Week 6 Fantasy Football Recap: Sean Tucker’s Big Day

Top Performances

Sean Tucker: 32.7 Half-PPR Points

Wow. Tucker, rostered in just 1% of fantasy leagues, was the league’s highest scorer in Week 6. The 2023 UDFA racked up nearly 200 combined yards and two touchdowns in a breakout performance as the Buccaneers dominated the Saints without Rachaad White. He saw the same amount of carries as Bucky Irving (14), although he did play just 36.1% of snaps.

If you’re unfamiliar with Tucker, he was once a highly touted prospect before his stock dropped massively due to a heart condition, leading him to fall out of the 2023 draft completely. Now, it’s not as though Tucker was some perfect player aside from his health concerns — he was a well below-average rusher as a rookie. But, in the very small sample size of one game, he looked excellent on Sunday.

Unfortunately, I’m not particularly excited about Tucker’s fantasy prospects going forward. Once White returns, this backfied will be, in Todd Bowles’ own words, a three-headed monster. Even if Irving and Tucker manage to wrest every single carry away from the inefficient veteran, White’s passing-game role is going nowhere. That leaves Tucker with likely less than half of carries on a pass-happy offense. He’s worth adding, but this is almost certain to be far and away his best outing of the year.

Chris Godwin: 30.0 Half-PPR Points

We stay in Tampa Bay, as the Bucs’ routing of New Orleans provided both the top two fantasy finishes of the week. Through six weeks of the season, Godwin is now the WR2 in half-PPR formats, with at least nine points in every single week. He ranks eighth in the NFL with 52 targets, having seen at least eight in every game but one. 

If we’re looking for an explanation for this resurgence from the 28-year-old, the obvious reason is that his slot rate has jumped up to 61% from 37% in 2023. He is averaging 3.47 yards per route run from the slot, an incredibly elite number, compared to a just okay 1.77 yards per route run out wide. While I don’t think Godwin will remain a top-five receiver for the rest of the season, he might be able to maintain WR1 production with this usage.

Caleb Williams: 28.64 Half-PPR Points

In last week’s recap, I mentioned how much Caleb Williams had improved after his slow start to the season. Well, the first overall pick kept rolling this week, throwing four TDs on his trip across the pond.

Now, we should note that Caleb’s back-to-back big games have come against arguably the two worst defenses in the league, the Panthers and Jaguars. But he is also simply playing better than he was over the first three weeks. Another important thing to note for fantasy is that Williams is averaging nearly 30 rushing yards per game, giving him a solid boost each week. The Bears are on bye in Week 7, but Caleb will be a borderline QB1 in Week 8 against the Commanders.   

Biggest Duds

Saquon Barkley: 6.4 Half-PPR Points

After the first few weeks of the season, it looked as though Saquon Barkley was going to single-handedly carry some teams to fantasy football championships. However, he has regressed (along with the rest of the Eagles’ offense), with Week 6 representing easily his worst output of the season.

With that said, I’m not worried about Saquon. Even if he isn’t the locked-in RB1 overall, he should still average RB1 numbers for the rest of the season. Philadelphia’s offense looks ugly, but he is seeing absolutely elite usage and has some great matchups coming up. This was just a bad enough week from one of fantasy’s top options to earn him his first mention in the Dud section.

Brandon Aiyuk: 4.7 Half-PPR Points

This is not Aiyuk’s first mention in the Dud section. After getting paid in the offseason (and missing most of the 49ers’ training camp), Aiyuk has just one weekly finish with more than 7.3 half-PPR points. He ranks as the WR45 in total points and has likely lost quite a few games for fantasy managers.

With that said, there are some reasons to expect better days ahead for Aiyuk. He still has a 20.5% target share, which is not far behind his 22.7% in 2023. He was always going to be due for some regression after setting the NFL record for yards per target, but this is a step too far. I expect Aiyuk to have some positive regression going forward and finish the season solidly back in the WR2 conversation. 

Calvin Ridley: 0.9 Half-PPR Points

Ridley is lucky that this isn’t a straight donut, as he failed to catch a single one of his eight targets on Sunday, only producing any fantasy points thanks to a nine-yard rush. To be fair to Ridley, Fantasy Points Data graded just two of those eight targets as catchable, so his miserable stat line is mostly not his fault. 

Unfortunately, that’s part of the problem for Ridley’s fantasy managers. Will Levis is simply not an NFL quarterback in terms of accuracy. Ridley’s catchable target rate for the season is just 50%, second to only Adonai Mitchell for the lowest among players with at least 20 targets. As long as Levis is under center, Ridley is not someone you can trust in your fantasy lineups.    

Sneaky Storylines

Tank Bigsby Misses An Opportunity

With Travis Etienne exiting early with a hamstring issue, this should have been a big week for Tank Bigsby. The sophomore had already been eating into Etienne’s workload with elite efficiency, and he suddenly had the backfield all to himself … or so it seemed

Instead, Bigsby was out-snapped 33 to 16 by veteran journeyman D’Ernest Johnson, who also saw eight touches to Bigbsy’s seven. The issue was that the Jaguars were playing from behind, and they clearly don’t trust Bigsby in any sort of passing situation.

For the season, Bigsby has just an 8% route participation rate, one target, and only six pass-blocking snaps. That’s not a good sign at all for his usage on a Jaguars team that is looking like they will be playing from behind early and often. If you can sell high on Bigsby with Etienne sidelined, do it.

Josh Jacobs Has Been Unlucky

Six weeks into his first season in Green Bay, Josh Jacobs has been … fine. He’s ceded more usage than managers would have hoped to Emanuel Wilson, but Jacobs still ranks third in the league with 108 carries (thanks partially to those two Malik Willis games). He has also seen some receiving work, with a 6.7% target share on a 44.7% route participation rate. 

However, all this usage has turned into just 11.0 half-PPR points per game, as Jacobs ranks outside the top 20 RBs in total points. The issue is simple: touchdowns. Jacobs has scored just one touchdown all season. 

Luckily, we can expect that number to regress going forward. It’s not like Jacobs doesn’t see goal-line touches: He has played all but one of the Packers’ snaps inside the five and is the only RB to have a goal-line carry. He’s just been straight-up unlucky with how Green Bay has scored its touchdowns. The Packers rank first by a solid margin with 82.4% of their offensive touchdowns coming through the air, and Malik Willis and Jayden Reed each added one on the ground.

The Packers do rank eighth in pass rate inside the 10 (and 10th inside the 20), but this number is still certain to regress. When it does, Jacobs should be the beneficiary. A few more TDs will help elevate him to solid RB2 status.   

It’s Boutte Time?

Last week, I was all over Ja’Lynn Polk, as the rookie had played 100% of the Patriots’ offensive snaps in Week 5, and Drake Maye was set to make his NFL debut. Well, I was right that Maye would improve the Patriots’ fantasy production, as he threw for 243 yards and three touchdowns in a losing effort against the Texans.

However, I was wrong about which receiver to target. Boutte, who had averaged just a 34.2% route participation rate over the first five weeks of the season, led the team with a 76.2% rate in Week 6. The 2023 sixth-rounder caught all three of his targets for 59 yards and a touchdown, the first of his NFL career. 

To be clear, this is just a deep-league recommendation. This is clearly a WR room in flux and Boutte didn’t even lead the Patriots in targets (that was Demario Douglas, who is also a winner with Maye looking solid). But Boutte was considered a first-round prospect early in his LSU career. If he can hold onto the WR1 role and show some of that potential while Maye continues to ascend, he will be fantasy-relevant sooner rather than later. 

Early DFS Plays

WR JuJu Smith-Schuster, Kansas City Chiefs

This one seems like a no-brainer. In the Chiefs’ first game without Rashee Rice, JuJu caught seven of eight targets for 130 yards. He didn’t see the full Rashee Rice role, with a 20% target share on 59% route participation, but a 20% target share from Patrick Mahomes is nothing to sneeze at. 

Looking ahead to this week’s DFS slate, JuJu is just $4,000 on DraftKings, compared to $6,100 on FanDuel. I will be putting him in the majority of my DK lineups at that price. 

TE David Njoku, Cleveland Browns

In Week 6, Njoku led all tight ends with a target share of over 30%. Now that Amari Cooper has been traded to the Bills, he is arguably the top receiving option in this Cleveland offense.

Even with Deshaun Watson playing like a car dealership inflatable man who was just taught the rules of football, the amount of volume Njoku should see makes him a great play for this week against a beatable Bengals defense. 

RB Austin Ekeler, Washington Commanders

This is assuming that Brian Robinson is out again in Week 7, which seems like a real possibility given that he did not practice at all in the lead-up to Week 6. Ekeler struggled last week with Robinson out, but that was against a solid defense in the Ravens. He still saw elite usage, handling 82% of the team’s RB rushes and seeing five targets on a 73% snap share.

This week, Ekeler and the Commanders get a much softer matchup against the woeful Panthers. Carolina is the second-best schedule-adjusted fantasy matchup for the RB position, and Washington has a massive 29.5-point implied total. If Robinson is out or even just limited, Ekeler is a smash play.