Fantasy: Projecting Dez, other Week 10 duds (2024)

As awful as Peyton Manning's performance against Kansas City in Week 10 was -- he posted minus-seven fantasy points in standard scoring leagues -- most of his fantasy owners already had either relegated him to the bench or formulated a strong backup plan in the event Manning did not return to his former elite level.

That means most fantasy owners were more negatively impacted, and by proxy more concerned, by the subpar point totals posted by other players who had been at or near elite scoring levels prior to falling off that pace Sunday.

This week's Fantasy Foresight article aims to assist in that process by reviewing some of these elite or near-elite players and assessing the odds that they will get back to posting upper-tier point totals the rest of the fantasy football season.

Dez Bryant, WR, Dallas Cowboys

Coming into Week 10 Bryant's fantasy owners were hoping things were getting back to normal after the Week 9 game against Philadelphia that saw Bryant rack up 16 points.

Those hopes came crashing down when Bryant tallied a meager four points Sunday against Tampa Bay despite seeing 12 targets.

With Tony Romo likely to return in Week 11, will Bryant return to his weekly double-digit point production?

For the answer, consider just how bad Matt Cassel is at throwing vertical passes (defined as aerials that travel 11 or more yards downfield). Over the six-season span of 2009-2015, only Josh Freeman has a lower yards-per-attempt (YPA) mark (9.2) on vertical passes than Cassel (9.3) among QBs who have started a minimum of 40 games. Cassel even managed to rank 30th out of 32 qualifying quarterbacks in vertical YPA in 2008 when he was throwing passes to an in-his-prime Randy Moss.

Even a rusty Romo should be a quantum leap over Cassel, so look for Bryant to become a double-digit fantasy scoring threat as soon as Romo is under center.

Darren McFadden, RB, Dallas Cowboys

The Cowboys' rushing attack fell well short of expectations early in the season, but it took a major turn for the better in Week 7. Dallas posted a season-high 61.0 percent mark that week in my good-blocking rate (GBR) metric that measures how often an offensive blocking wall gives its ball carriers quality run blocking (roughly defined as not allowing the defense to disrupt a rush attempt).

That improvement led McFadden to post 22 points in Week 7, so when he followed that up with double-digit point totals in Weeks 8-9, all looked better than it may have actually been. During that two-week span, the Dallas GBR dropped to a 36.5 percent level that is 3.5 percentage points below the 40 percent leaguewide average in this category.

Not having to pay as much attention to the vertical passing attack is a primary reason that the Cowboys' GBR has also been barely above average over the course of the entire season (41.5 percent), so having Romo back under center should get McFadden's production levels back to the double-digit range.

Drew Brees, QB, New Orleans Saints

Quarterbacks can be notoriously streaky fantasy producers, but Brees stretched that definition to its limits in Weeks 8-9 by posting a total of 75 points in those two contests.

That pace came to screeching halt in Week 10 when Brees posted only 12 points despite what looked to be a very favorable matchup against a weak Washington secondary.

The bad news for Brees owners is that point decline may be a trend because the truth of the matter is the two-week point spike had to do with factors that are not likely to repeat.

The first of these is stretch vertical pass production (points scored on aerials thrown 20 or more yards downfield). Brees racked up 19 stretch vertical fantasy points in Weeks 8-9, but has tallied only 14 over the course of the rest of the 2015 campaign up to this point. Even that latter point total doesn't really tell the story, as six of those points occurred in the Week 5 game against the Eagles.

Brees also posted a rushing touchdown in Week 9, his only ground score of the season. Hitting pay dirt on rushing plays on multiple occasions in one season is rare for Brees, as he has accomplished this only three times in 13 seasons as a starting NFL quarterback.

The takeaway? The factors that converged to make Brees an impact fantasy starter don't look likely to recur. He does have some upcoming matchups that provide spot start value (including a Week 15 matchup against Detroit), but can otherwise be considered a rotation starter for teams with alternate quarterback options.

Jimmy Graham, TE, Seattle Seahawks

For the first six weeks of the season, Graham bounced between posting double-digit point totals (as he did on three occasions) and tallying nearly nonexistent fantasy production (three or fewer points in the other three games).

He has posted only 14 points in three games since then, so his fantasy owners are wondering if he is going to return to the earlier form that had him being an impact player at least half of the time.

The bad news for those owners is the metrics and matchups indicate things might not be looking up any time soon.

It starts with his scoring prowess. From 2012 to 2014, Graham caught 11 touchdown passes on plays that started at or inside the opponent's 5-yard line. That total ranked second in the league, as only Bryant had more (15).

This year, Graham has recorded zero touchdowns on plays of that nature, but that doesn't even begin to tell the story. Graham also has zero receptions, one target and only four routes run on plays that started at or inside the opponent's 5-yard line. It's not as if Seattle is directing its passing game elsewhere in these situations, as the team has posted a grand total of five pass attempts and has posted only a single completion, a 5-yard touchdown pass to Fred Jackson all the way back in Week 2.

Graham is slated to face two red-rated matchups the rest of the season. The red rating indicates the matchup is a highly unfavorable one that can move a player a level below his normal point production pace, so his odds of improving will be lower in these contests.

Add it all up and it means that even if the Seahawks find a way to improve their subpar pace of getting into short-yardage goal-to-go situations, they aren't putting the ball in the air enough when that happens to vault Graham's scoring pace.