Texans vs. Dolphins Fantasy Football Worksheet, Week 15

The Worksheet, a comprehensive fantasy football preview by Rich Hribar, breaks down everything you need to know about the Week 15 matchup between the Texans and Dolphins.

Find a breakdown of every Week 15 NFL game in our Worksheet Hub.

Trust = spike production for that player

Quarterback

Tua Tagovailoa: Tua kept plugging the box score on Sunday, completing 33-of-47 (70.2%) of his passes for 331 yards and two touchdowns.

Tagovailoa has ripped off four straight QB1 scoring weeks.

Miami has been unable to run the football effectively, and they have calibrated working around that with their short passing game.

Tagovailoa has thrown the ball 36, 40, 46, and 47 times over the past four games.

Miami has thrown the ball 8% over expectations over that period and 4% over expectations on first downs.

With the high success rate that Tua’s throws have paired with that type of volume, Tagovailoa has a higher floor for fantasy as a back-end QB1.

Tua has completed a league-high 73.8% of his passes, and his expected completion rate per Next Gen Stats is 72.8%, which leads the league.

30.2% of his passes have been at or behind the line of scrimmage (2nd highest in the league), the highest career rate.

Tua averages 4.4 air yards per completed pass, the lowest of his career.

For context, he averaged 6.3 air yards per completion in 2023 and 8.8 air yards per completion in 2022.

Houston has allowed the lowest completion rate in the league at 56.3%. 

Given this matchup, I would scoff at that holding up, but Jared Goff (2nd in the league in completion rate behind Tua) only completed 50% of his passes against Houston.

While Houston has played good top-down pass defense, they have been shredded when allowed completions.

The Texans have allowed 11.9 yards per completed pass (28th) and a 6.1% touchdown rate (30th) to passers.

Houston has struggled to defend downfield throws, which have not been as prevalent for this passing offense this season.

But even on throws shorter than 10 yards downfield, the Texans have allowed a 5.3% touchdown rate, which is 30th in the league.

Miami has not played as well on the road, and Houston has been underwhelmed on offense all season, but this game still has enough star power to turn into a potential shootout.

C.J. Stroud: Stroud exits the bye, sitting at QB26 in points per game (13.9). 

He has not had a QB1 scoring week since Week 4.

Stroud is 28th in the league in inaccurate throw rate (12.3%).

A league-worst 21.1% of his dropbacks have resulted in a loss of 1.0 EPA or more.

Those are not far off from his rookie season rates.

In 2023, Stroud had a 12.5% inaccurate throw rate (23rd) and an 18.8% bust rate per dropback (21st).

But he has been unable to offset those with splash plays this season like last year.

As a rookie, Stroud was 5th in the league in rate of dropbacks that generated 1.0 EPA or more (26.8%).

This season, he is 16th (24.5%).

Stroud is a floor-based QB2 for fantasy, but the window is still open for a spike week.

There is a path here for this game to pop, and Houston had the bye to hopefully self-scout and adjust for the season's final stretch.

Miami has been softer against the pass since their Week 6 bye.

Since Tua returned, they are inherently playing higher-scoring games.

Over that span, Miami has faced 38.4 pass attempts per game, which is the 2nd-most in the league.

Before that, without Tua, they were facing 28.3 attempts per game, the 6th-fewest.

They just allowed 339 passing yards to Aaron Rodgers on Sunday, his first 300-yard game since 2021.

The week prior, they allowed 9.8 yards per pass attempt to Jordan Love.

Miami has allowed quarterbacks 17.4 fantasy points per game over its past seven games, including solid weeks for Rodgers (17.6 points), Love (19.0 points), Gardner Minshew (18 points), Josh Allen (22.1 points), and Kyler Murray (22.2 points).

Running Back

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