Joe Flacco (QB, DEN) - Week 7 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 2-QB Leagues

OWNED IN: 8% of Leagues

ANALYSIS: Nobody cares about Joe Flacco because Joe Flacco is one of the blandest players in the league, but in fantasy football, some storylines and playing trends don’t have a lot of importance. Actually, after moving from Baltimore to Denver, Joe Flacco has been his very own self but he’s putting up interesting numbers for owners to consider, and he’s currently on the low.

Looking at this season data, Flacco has been a high-end QB2 through six weeks of play. He’s got the 16th-most yards and he’s completing passes at the 10th-highest clip (66.3%) while having thrown the 13th-most. We all know Flacco’s style of play. He is totally risk-averse and his numbers show it. Flacco has the third-lowest average depth of target (6.3 yards), he only has one performance of 300-plus yards in 2019, but he’s throwing only 20% bad passes.

Before dropping below 10 fantasy points in Week 6 against Tennessee playing to a bad game script, Flacco had a streak of five games with 11-plus points, three of them of at least 17 points and a 27-point explosion in Week 4 facing Jacksonville. Denver’s schedule has been one of the hardest for quarterbacks so far: only the Raiders (Week 1) rank below-average in points allowed to the position. Going forward the Broncos face the 24th-, 18th-, and 20th-best defenses against QBs, a much more palatable schedule.

Flacco looks like a good streaming option to me (the next game is against Kansas City) and a solid starter in 2QB or deep leagues where there are just a few available players. It’d be hard to bench any QB1 you already have in your team, but if you have a spot to have a second QB, need to start two, or are just streaming the position weekly, there is no better time to get Flacco than now.