Fantasy Football Week 7: New Orleans Saints vs. Jacksonville Jaguars start 'em, sit 'em, how to watch TNF and more
This week we will enjoy a dose of very contrasting trends on "Thursday Night Football."
The Jacksonville Jaguars (4-2), winners of three consecutive games, have finally found the key to unlock their winning ways after starting the season with a 1-2 record, including a Week 3 loss against division-rival Houston Texans.
The New New Orleans Saints, on the other hand, seemed to have struck gold by signing Derek Carr. They got things going smoothly with an early 2-0 record that is now at an even 3-3 with their only (albeit dominant) win in the past four weeks coming at New England.
There isn’t much precedence between these two, so you won’t have that information available if you want to make an educated guess at what might happen on Thursday night.
The last time the Saints and the Jaguars met was in 2019, a horrible game for those watching that ended in a paltry 13-6 win by New Orleans. Both franchises have gone against each other only twice in the past 10 years and three times after the 2007 season, although they have alternated wins every time with the Jaguars having a 2-1 winning record in that span.
Oddsmakers couldn’t have made this matchup any closer, handing Jacksonville a tiny advantage with the Jaguars opening the week as a slight 1-point favorite over the Saints. The over/under was set at 41.5 with the two teams averaging a combined 41.9 points scored but allowing a lower 36.3 combined per contest.
As injury reports and news kept coming the lines started to move and swing in favor of the Saints, who turned into the matchup favorites by a field goal (-3) and the total moving down a bit to 39.5 points Monday. On Thursday, the Saints are still favorites by 2.5 points.
How do the Saints and Jaguars arrive at their TNF matchup?
They arrive thriving … and collapsing. That’d be the Jaguars and the Saints' situations respectively, of course, as the two teams couldn’t be navigating the season in more diverging ways of late.
As ridiculous as it sounds, the Jaguars have won four games this season and half of those victories came in games played in London. Jacksonville faced Atlanta and Buffalo on back-to-back overseas games, beat both of them and returned home to beat the Indianapolis Colts.
Those three consecutive wins followed a 1-2 start of the season, but don’t get the suddenly positive momentum wrong: the Jaguars might be 3-0 in that span but they have surrendered more yards than they’ve produced in each of those games and rank 26th in net yards per play.
Is some regression about to happen?
The Saints, on the other hand, seemed to reach the lowest point of their season to date after losing to the surprising Texans in Week 6. Coming off trouncing the Patriots 34-0, New Orleans was limited to just 13 points by Houston and lost for the third time in a month.
Those losses (outside of that 34-0) include scoring just 39 points while allowing opponents to dump 64 points on them. Derek Carr admitted to being “very disappointed” and “livid coming off the field,” but he said Tuesday that everybody is “super positive” and the offense has “corrected” their woes. We’ll see how that goes.
For now, the only team having at least one player ranked inside the top 50 players overall in most fantasy leagues is Jacksonville, thanks to QB Trevor Lawrence and RB Travis Etienne Jr. Surprisingly, the best Jaguars pass-catcher has been Christian Kirk, who has more targets, receptions and yards than fellow wideout Calvin Ridley.
The Saints’ best performer through Week 6 is QB Derek Carr but he’s not even in the top-20 players at the position, which tells you all you need to know about New Orleans’ offense. WR Chris Olave leads all Saints skill-position in total fantasy points with RB Alvin Kamara posting the best per-game average through the three games he’s been available.
TNF Week 7: Injury Report
Monday’s estimated injury report was scary, to say the least.
The Saints listed 14 players on it featuring starters from all across the lineup on both offense and defense, including the likes of Carr and Olave.
The Jaguars weren’t in a much better place, mostly because of Lawrence’s shaky status after suffering a knee injury late last Sunday with just a few minutes left to play and his availability for TNF hanging by a thread. Starting WR Zay Jones was estimated as a non-participant Monday.
As the week progressed so did the healing, and even by Tuesday there was mostly positive news popping up in both camps. Lawrence was upgraded to limited and is active and expected to start. Carr was upgraded to a full participant and should carry no injury concerns. Chris Olave also was a full participant.
Jamaal Williams didn’t log a full practice throughout the entire week and he was listed as questionable in the final Saints injury report, but he's expected to play Thursday.
That’s not the case for TE Juwan Johnson, who is dealing with a calf injury and has been ruled out. He's now missed the last three games.
New Orleans will also miss two starters on their offensive line, and Jacksonville ruled WR Zay Jones out for TNF with a knee injury.
Two stats that can swing the balance
Jacksonville leads the NFL with 15 forced turnovers and New Orleans has the fifth-worst scoring efficiency inside the red zone.
Now that I have given you the stats, allow me to tell you that they might actually be a bit fluky.
If you check the overall performance of the Jaguars defense and the Saints offense, things look at least a bit different from what those two facts above could tell you.
Take the Jaguars. They have 15 takeaways this season between interceptions (eight) and recovered fumbles (seven). However, they have also allowed the second-most passing yards per game to opposing offenses for an average of 270.3 yards.
Looking at the bigger picture, the Jaguars have allowed the fifth-most fantasy points to quarterbacks, the ninth-most to wide receivers and the 12th-most to running backs. The defensive takeaways might paint them as menacing, but they feel more opportunistic than not.
Jacksonville has only 12 sacks through Week 6, tied for the sixth-fewest in the NFL. The only team with that figure? New England, which the Saints destroyed in Week 5.
Speaking of the Saints, the main narrative around the franchise this season has been their atrocious execution inside the red zone, with a 36.8% conversion rate. However, New Orleans has a much better 62% conversion rate on goal-to-go plays.
Through Week 6, no other team in the league has three players (Chris Olave, Michael Thomas, Alvin Kamara) with at least 45+ opportunities and only one touchdown scored at most. No other franchise has two wide receivers with 45+ targets but only one receiving touchdown. Positive regression must be coming and it’ll start (if it hasn’t already) with Derek Carr.
Carr started the season strong but suffered an injury in Week 3 and played through it in Week 4. After that, he’s put up back-to-back games of 15+ fantasy points and completed three passes for touchdowns against only one interception. Last Sunday, Carr looked like the Carr we remember, and although it’s unreasonable to expect him to throw 50+ passes or reach 350+ yards weekly, he should have enough to be a weekly top-15, potentially top-10 player.
Two players to start, one to leave on your bench on TNF
Start: TE Evan Engram (JAX)
After Zay Flowers scored his first touchdown of the season last Sunday, Evan Engram is the leader in Jaguars receptions without a score this season. Engram has been targeted 44 times and he’s hauled in 36 of those passes for 301 yards. No other tight end in the NFL is on par with that.
Barring the lack of touchdowns, Engram has the fourth-most receiving yards, he is tied for the most receptions and he has the third-most targets among tight ends through Week 6.
It’s fair to say that New Orleans has only faced one top-tier tight end this season: Dalton Schultz last weekend. The Saints got burned by Schultz to the tune of four receptions on seven targets and a touchdown. While the unit has been good against the position in the fantasy realm, Luke Musgrave (six receptions, 49 yards) and Cade Otton (three receptions, 13 yards, one touchdown) already did enough to finish as TE1s against the Saints.
Engram is better than the latter two and on par with Schultz. The Jaguars tight end is also one of the most reliable players on a weekly basis as he boasts one of the lowest week-to-week variations in FPPG: Engram has scored between 7.4 and 10.2 FP in five of the six games he’s played to date, and between 7.4 and 8.7 in four of them (based on the half-PPR scoring system).
Consider benching if you have better options: RB Travis Etienne Jr. (JAX)
We had to wait a full year to enjoy the Etienne experience after the rookie was ruled out for the 2021 season, but the former Clemson standout delivered the goods in 2022 and he’s on pace to do so again.
Etienne is a must-start type of player in most fantasy leagues and contexts, but that might not be the case in this particular TNF matchup. The Saints' defense has been impressively stout against the run this season. They have allowed just one rushing touchdown all year long and it wasn’t scored by a running back. Only Derrick Henry (all the way back in Week 1) crossed the 60-yard barrier rushing against New Orleans.
Etienne leads the NFL in total carries (113), ranks sixth in rushing yards (451), is tied for the sixth-most rushing touchdowns and although he has not caught a pass for a score he has accrued 172 receiving yards on 21-of-24 grabs.
Most of that production, however, came on rather favorable matchups. Etienne has scored 15+ fantasy points against bottom-10 defenses but in the two games against top-five units he didn’t even reach double-digit FP. New Orleans has the second-best defense against fantasy rushers.
You're likely starting Etienne, but if you happen to be loaded at fantasy RB this season, consider giving him the night off.
Start: Michael Thomas (NO)
Surprisingly, Michael Thomas is available in more than 15 percent of all Yahoo leagues entering Week 7. Most probably that has to do with his shaky health during the past few years. In the 2020-22 span he only appeared in 10 combined games, but through the first six weeks of play this year, Thomas has started all games while taking 329 snaps (18th-most among WRs across the NFL).
As alluded to already, one of the main problems of the Saints this season under Derek Carr has been red-zone execution, but that has to positively regress at least to a certain extent at some point.
Other than that lack of scoring (which is a scarce resource of fantasy points and fairly a risky stat to rely on weekly), Michael Thomas ranks 18th in receptions with 31 and he’s actually the only WR with more than 27 passes hauled in but no touchdowns scored. Thomas is also one of three players with at least 329 receiving yards but no scores.
The production has been there on a weekly basis for Thomas with the veteran wideout averaging five receptions on nearly eight targets per game for around 55 yards. The touchdowns will start falling sooner or later and the Jaguars have allowed nine through the season — a bottom-10 figure in the NFL.
Two players to scout as prospective waiver wire adds
Saints RB Jamaal Williams (39% rostered)
Williams spent his first few seasons in Green Bay before moving to divisional-rival Detroit in 2021. He increased his rushing stats nearly every passing year leading up to an absolute eruption last season when he rushed the rock 262 times for 1,066 yards and 17 (!!!) touchdowns.
No wonder the Saints paid him all he wanted.
Then, after just two games, the Saints were forced to place Williams on Injured Reserve. He suffered a hamstring injury in Week 2, having logged 27 carries for 74 yards and no scores to go with seven yards on two carries.
Williams has been activated off IR, but I wouldn’t advise starting him even against a bottom-10 defense against the rush in a promising matchup. Williams’ injury has made him available in nearly two of every three Yahoo leagues, however, and he’s more than proved his value in the NFL when given the chance.
Alvin Kamara isn’t even remotely close to his best version after missing the start of the year, rushing for around 66 yards per game this season and having only one rushing touchdown, as well as averaging 29 receiving yards with no scores.
I don’t expect Williams to take over the RB1 role, but he should be one of the best waiver wire targets for the remainder of the season with a reasonable projection for producing RB2-level fantasy points weekly.
Saints WR Rashid Shaheed (37% rostered)
Unless you manage a fantasy team in a deep league, it doesn’t make much sense to start Shaheed this week. That said, things might change for the better sooner rather than later when it comes to the sophomore.
Shaheed has been a bit underwhelming at catching passes (he’s grabbed only 59% of his 27 targets) but his yards-per-catch averages are impressive on a weekly basis. He just has to remove the butter from his fingers and he would turn a top-heavy wideout room into a three-headed monster.
The Weber State product has logged 89, 63, 33, 28 and 85 yards in the five games in which he’s caught at least one pass this year. The problem is that he’s yet to grab more than five passes and he only did that once all the way back in Week 1.
Consider Shaheed a little bit of a boom/bust proposition, but for the role and usage he’s getting it’s fair to say he’s been solid putting up 298 yards on just 16 grabs to go with two receiving touchdowns.
Also, keep in mind that Thomas has only played 10 combined games from 2020 through 2022 with injuries, so there’s always a chance he ends up missing time and Shaheed’s role increases as a result.
