as the Jets had nothing to play for. But that hardly happens (if ever) in the NFL. Whether it was Justin Jefferson returning to catch passes from Nick Mullens and Joshua Dobbs last year or Hall taking a beating for the sake of this 4-11 Jets team, these players almost always play if they can (Hall’s comments about not wanting to pick up an “injury-prone” label may partially explain why). Keep this in mind around Week 14 next year when everyone is worried about some star player on a losing team being “shut down” with a relatively minor injury. 

Early DFS Plays

WR Mike Evans, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

With two games left to go, Mike Evans needs 182 receiving yards to keep his streak of 1,000-yard games alive. He might not be thinking about it, but his quarterback sure is. This game is huge for the Buccaneers’ playoff chances, so Baker Mayfield obviously won’t hurt the team’s shot at winning by forcing the ball to his top target. But on a team with few other weapons against a terrible Panthers defense, I bet he can kill two birds with one stone. 

Looking at things another way, this game has the highest total on the slate, and Evans is the most talented player in it. He’s expensive, but I’m willing to back him to come through for both his team and fantasy players.  

QB Mason Rudolph, Tennessee Titans

I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself. Maybe it’s just the Christmas magic of a guy named Rudolph starting an NFL game. But here are the facts: Rudolph has averaged a solid 17.3 points per game in the four games where he has played all of the Titans’ offensive snaps. This week, he should get to do that against a Jaguars defense that is by far the softest schedule-adjusted matchup for quarterbacks. Given his low salaries on all sites, I like Rudolph’s chances to shine brightly as a value QB option this week. 

WR Romeo Doubs, Green Bay Packers

Christian Watson is dealing with a knee injury. His status for this game is in question, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he is absent. Even if Watson is in, Doubs has consistently led all Packers receivers in terms of routes this season. He may not be the most talented member of their young receiving corps, but being on the field is the first step to scoring points. 

And Doubs should be on the field plenty for this juicy matchup with the Vikings, the softest defense against fantasy wide receivers. Priced outside the top 20 receivers (if not outside the top 30) on each of DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo, Doubs is perfectly placed to come through as a mid-range option this week.