Chargers vs Bengals Fantasy Football Worksheet, Week 13

The Worksheet, a fantasy football overview by Rich Hribar, breaking down everything you need to know for the Week 13 Los Angeles Chargers at Cincinnati Bengals Sunday afternoon game.

• Joe Mixon has scored a touchdown in eight consecutive games, the longest streak for the Bengals since A.J. Green scored in nine straight in 2012.
• Mixon has scored multiple touchdowns in four straight games, the longest streak in franchise history.
• The Chargers have allowed a rushing touchdown in seven straight games, the longest active streak in the league.
• 41.5% of the yardage allowed by the Chargers has come via rushing, the highest rate in the league.
• 79.2% of the rushing yardage gained by Cincinnati running backs has come after contact, the highest rate in the league.
• The Chargers are 31st in points allowed per pass attempt on throws under 15 yards downfield (0.45) but are second in the NFL in points allowed per attempt further downfield (0.29).
• The Bengals are first in the NFL in penalty yards per game (32.8).

Trust = spike production for that player

Quarterback

Justin Herbert: Herbert and the Chargers have been Jekyll and Hyde all season long. Herbert still has yet to hit 8.0 yards per pass attempt in back-to-back games, but he has now thrown multiple touchdown passes in four of the past five weeks. 

Herbert has also really started to run. He has two or more rushing points in each of his past four games (7.4, 2.2, 9.0, and 3.6) after just once over his opening seven games of the year. 

Herbert has been the most sensitive to teams that are aggressive and blitz heavily. Among all passers with 50% of their team dropbacks, against the blitz, Herbert is 18th in completion rate (60.6%) with 7.2 yards per attempt (15th) and five touchdown passes as opposed to completing 67.8% of his passes (10th) for 7.4 Y/A (ninth) with 19 of his touchdown passes.

The Bengals are not aggressive blitzing defense, sending heat on 21.1% of dropbacks (27th), but they have played coverage, ranking fifth in points allowed per pass attempt (0.37) in part of allowing just a 3.8% touchdown rate (second). 

The Bengals do have some red on their ledger, though, allowing 351 yards to Kirk Cousins back in Week 1, and QB1 scoring weeks to both Mike White (26.1 points) and Baker Mayfield (16.7 points). 

We are still rolling out Herbert as a QB1 in the highest game total on the board despite his up and down performance and are looking for his splits against the lack of blitzes to pave a way to production. 

Joe Burrow: Burrow has single-digit passing points in each of his past three games. After throwing multiple passing touchdowns in each of his opening eight games, he has just two passing scores over those three contests as Joe Mixon has been gobbling up a plethora of scores. 

Burrow only threw 24 passes last week due to the blowout as his two lowest volume games this year have come against the Steelers. That said, Burrow still completed a season-high 83.3% of his passes and had a near touchdown with Tee Higgins being tackled at the 1-yard line. He made up some ground on his own, rushing for his first touchdown of the season. 

Burrow is averaging 11.8 yards per pass attempt against the blitz (first) as opposed to 7.4 Y/A when not blitzed (16th). That 3.8 Y/A difference is the largest differential in the league. After the Browns and Raiders backed off him and did not blitz (allowing 7.0 Y/A and 5.1 Y/A), the Steelers decided to blitz Burrow on 33.3% of his dropbacks where he averaged 10.1 yards per pass attempt. 

The Chargers are 12th in blitz rate. They blitzed at the fourth-highest rate (40.7%) in Week 12 against the Broncos but were at the bottom of the league in the previous two games against Ben Roethlisberger (19.1%) and Kirk Cousins (20%). How they approach things here can dictate their success.

Overall, the Chargers are seventh in passing points allowed per game (13.6) and 10th in yards allowed per pass attempt (7.0 Y/A) since they keep so much tight to the line of scrimmage. 

If the Bengals can run the ball like they have the past two games that can limit Burrow’s ceiling again, but if the Chargers do get aggressive and this game environment gets cooking to its implied total then Burrow has plenty of upside himself as a QB1 play.

Running Back

Joe Mixon (TRUST): Mixon has been on a heater, producing a top-four scoring week in five of his past six games. After rushing for 127 yards in Week 1, Mixon failed to rush for 100 yards in his next games before rushing for 123 and 165 yards the past two weeks. 

Mixon is inevitably not going to score a touchdown in a game, but here he gets a Chargers defense that is 31st in rushing points allowed per game (19.8). 

Austin Ekeler (TRUST): Ekeler has had more than 12 rushing attempts in just one of his past six games, but his dual-usage and touchdown equity makes him such a strong fantasy scorer. Ekeler has a receiving touchdown in three straight games and leads the position with seven receiving scores on the year to go along with a career-high seven rushing scores.

Receiving backs have given the Bengals handfuls of trouble this season as they are 30th in receiving points allowed per game (14.0) to opposing backfields. 

Wide Receiver

Keenan Allen: Allen pulled in 7-of-10 targets for 85 yards on Sunday, giving him five straight games with double-digit targets on the season. Allen has at least five grabs in every game this season with six or more in nine of his 11 games played. 

The only thorn for him crashing his ceiling regularly is that Allen has just two touchdowns. Allen also has just four end zone targets, which trails Mike Williams (nine) and Jared Cook (six), so he has not run cold in that department based on usage. 

The Bengals are 30th in catch rate (67.7%) allowed to opposing wideouts but are fifth in touchdown rate (3.2%) allowed to the position, which plays right into Allen’s fantasy output as a fringe WR1 in PPR formats and floor-based WR2 in non-PPR formats.

Ja’Marr Chase: After scorching the Earth to kick off his career, Chase is going through his first lull, catching 15-of-31 targets (48.4%) for 152 yards over his past four games with a pair of touchdowns. 

Deep ball variance has caught up to Chase as a primary culprit of the decline. Over the opening seven games of the year, Chase secured 10-of-17 targets (58.8%) on throws 15 yards downfield or further for 384 yards and four touchdowns. That production accounted for 49.5% of his fantasy production. Over this four-game slide, Chase has reeled in just 1-of-8 of those targets for 16 yards.

The Chargers are second in the league in points allowed on those downfield targets and have allowed just one touchdown on those throws this season, but we have seen some splash plays come against them in recent weeks from DeVonta Smith (5-116-1), Justin Jefferson (9-143-0), and Chase Claypool (5-93-0). 

We may have jumped the gun on Chase as a locked-in fantasy WR1 since he was living on the deep ball early on, but he still has seen over 20% of the team targets in nine of 11 games. A player getting his usage and target tree is bound to have the pendulum swing back in his favor again as an upside-based WR2.

Tee Higgins: After a season-low 10.7% target share in Week 11, Higgins bounced back to see 33.3% of the Cincinnati targets last week, catching 6-of-8 targets for 114 yards and his first touchdown since Week 2. That was his first WR1 scoring week of the season and his ceiling has been lacking, but Higgins has been a top-25 scorer in four of his past five games played and a top-30 scorer in six of his nine games played this season.

Higgins is a borderline WR2/WR3 here, but this is a curious test overall in this matchup because opposing wide receivers have scored 38.6% of the points allowed by Chargers, which is the second-lowest rate in the league. Part of that is the high amount of production they allow to opposing backs and part is the design of the defense predicated on preventing allowing big plays through the air.

The Chargers’ pass defense has been worse over the previous month and last weekend was not a great example of it being good since the Broncos just sat on their early lead. 

Mike Williams: Catching 4-of-8 targets for 39 yards last week, Williams was back in line with his production that we have seen since October started after he was gifted a long touchdown the week prior against the Steelers. 

Williams has now been below a 20% team target share in each of his past six games after clearing 25% of the targets in four of the opening five weeks of the season. The Bengals are middle of the pack against downfield targets, but we have long been back to Williams being handled as a boom-or-bust WR3.

Tyler Boyd: A week after seeing 28.6% of the targets, Boyd managed to see just two targets come his way on Sunday in the blowout victory over the Steelers. Boyd does have an intriguing matchup here based on where he accrues his targets and where the Chargers give up their most production. Some gamers may look to C.J. Uzomah in this matchup given the Chargers struggles to tight ends, but Boyd could be the pivot in that regard. The main question is how much of a ceiling do we have with Boyd?

Boyd has just 212 yards over his past seven games played with a high of 69 yards in an individual game. He also has just two touchdowns on the season, leaving him as a floor-based WR3/FLEX in PPR formats and WR4 in non-PPR formats.

Tight End

Jared Cook: Cook found the end zone for the third time this season, but that was what anchored his line once again as he caught just two passes for 25 yards to go with hat score. Cook now has fewer than 30 yards receiving in all but three games this season. The Bengals have allowed a 6.9% touchdown rate (24th) to opposing tight ends if you need incentive to chase the touchdown potential for Cook as a touchdown-dependent TE2.

C.J. Uzomah: Uzomah has just one game this season with more than 12.5% of the team targets and two games with more than 35 receiving yards. We have seen him be the TE1 in overall scoring twice on the season, but his usage is just consistently not relevant as a pass catcher, which is why he has been nothing more than a touchdown-dependent dart throw.

The Chargers do offer matchup appeal if targets do find Uzomah in deeper DFS stacks here as they are allowing a league-high 12.5% touchdown rate to opposing tight ends to go along with a 72.5% catch rate (24th) and 8.1 yards per target (28th) to the position.

More Week 13 Fantasy breakdowns from The Worksheet:

DAL at NO | ARI at CHI | NYG at MIA | TB at ATL | MIN at DET | IND at HOU | PHI at NYJ | LAC at CIN | SF at SEA | WFT at LVR | JAX at LAR | BAL at PIT | DEN at KC | NE at BUF