Week 12 Fantasy Football Power Rankings: Saints-Texans should provide fireworks

Let’s put a fantasy spin on the this week’s action by ranking the games in expected order of point-producing relevance using the over/under totals from Las Vegas, specifically as listed at VegasInsider.com. 

Note: Dollar values in parentheses denote a player's current week price in the Yahoo Daily Fantasy game. It is displayed for point of reference.

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The Fab Four

1. Saints at Texans, Sunday, 1 p.m., O/U 47.5: Should you worry about playing Drew Brees ($40) on the road? Since 2014, he’s averaging 21 points per game at home and 17.8 on the road. That’s still clearly playable on the road, however. Ryan Fitzpatrick would have had a pretty big day vs. this Texans if 1) Devin Smith could catch (he dropped a TD bomb) and 2) if he wasn’t playing the final minutes after seemingly suffering a head injury. So I would not run away from Brees and Brandin Cooks ($29) in this game. You obviously want to play all of your Texans in this matchup even though New Orleans has a new defensive coordinator. Same defense, of course.

2. Buccaneers at Colts, Sunday, 1 p.m., O/U 46.5: The Eagles’ defense was about average last week and Tampa Bay went nuts running and passing. The Colts are worse than Philly was in our most predictive metric (not that it’s THAT predictive in any one game), yards allowed per play (and this is about two/thirds a passing stat, which is perfect). I thought Jameis Winston ($28) was going to struggle due to his regression in college mostly. I was wrong. He is playing quite well for a rookie in passer rating and especially in yards per pass play and sack percentage. The Colts offense on the other hand is predictably struggling with Matt Hasselbeck ($25) at the controls and the receiver struggling the most is Donte Moncrief ($19), who can no longer be played with confidence.

3. Chargers at Jaguars, Sunday, 1 p.m., O/U 46.5: Blake Bortles ($39) is not a good quarterback and with the Chargers offense struggling I can see another low-scoring game like last week against the Titans. Bortles and Co. really need garbage time or at least a high-scoring pace. T.J. Yeldon ($28) is not getting the goal-line carries with any predictability and that’s a shame consider the Jaguars somehow are slightly above average in getting 3.2 red zone possessions per game. The Chargers defense is not terrible here either (3.4 allowed). As you would expect, the defensive groupings are tighter than the offensive ones because it’s offense that generally controls outcomes. So defenses have a much narrower range between best and worst.

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4. Giants at Redskins, Sunday, 1 p.m., O/U 46.5: The Giants are coming off their best game of the season, the Week 10 loss in New England. They handled the Redskins easily earlier this year at MetLife Stadium. The Giants defense surprised against the Patriots. Is that a sign of things to come with Jason Pierre-Paul back or was that more a sign of the Patriots suffering attrition due to offensive injuries? Washington is 20th in offensive points per game allowed (22.6), according to TeamRankings.com. The Giants are close behind (23.9) with the nightmare against the Saints weighing heavily. Play Giants and Redskins aggressively. 

Middle Ground

5. Vikings at Falcons, Sunday, 1 p.m., O/U 46: I don’t trust either of these offenses at the moment. Teddy Bridgewater ($24) and Matt Ryan ($29) have been fantasy disappointments. I know Adrian Peterson ($34) has produced well on the running back curve (where no one is really scoring). But there are a lot of empty yards here and not only does he not convert the long runs anymore at age 30 but he’s also 1-for-12 on runs inside the five (for a total of minus-2 yards). Julio Jones ($33) has remained effective but has just two TDs in his last seven games.

6. Steelers at Seahawks, Sunday, 4:25 p.m. O/U 45.5: Why is this total so low? The Seahawks are just an okay defense. I mean they gave up 13 to the 49ers, who average just under 14 per game. So don’t run away from this defense. This isn’t the great matchup of running backs we anticipated back in draft season: Thomas Rawls ($14) vs. DeAngelo Williams ($23).

7. Cardinals at 49ers, Sunday, 4:25 p.m., O/U 45: Arizona has the highest scoring offense in points per game and is also best in yards per play but will the 49ers dumb this game down with their old-school attack? Carson Palmer ($39) is turning into Drew Brees in posting good numbers in a way that doesn’t reliably predict viable fantasy wideouts. Michael Floyd ($23) seemed to be emerging at the expense of Larry Fitzgerald ($31, two TDs and one 100-yard game in his last seven), but Floyd has the dreaded hamstring injury.

8. Patriots at Broncos, Sunday, 8:30 p.m., O/U 44: Deion Branch may have to come out of retirement for this game, given the Patriots depleted receiving corps. What’s up with Rob Gronkowski ($28)? He’s caught more than five passes in three games this year. He’s being kept in to block on 13.3 percent of snaps this year and even more frequently of late (16 percent the last four weeks) due to injuries throughout the offensive line. This doesn’t really explain things though, since he was about 11 percent last year. Thanks to ProFootballFocus for those blocking stats.

9. Raiders at Titans, Sunday, 1 p.m., O/U 44: Derek Carr ($33) was pitiful against the Lions but just forget about that game. Tennessee ranks 19th in the most important stat for assessing pass defense, yards allowed per pass play. Make sure you get Amari Cooper ($28) in the game too, since the Raiders have made a point about correcting his low target allotment last week. 

Defensive battles

10. Dolphins at Jets, Sunday, 1 p.m., O/U 42.5: As many of you who follow me on Twitter know, I’m a Jets fan. I also like ($31) Chris Ivory’s running style. But the man has predictably broken down with a variety of injuries because the Jets decided to make him a bell cow instead of a committee member. We, like the Jets, greedily wanted that then, but are paying for it now. Ivory’s burst has disappeared.

11. Rams at Bengals, Sunday, 1 p.m, O/U 42:  The Bengals are second and the Rams fourth in offensive points allowed per game (17.4 and 17.7 respectively). The Rams are just a horror show with their 1970s passing game (173.9 yards per game). You can argue that this is hurting Todd Gurley ($34) but finding a statistical proof of any connection between running and passing effectiveness has proven futile. The Bengals rush defense is poor in general (27th in yards allowed per rush) overall, but somehow has yielded only three rushing TDs. Bet on the bigger sample (yards/attempt).

12. Ravens at Browns, Monday, 8:30 p.m., O/U 41: This game could give us points. Everyone is laughing at Matt Schaub ($23) but he’s 34 and has been an effective player. It would be very unusual for him to just lose all of his skills at this age. I like Javorius “Buck” Allen ($17) a lot in this game and overall because he is big and can catch. 

13. Bills at Chiefs, Sunday, 1 p.m., O/U 41: Tyrod Taylor ($27) is hurt and so we’ll give him a pass but he’s just not good. He can’t make even simple throws. I like the under here a lot and thus no players on either side should be played with any confidence. Yeah, that includes LeSean McCoy ($27), who is being killed by the Bills going three and out a league worst 28.6 percent of possessions (the Vikings, shockingly, are best at 12.4 percent).