Fantasy Football Takeaways: Week 6

We have yet another AFC West showdown tonight (Chargers vs. Broncos) to conclude Week 6, but outside of that we completed an impressive slate of games. We had the following teams on a bye this week: Detroit Lions, Las Vegas Raiders, Tennessee Titans and Houston Texans. 

Little has changed with these teams from a fantasy perspective. However, we did see a few intriguing takeaways from this week’s slate of games, and I will break down a few below. 

Kenneth Walker looked strong in his debut 

Last week, the Seahawks lost starting running back Rashaad Penny to a broken leg. With this, rookie Kenneth Walker was asked to step into a large role. He did this in a big way, seeing 21 carries and 24 total touches. This resulted in 110 scrimmage yards and a score, en route to 19 PPR points and an RB7 finish this week. He showed everything we want to see in a starting running back: good vision, burst, awareness and elusiveness, leaving many managers very hopeful. 

This is a great sign for the future, especially since he out-touched DeeJay Dallas on the ground and was the only running back to see any targets this week. He will command the lion’s share of work going forward with Penny out for the season. He is a must-start going forward no matter the format. 

The Chris Godwin takeover has started 

In his third game back from injury, Chris Godwin has started to look more like the version of himself before his ACL injury. This week, he led the Buccaneers in targets with 12, which was double the next-closest player (Leonard Fournette). When it came to wide receivers, he tripled the next-closest player, as both Mike Evans and Russell Gage only saw four targets apiece. Godwin caught six of these targets, which resulted in a team-leading 95 yards. 

Unfortunately, he failed to find the end zone in this matchup, which limited his fantasy impact to some extent. Despite this, he produced 15.5 PPR points and a top-24 finish in Week 6. The biggest takeaway from this, though, is that Godwin has begun to become Brady’s go-to guy in the passing game, much like we saw last season before his injury. This is huge news, especially when we look back and see that at the time of his injury, Godwin was WR6 in PPR scoring while averaging over 17 points a week. 

The Bengals are ramping up 

After a few weeks of very average performances from the Bengals skill players, we finally saw a bit of an explosion this week – thanks to Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase, who both finished at the top of their position in fantasy scoring this week leading into Monday night. Burrow posted 32.5 points after producing 300 yards and three touchdowns on 37 attempts. We saw Chase and Tee Higgins lead the way in targets with 10, and both players caught at least 60% of these. Higgins caught 6-of-10 for 47 yards but failed to find the end zone this week. Chase exploded for two scores and 132 yards on his seven receptions en route to 32.2 PPR points this week. 

This is only the second time this year that Chase was able to go over 100 yards receiving, and it was his first two-touchdown game. Over the past few weeks, the Bengals have started to ramp up as the offensive line play has improved, and this has helped ignite the passing game. Chase was the second Bengals wide receiver in three weeks to finish inside the top 5 at the position in fantasy scoring (Higgins in Week 4 –WR5). As a result, it seems safe to believe we will see the Bengals offense return to last season’s form. 

Dolphins dynamic duo 

For the third time this season, both Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle exceeded 100 yards receiving. Hill led the way with 177 yards on 12 receptions on 15 targets, while Waddle produced an impressive 129 yards on only six receptions (10 targets). It was frustrating that neither found the end zone, but  both players produced top-24 numbers, as Hill finished with 29.7 PPR points (WR3) and Waddle produced 16.9 points (WR14). The most impressive thing is that no matter who is playing quarterback, this duo can produce electric numbers. 

We have seen the flip side of this as well, however. In multiple weeks, we have also seen one of these WRs go for under 40 yards receiving. There is a boom-or-bust factor built into this duo, but they remain must-starts moving forward, especially considering that in three of six weeks at least one Dolphins wide receiver has finished inside the five in PPR scoring.