At the top of the production chart for Week 11 of the fantasy football season, sits Jonathan Taylor who rushed for 185 yards with four rushing touchdowns and he caught a touchdown pass as well. Austin Ekeler gave Taylor a good run for his money for the top performer title, but he only scored four touchdowns (two rushing, two receiving). Aaron Rodgers had an excellent bounce-back week by throwing four touchdown passes with an injured Toe. Russell Wilson on the other hand, didn’t throw a single touchdown pass and he’s now posted two single-digit fantasy performances. He wasn’t the only stud-QB to put up a dud-like performance as Patrick Mahomes and Dak Prescott were also in the single digits when it came to their Week 11 production. With Amari Cooper already out in Week 11, CeeDee Lamb got concussed and Ezekiel Elliott banged up his Ankle and the timing doesn’t work in their favor because as always, the Cowboys play on Thanksgiving. Here are the latest trendy players as we start looking towards clinching our fantasy football playoff spots.


 

UP:

Kirk Cousins: Cousins hasn’t thrown an interception since week five and he’s thrown multiple touchdown passes in four of his last five games. He’s actually only thrown two interceptions all season, which is the fewest among the top 15 fantasy quarterbacks.  Despite the harder matchup coming up this week against the 49ers, Cousins continues to throw well over 30 passes in most games. He’s completing over 68 percent of his passes. Cousins averages over 24 fantasy points per week which ranks him in the top-10 among quarterbacks. He’s thrown 21 touchdowns ranking fifth among QBs and he’s up there in passing yards as well. Cousins isn’t as mobile of a quarterback so most of his production will have to be through the air. There are only four quarterbacks in the NFL who have thrown more passes than Cousins and only Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert have completed more passes than him.

Elijah Moore: Despite the Jets going through a number of Quarterbacks over the last few weeks, Moore has hit the 13-point mark in PPR in each of his last four games. The Jets could be without part of their run-game as Michael Carter is dealing with an Ankle injury and that could favor the Jets passing attack against Houston. Moore has been targeted no fewer than six times in his last five games and he’s caught four touchdown passes total in his last three matchups. He has more catches than any other Jets player this season and after dominating the target-share in Week 11, his target percentage is now ahead of Corey Davis for top target on the team. The Jets also suck and they’ll be forced to throw for the rest of the way. He’s caught six or more passes in three of his last four games. Joe Flacco targeted Moore 11 times on Sunday and it’s looking like he will be under center again against the Texans. 

Brandon Aiyuk: Has Aiyuk's hamstring finally healed? Does he understand the offense he succeeded in last season? The 49ers have a few strong matchups coming up against the Vikings, Seahawks and Bengals and Aiyuk has been getting more looks from Jimmy Garoppolo in recent games. After not being targeted more than five times in a game more than once through week seven, Aiyuk has been targeted seven or more times in three of his last four games. He’s caught touchdown passes in two of his last three games. He has about a 14 percent target-share in the 49ers offense and he has actually received at least 20 percent of the 49ers targets in each of his last four matchups. He’s now out of whatever “doghouse” he was in prior to the season and we should continue to see him more involved down the stretch especially as we look towards the fantasy football playoffs.  

 

DOWN:

Kyle Pitts: While Pitts is the most targeted receiving weapon in the Falcons offense, he’s produced one double-digit fantasy outing in PPR in his last four contests. Pitts hasn’t caught more than four passes in a game since the Falcons week seven matchup and you would think in situations with Calvin Ridley away from football and Cordarrelle Patterson hurt, targets would be force-fed to Pitts, but he caught three passes for 29 yards on five targets. The Falcons don’t even have an effective ground-game and Pitts still hasn’t been producing. Part of it is that opposing teams are looking to take him out of the game, and the other part is that Matt Ryan has thrown 30 passes just one time in his last four battles. Pitts has in theory what should be a good matchup against the Jaguars. Only two NFC teams have scored fewer points than the Falcons this year. 

Adrian Peterson: This one is going to sting because some of you spent a pretty penny on Peterson on waivers and he’s hardly doing anything with the carries he’s been given in the Titans offense. He ran in a touchdown in week nine versus the Rams, but that’s about it. After being on the field for 33 percent of the snaps his previous two weeks, he was just able to account for 19 percent of the Titans snaps. He got out-snapped by D’Onta Foreman in week 10 and both were out-snapped by Dontrell Hilliard in Week 11. This whole run-game is very difficult to rely on at this point. The 36-year old grizzled veteran has rushed for three yards per carry. Ryan Tannehill will also vulture touchdowns from the run-game. He’s run in five scores himself this season, four of them in the last six weeks. The matchup is also horrible for the Titans running backs against the Patriots who have only allowed two rushing scores on them all season. You’d have to be in a huge desperation spot to start Peterson. 

Emmanuel Sanders: Since the Bills bye in Week 7, Sanders has fallen off big time. He’s hit double figures in PPR just once in his last four matchups. He’s received less than 10-percent of the team’s target-share in two of his last four battles and he’s hit the four-catch mark one time during this stretch. Dawson Knox being back hurts Sanders a bit, but he can’t seem to shake Cole Beasley from getting either as big of a piece of the target-pie as Sanders or even a bigger piece. Beasley has even been playing hurt over the last few weeks and Sanders has still matched him in target percentage over the Bills last two games. Sanders has been on the field more than Beasley during this time but when Beasley’s on the field, the Bills are clearly trying to get him the ball more than Sanders. He has the second most catches on the team this year, but his production has completely slowed down since the early part of the season.