Eagles vs Raiders Fantasy Football Worksheet, Week 7

The Worksheet, a fantasy football overview by Rich Hribar, breaking down everything you need to know for the Week 7 Philadelphia Eagles at Las Vegas Raiders Sunday afternoon game.

• Just 9.2% of the offensive snaps run against the Raiders have come inside of the red zone, the lowest rate in the NFL.
• Jalen Hurts leads the league in red zone fantasy points (68.5).
• Hurts leads all quarterbacks in fantasy points scored in the 4th quarter this season (56.8).
• The Raiders are averaging a league-high 9.8 yards per passing play on third downs.
• Derek Carr is averaging just 6.9 yards per pass attempt on first down (28th), but 9.3 Y/A on all other downs, third in the league. He leads the NFL with 12.1 Y/A on third downs.
• The Eagles are second in the league in percentage of completions to gain 20 or more yards (7.7%) while the Raiders are third (8.6%).
• The Raiders (13.5%) and Eagles (13.9%) are the two lowest blitzing teams in the NFL.

Trust = spike production for that player
Bust = down-week production for that player’s standards

Quarterback

Jalen Hurts: Hurts just keeps making things happen in the box score by the time the game ends. He is the only quarterback so far to be a QB1 scorer every week this season. The past two weeks have been ugly from a passing stance, completing 59.5% and 46.2% of his passes for 5.4 yards per pass attempt and 4.4 Y/A, but Hurts tacked on two rushing touchdowns in each game as fantasy deodorant for those performances through the air. Through six weeks, 40.8% of Hurts’s fantasy points have come via rushing, the highest rate in the league.

He will need to stay active on the ground here as the Raiders have been game against the pass. Las Vegas gave up a plethora of garbage production last week, but even with it included, the Raiders are fifth in passing points allowed per attempt (0.38) and second in yards allowed per pass attempt (6.3 Y/A). 

The other wrinkle here is that the Raiders just do not blitz anyone. They are blitzing at the league’s lowest rate (13.5%). Typically, a benefit for an opposing passer, but Hurts has averaged 8.9 yards per attempt with five touchdowns against the blitz this season as opposed to 6.3 Y/A and three touchdowns with all four of his interceptions when not blitzed. It has also become frustrating that the Eagles are doing nothing schematically to aid Hurts and this passing game, sparingly using play-action (21st), and  Hurts has still shown he is a high-floor QB1 due to his rushing ability despite the matchup wrinkles, but eventually he is not going to back door his way to a QB1 scoring week. 

Derek Carr: After a couple of down weeks, Carr tapped back into the passer we saw early in the season last week as he was the QB10 (21.5 points), throwing for 341 yards and a pair of touchdowns. 

In the first game with Greg Olson calling plays given the shakeup from last week, the Raiders used play-action on a season-high 31% of Carr’s dropbacks after 11.5% through five weeks.

Carr has lived downfield this season, having the most completions in the league of 20 or more yards (32) and is sixth in average depth of target (9.8 yards), but the Eagles are second in 20-yard pass plays allowed (11) and opponents have just a 6.6-yard aDOT against them, the second-lowest rate in the league. Carr has the most fantasy points this season among quarterbacks on throws over 15 yards downfield (42.9). Just a week ago, Tom Brady was in a similar position. Brady was leading the league in 20-yard completions entering last week and had an aDOT of just 5.6 yards against the Eagles, which was ahead of only Geno Smith (4.1 yards) in Week 6. The last time Carr faced a strong team against the deep ball was the Chargers in Week 4 when he averaged a season-low 5.8 yards per pass attempt. With the Eagles forcing things underneath, Carr is a floor-based QB2.

Running Back

Josh Jacobs: After Jacobs accounted for 90% and 86.4% of the backfield touches Weeks 4-5, he handled 68.0% of the touches this past week as the staff reincorporated Kenyan Drake for six touches, two of which he turned into touchdowns. The interesting part of that was that there was no playing time change. Jacobs still played 64% of the snaps and ran a route on 48.3% of the dropbacks, which is right in line with his usage since returning to the lineup. Drake played just 21% of the snaps and ran a pass route on just 20.7% of the dropbacks, he just made the most of his chances while Jacobs only got one target. 

Jacobs needs those targets because the Raiders are the league’s worst rushing offense, currently sitting dead last in the NFL in expected points added via rushing. Jacobs himself has carried 54 times for 175 yards (3.2 YPC) with a high of 3.4 YPC in a game this season. The Eagles can potentially help that as they have allowed 4.5 YPC to backs (20th), but if Jacobs does not have the targets or rushing efficiency, he is a touchdown-dependent RB2.

Miles Sanders: After a Week 4 scare when it looked like Kenneth Gainwell was gaining steam, Sanders has come back the past two games and played 75% and 83% of the offensive snaps compared to just 24% and 23% for Gainwell. Sanders has handled 84.2% and 91.7% of the backfield touches in those games. 

Sanders has only rushed 20 times total those weeks, but he has turned in 101 yards on those carries. The Eagles need to #EstablishIt more often. The Raiders can be run on, allowing 4.5 YPC to backs (22nd) and 15.3 rushing points per game (22nd), but as a road underdog, Philadelphia needs to show us a commitment to the run. On the receiving end, Sanders has also run a pass route on 67.5% and 66.7% of the team dropbacks the past two games to go with all those snaps, his two highest rates on the year. His receiving numbers are lax (18 catches for 121 yards), but with Sanders becoming a full-time back in a positive matchup for rushing efficiency, he is back in play as an RB2 option.

Wide Receiver

DeVonta Smith: The rollercoaster for Smith went down last week as he reeled in just 2-of-4 targets for 31 yards. Smith now has been the WR19, WR85, WR71, WR12, WR27, and the WR71 through six games, giving us nearly no middle ground to work with. Smith is still 12th among all receivers in route participation (93.9%) while his target share (22.6%) is 23rd and targets per game (7.3) WR28 are in the WR2/WR3 area of the position.

The Raiders are second in the league in points allowed per target (1.52) and second in yards allowed per target (6.5 yards) to opposing wideouts but did allow both Denver wideouts in Courtland Sutton (8-94-1) and Tim Patrick (3-42-1) to be top-30 scorers last week. That WR2/WR3 fringe area is where Smith belongs as a volatile fantasy option that has WR2 usage but is also attached to uneven quarterback play that makes his floor unstable.

Henry Ruggs: The weekly question is “Did Henry Ruggs catch a long touchdown pass?” The answer to that will provide you with how usable Ruggs was in fantasy. In his two weeks with a touchdown catch, Ruggs has been the WR9 and the WR15. In his other four games, Ruggs has been the WR73, WR34, WR54, and WR55. 

As noted above, the Eagles have not given up many splash plays on vertical targets this season. They have allowed just 12 completions on throws over 15 yards downfield (eighth) and have faced just six passes on throws with 30 or more air yards, allowing two to be completed. Ruggs has eight targets (five catches for 237 yards and two touchdowns) on throws over 30 yards. 

Ruggs is fast enough to by anyone downfield, but this is a week to suggest that he will find it harder to connect on one of these downfield bombs as a boom-or-bust WR4.

Hunter Renfrow: Renfrow caught 3-of-5 targets for 36 yards last week, his fewest targets in a game this season. The Eagles have allowed just three top-45 scorers on the season at the wide receiver position in Tyreek Hill, Antonio Brown, and Deebo Samuel, making it tough to lock in on Renfrow as a spike week asset, but the Eagles do face a low depth of target to give Renfrow a pulse as a floor WR5 option in full-PPR formats.

Eagles WRs: Non-Devonta Smith Eagles wideouts have produced just one WR3 or better scoring week on the season (Jalen Reagor as WR25 in Week 1), but with the trade of Zach Ertz, we should anticipate this team being more of an 11 personnel team. That doesn't give a ton of life to Reagor or Quez Watkins in seasonal formats to lean on this week, but if going to for a Hail Mary stacking partner, they are on the board.

Tight End

Darren Waller: Waller has been the TE9 or lower in every game since Week 1. While that is disappointing, he also has not been lower than the TE15 in any week and a TE1 scorer still in four of six games. The floor has been steady, he has just lacked the ceiling weeks. 

Waller has done this before for stretches of his career, so you just must stick with the usage. A year ago, Waller cleared 50 yards receiving in just two of his opening nine games. Since Week 1, Waller is still the TE4 in expected points per game. 

This may not be a spot where things turn around, though. The Eagles have faced the third-most targets per game (8.8) to opposing tight ends but rank sixth in yards allowed per target (6.1 yards). They have faced Kyle Pitts (4-31-0), George Kittle (4-17-0), and Travis Kelce (4-23-0) as part of their sample, but they did allow a huge game to Dalton Schultz (6-80-2) to keep the lights on for a big game.

Dallas Goedert (TRUST): Goedert is set to be freed as a fantasy TE1 if he is able to get off the COVID-19 list this week after the Eagles traded away Zach Ertz. Howie Roseman suggested the Eagles want to see what Goedert has moving forward, saying, “Getting him in a role where it’s not just sharing time and he’s the guy, because in terms of our bargaining power, there’s going to be no discount on Dallas Goedert. We know that, so we want to get as much information and give him as much opportunity to take over…”

Goedert averaged 50.0 receiving yards per game with Ertz out a year ago. He is currently averaging a career-high 14.4 yards per catch but has just 19 targets in five games. 

The Raiders have been giving to tight ends of late, allowing four touchdowns to the position over their past three games, with two top-5 scorers in Jared Cook (6-70-1) and Noah Fant (9-97-1) over that span.

More Week 7 Fantasy breakdowns from The Worksheet:

DEN at CLE | CIN at BAL | ATL at MIA | KC at TEN | CAR at NYG | NYJ at NE | WFT at GB | PHI at LVR | DET at LAR | CHI at TB | HOU at ARI | IND at SF | NO at SEA