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Fantasy Football Six Pack: Is George Pickens the NFL's next potential superstar WR?

We haven't figured out the entire Week 13 puzzle just yet, but we do happen to know these six things...

100.2 - This is the passer-rating on attempts targeting George Pickens this season — and, yes, it is well ahead of Kenny Pickett's 73.5 rating for the year. Every week, Pickens delivers one of these...

While the Steelers are perhaps not having the season they'd expected, at least they know they have a potential superstar wideout as a foundational piece of the offense. Pickens is absurd. He gets Atlanta this week, a defense that's allowed the fourth-most fantasy points to wide receivers and the second-most receiving yards to the position.

60 - David Montgomery delivered a good-not-great performance for fantasy purposes last Sunday, carrying 14 times for 79 yards and catching three balls for 34. But he produced a few exceptional highlights along the way and gained 60 of his 79 rushing yards after contact. He also forced seven missed tackles on his 14 carries — the highest total for any back in Week 12 — and four of his attempts went for 10 or more yards. He was simply excellent. This week, he's at home facing an absolutely dreadful Packers run defense; Green Bay ranks next-to-last in rushing yards allowed (154.8 YPG) and they give up 5.0 yards per carry. Montgomery is unbenchable this week, headed for a top-10 (5?) positional finish.

89 - In Keenan Allen's second game back from injury, he played a season-high 89 percent of the snaps for the Chargers, running 49 routes and looking generally like himself. Allen made his first visit to the end zone this season, too.

It is, in fact, not yet too late for Allen to have a massive impact in our game. We'll remind you that from 2017 to 2021, the man averaged 102 receptions and 1,184 receiving yards per year. His rest-of-season schedule is incredibly friendly, beginning this week at Vegas.

49 - Taysom Hill just played a season-high 49 percent of his team's offensive snaps, the third straight week in which he's topped 40. He's handled 15 carries, drawn three targets and attempted four passes in his last two games, so he's plenty involved in the Saints offense. If his usage remains at this level, another blow-up week is definitely coming. Hill is actually still the No. 6 fantasy tight end on the season thanks largely to one monster performance against Seattle, a fact that tells you something about Taysom's upside and also about the horrors of this position.

Taysom Hill is getting the kind of workload that could lead to a big fantasy game soon. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Taysom Hill is getting the kind of workload that could lead to a big fantasy game soon. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)

15 - Daniel Jones, who has started all 11 games for the Giants and put the ball in the air 316 times, has attempted only 15 passes traveling 20 or more yards. That's just a stunningly low total. Fourteen different quarterbacks have attempted at least 40 passes targeting a player 20 yards downfield. Jones has hit on six of his 15 deep attempts this year, resulting in two scores and no picks. He's had plenty of success on deep shots in the past — in 2020, he went 20 for 43 with six TDs and zero interceptions — so this seems like less of a Jones issue and more an indictment of New York's receiving room. Still, you'd like to think Darius Slayton would be seeing 2-3 bombs per game, if only to give opposing defenses more field to defend.

8 - Since joining the Vikings ahead of the trade deadline, T.J. Hockenson has seen eight red-zone targets, second-most among all tight ends over the past four weeks. Hockenson has been targeted 34 times in his four games for Minnesota and he's had at least five receptions every week. He's seeing 2.4 additional targets per game than he was averaging with Detroit. We don't see many situations in which a tight end switches teams at mid-season and immediately surges, but it's happening for Hock.

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