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As we head into the NFL's premiere showcase, Thanksgiving Thursday, the league standings are a massive quagmire. Week 11 did little to settle things. Miami made up no ground on Buffalo atop the AFC East. In fact, the entire division is on a losing streak. Cleveland is now ahead of Baltimore, yet the point differentials tell much the opposite story. Indianapolis and Tennessee continue to keep pace. Only Kansas City and Pittsburgh have found breathing room.
In the NFC, there aren't even two teams that stand above the rest. And the jumble of the standings mirrors how the fantasy season is unfurling. There are a couple stud performers at most from each positional group. After that, the mishmash of good to okay players leaves fantasy managers often scratching their heads. It isn't fair to say lots of players are disappointing. Instead, lots of guys have wide performance thresholds. They can be bad to great any given week.
That is all pretty terrible news for fantasy players. Yet it makes it easier to predict the top of the leaderboards. In Week 11, we are left with only a couple studs who failed to live up to expectations. Just remember that not all duds are created equal. Some disastrous performances are signs of more to come. Here are Week 11's studs turned duds.
Alvin Kamara, New Orleans Saints
It's worth mentioning when a top player in fantasy puts up his worst game of the season, even if that performance wasn't a complete dud. Kamara finished Week 11 with 45 yards from scrimmage and salvaged the week by scoring a touchdown. His rushing has been held in check the past three weeks, but it has always been the receiving that separates Kamara from ordinary backs. However, with Drew Brees out and Taysom Hill in at quarterback for New Orleans, the passing game is going to look completely different. After catching 7.4 passes per game through 10 weeks, Kamara didn't make a single reception this time out.
This dampening of the passing offense should be the case for as long as Hill remains in at QB. Kamara's ceiling gets lowered, even if his floor remains high and his status remains must-start.
Julio Jones, Atlanta Falcons
If you want to say Jones' Week 11 stinker was due to injury and should be disregarded, I'm not going to argue with you. Jones was in and out of the lineup on Sunday due to a recurring hamstring injury that sidelined him earlier in the season. He is questionable for Week 12 because of it as well. Yet Jones didn't miss the game and wasn't permanently removed from it either. He played sparingly - only 36 percent of Atlanta snaps - but he was available. The final line is predictably bad. He caught two passes for 39 yards, giving him his worst game since Week 2, when the hamstring issues first cropped up.
That first time, Jones saw partial action in two games and missed two others in the span of a month. Are we in store for something similar this time? If so, managers are not going to be happy with their WR1. As always with these elite players, we roll with them if they are marked active and hope their availability isn't limited during the game. Unfortunately, Jones seems more likely than most to fall into that latter category this season.
Borderline Tampa Bay Buccaneers
At age 43, Tom Brady is no longer a fantasy stud. And yet, he's the number eight fantasy quarterback through 11 weeks, ahead of Lamar Jackson, Ben Roethlisberger, and others. Ronald Jones is not a fantasy stud either. And yet, he's the number 12 fantasy running back (depending on league settings). Injuries have played a major part in pushing these teammates up their respective leaderboards. Either way, here we are. These are every-week starters that managers are relying on...and boy, has that been rough.
Week 11 was another bumpy week for Brady and Jones. It wasn't as bad as Week 9, but Brady completed just 54.6 percent of his passes for 216 yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions. It was one of those weeks where managers in superflex leagues may actually have been upset with slotting in a QB. And Brady has had a few such weeks.
Jones was even worse and has matched Brady in terms of terrible weeks throughout 2020. In Week 11, he collected 24 total yards from scrimmage and didn't catch a pass. On a somewhat positive note, Leonard Fournette didn't usurp anything from Jones here; all the TB backs were shut down by Los Angeles. Jones remains one of the biggest boom-or-bust players atop the RB leaderboard. He has had two games as a top-five back and four games as a top-20 play. On the other hand, there have been three games where he ranked outside the top 40. Fortunately for both Brady and Jones, the Bucs' schedule lightens up a great deal down the stretch of the season.
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