Week 14 Need to Know: Fantasy Football Cheat Sheet

The Steelers may be toast, but hopefully your fantasy season is still alive.

Matt De Lima | Dec 10, 2021

Chase Claypool made headlines Thursday night for a couple of bone-headed plays. He shoved Vikings cornerback Bashaud Breeland in the face after a play and got called for a penalty. Late in the game—and, mind you, the Steelers had no business being this close at this stage of the game—he posed after securing a first down while the clock wound down to around 25 seconds when Pittsburgh had no timeouts and there should’ve been a sense of urgency in a hurry-up offense.

I don’t know where his head was at. I don’t know where this team’s head is at.

Those were the post-game headlines, but in between those mindless errors, Claypool made a couple crazy catches (one & two). Outstanding play gets overshadowed when you play selfishly at critical moments. Head coach Mike Tomlin even benched Claypool briefly after the unnecessary roughness penalty, so you’d think his mind would be right.

All that said, the Steelers’ run defense was atrocious. Dalvin Cook ran wild and would often be at the second and third levels of the defense before first contact. Minnesota finished with 8.2 yards per rush before contact in the first half. Yikes! Cook finished with 205 rushing yards and two touchdowns.

The Steelers are still technically in the playoff hunt, but will likely need to win out with games remaining against the Titans, Chiefs, Browns and Ravens. But this team has checked out mentally. Not having T.J. Watt for this game doesn’t excuse what was a disappearing act for the first half and change. Tomlin is a great coach and his resume stands on its own, but he’s lost this team. It’s sad to watch.

Now, let’s move to the Week 14 need-to-knows!

1. Saquon Barkley ain’t it

You may be seeing calls to start Barkley against the Chargers this week. Finally, right?! You drafted him early. You put him in an IR spot. You’ve been waiting all year for a legit RB1 performance. You’re going to keep waiting. The Chargers have something to play for (the postseason), the Giants do not. Game score will not be in the Giants’ favor. Barkley is dealing with an ankle injury. The starting QB will be Jake Fromm, possibly even Mike Glennon.

The Chargers have allowed the seventh-most points to running backs on the year, but have improved slightly as of late. They’re 15th-worst, basically middle of the pack, against RBs over their last five games. The Giants’ offensive line is one of the worst in the league. Barkley hasn’t rushed for more than 60 yards in any game yet this season. They say “start your studs” and well, to put it mildly, Barkley ain’t a stud. We can revisit this conversation next year.

2. My 2022 tight end sleeper of the year

THE PICK IS IN! I love when a team gets their pick in early during the draft and you’re not having to sit around for the full 10 minutes. Well, I’m in early on Cole Kmet. Let’s dive into the numbers.

Kmet has an 18.7% team target share. Only Mark Andrews, Travis Kelce, T.J. Hockenson, Kyle Pitts and Darren Waller have a higher share. Kmet is in his second-year, but things haven’t really gone his way. Nothing really has for the Bears. Andy Dalton was the starter, then Justin Fields earned a shot but hasn’t been too great passing the ball. Fields has four touchdown passes all year. He missed Weeks 12 and 13, but he still had eight starts before that.

Chicago Bears Cole Kmet — Mike Dinovo/USA TODAY Sports

I don’t know that Fields will get much better between now and 2022, but I’ll give this offense the benefit of the doubt. I imagine Kmet will be a borderline TE1, high TE2 in next year’s redraft rankings. He’s seeing 5.3 targets per game, 12th-most among TEs. And I think it’ll help for the Bears to move on next year from either Jesse James and Jimmy Graham to focus the offense more through Kmet. No TE1 is dealing with worse QB play this year, so even a marginal improvement would do wonders for his 2022 stats. You always want to target value if you miss out on a top-tier tight end, and I feel Kmet remains just under-the-radar enough to be a sneaky good play next year.

3. Are you really watching?

Last week I talked in this section about the lost art of finding a league-winner. This week, I’ve got to talk about watching the games. Sure, we all watch football, but how much? Not all of it, right? Who has the time? We hear about work-life balance, what about work-life-fantasy balance?! There’s only so many hours in the day!

I’ll be direct with you. I don’t think most people watch much of the games, or even those really great highlight supercuts the NFL provides on their YouTube channel. If you watch Thursday Night Football, the Sunday 1 p.m. ET game, the 4 p.m. ET game, Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football, that’s five games. So even all that only amounts to about a third of the action. Can you realistically do that every week for four months? I salute those of you with that kind of uninterrupted free time.

Where I try to bridge the gap is by watching some or parts of the night games, highlights from every game and a full game whenever it fits my life. In the early part of the week, I’ll do a lot of reading, especially from the beat writers who hit on the major themes and takeaways from each game. You want to win your league title, but not at the expense of everything else. Fantasy football is a fun distraction, but I hope everyone’s making time for all things, big and small.

I’m too busy to watch every game or even most of it—I’m not afraid to admit it. Not busy with work, but busy with life. Family, friends, pets, hobbies, chores, bills, Netflix, sleeping, drinking, eating and hey, when I have time: football. So this one goes out to all my fellow fantasy football analysts who may feel they have to keep up with the Joneses and put on a front like they’ve been watching these guys since they put out their high school recruiting tapes. It’s okay to turn off the Madden Telestrator for a bit and unwind. It’ll be our little secret.

4. Week 14 SI Fantasy must-reads

Before setting your lineups, make sure you check out some of the world-class fantasy lowdown from our SI Fantasy analysts:

Published Dec 10, 2021

MATT DE LIMA