Titans vs Rams Fantasy Football Worksheet, Week 9

The Worksheet, a fantasy football overview by Rich Hribar, breaking down everything you need to know for the Week 9 Tennessee Titans at Los Angeles Rams Sunday Night Football game.

• The Rams lead the NFL in points per drive (2.92) while the Titans are seventh (2.42).
• The Rams have a 56.9% pass rate in the red zone (sixth) after a 38.8% in 2020 (31st).
• Cooper Kupp has scored 80.3 fantasy points in the red zone, the most of any non-quarterback in the league and behind only Tom Brady (83.4) and Matthew Stafford (82.5) on the season. 
• Tennessee is producing just 3.3 plays per game to gain 20 or more yards, ahead of only New Orleans (2.5).
• The Rams are averaging 2.4 more yards per pass play than their opponent, the largest differential in the league.
• Derrick Henry had accounted for a touch or target on 58.4% of his snaps, the second-highest rate in the league.
• Henry was the only player that accounted for over 50% of his team’s offensive touches (54.6%) on the season. 
• Henry accounted for 34.2% of the Tennessee yardage gained (first among running backs) and 41.7% of the offensive touchdowns (second).

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

Quarterback

Matthew Stafford (TRUST): Stafford has been tearing apart a string of soft defenses with QB5 (25.2 points), QB1 (27.2 points), and QB6 (24.2 points) scoring weeks against the Giants, Lions, and Texans. He runs right into another strong matchup here against a Tennessee defense that is allowing 17.1 passing points per game (24th) and has already allowed the QB1 in overall scoring twice on the season. 

Ryan Tannehill: Tannehill has bounced back with back-to-back QB1 scoring weeks in each of the past two games after a slow start to the season. Those matchups came against the Colts and Chiefs, two teams we have picked on all season when applicable. The Rams have been a much tougher defense to attack, ranking 13th in yards allowed per attempt (7.1 Y/A) and second in touchdown rate allowed (2.8%) to opposing passers. 

We also have no idea what we are going to see from the Titans’ offense in the wake of losing Derrick Henry. Tannehill has started one game in Tennessee without Henry active in 2019, completing 17-of-27 passes for 272 yards (10.1 Y/A) with three touchdown passes. 

The Titans have been such a unique offense attached to Henry. The Titans have thrown the ball on just 39% of their first down play calls outside of the fourth quarter (second-lowest in the league) and just 45% of the time on first or second down play calls outside of the fourth quarter (second-lowest). Henry had 142 touches on first downs alone, which are 50 more touches than the next closest player on first downs, and would make him fifth overall in touches on the season if he did not record a touch on any other downs.

We also need to see if the Titans continue to use play-action passing to the degree they do since Tannehill has carried such jarring splits with the use of the play pass. Tannehill is averaging 10.2 yards per pass attempt using play-action as opposed to 6.6 yards per pass attempt without. In that 2019 game without Henry, they still used play action on 31.8% of Tannehill's dropbacks, which was the fourth-highest rate in the league that week. With the use of play action in that game, Tannehill was 9-of-11 passing for 174 yards (15.8 Y/A) with two touchdowns. 

Pairing the unknowns of the offense with the matchup, being large underdogs, and Tannehill’s performance this season against better defenses, I am approaching him a QB2 this week.

Running Back

Darrell Henderson: Henderson turned 15 touches into 93 yards and a pair of touchdowns last week against the Texans, his second top-five scoring week over the past three games. Henderson has at least one touchdown in five of his seven games played, which has covered him catching three or fewer passes in all but one game. After back-to-back games against the Texans and Lions, two of the worst run defenses in the league, Henderson draws a Titans unit that is more middle of the road, allowing 12.2 rushing points per game (15th), but is allowing 4.55 yards per carry to backs, which is 28th in the league. Continue to roll Henderson out as a fringe RB1 option attached to this passing game.

Titans RBs: There is no replacement for Derrick Henry and this remaining depth of Jeremy McNichols, Dontrell Hilliard, and the freshly signed Adrian Peterson  and D'Onta Foreman has a lot of ground to make up. 

McNichols has bounced around the league and has just 56 career rushing attempts five years into his career. McNichols was a workhorse at Boise State, racking up 291 and 351 touches his final two years in college, but he has double-digit carries in just one career game in the NFL.  

Peterson is 36 years old and is coming off averaging 3.9 yards per carry last year with the Lions, but he did find the end zone seven times. 

Hilliard has 22 career carries in five NFL season with four teams.

Foreman was with the Titans a year ago, rushing 22 times for 95 yards.

Henry was also a unique runner, so it is not like this climate created him. The touch count aided his counting stats, but Henry had already rushed for fewer than 3.0 yards per carry the past two games. Only 28.3% of his carries gained five or more yards (68th among all players with 25 or more carries), but he led the NFL with 391 yards on carries gaining 10 or more yards, which made up 41.7% of his rushing yardage. 

The Titans would be best in not trying to replicate their approach with Henry with this outfit and being large road underdogs may force them out of that anyways. With McNichols already being a reliable pass catcher, he would be my favorite option out of the gates paired with the potential game script here. The Rams are 24th in receiving points allowed per game (12.6) to opposing backfields compared to 11th in rushing points allowed per game (11th).

Wide Receiver

Cooper Kupp (TRUST): Kupp’s blitzkrieg on the league continued last week, catching 7-of-9 targets for 115 yards and his 10th touchdown on the season. Kupp now has 214.9 PPR points on the season, surpassing the 208.7 points he scored all of 2020. He now gets a Tennessee secondary allowing a league-high 16.5 receptions and 216.0 yards per game to opposing wide receivers to go along with 12 touchdowns.

A.J. Brown: Arthur Juan has been cooking, posting games of 7-91-0, 8-133-1, and 10-155-1 the past three weeks. Brown recently beat up on the Colts and Chiefs, but also the Bills, who have been a top defense. The Rams are allowing 7.9 yards per target (10th) and a 2.9% touchdown rate (fourth) to opposing wideouts, so this will be a test as strong as that matchup. The Rams have not used Jalen Ramsey to shadow wideouts, but having Julio Jones actually be on the field can help Brown out here for that being an option. The Titans and Brown have a wide range of outcomes this week, but there is upside here for Brown as a volatile WR1 option.

Robert Woods: After opening the year as the WR46, WR44, and WR65, Woods has been the WR8 in overall scoring since with weeks as the WR27, WR8, WR37, WR19, and WR11. He has fewer than 50 yards receiving in five of his eight games but has found the end zone four times over those past five games. He even had three rushing attempts last week (22 yards and a score) after failing to carry the ball since Week 3. Woods has run a bit hot due to offensive attachment, but nothing is changing here in this matchup as noted with Kupp to move away from him as a WR2.

Van Jefferson: Jefferson has played 94% and 84% of the snaps the past two weeks, running a pass route on 95.2% and 88.6% of the team dropbacks. He is a full-time player on an elite offense now that DeSean Jackson is out of the picture, seeing seven (4-43-1) and six (3-88-0) targets the past two weeks, his two highest target shares of the season. Jefferson is now essentially an upgraded Christian Kirk for fantasy purposes as an upside WR4, with greater appeal in soft matchups such as this one.

Julio Jones: Jones missed his second game of the season last week due to a bulky hamstring and has now played 50%, 66%, and 43% of the snaps in his past three games when on the field. We will monitor his status throughout the week, but he is a volatile WR3/FLEX until we see him healthy. That health is a big deal because Jones is still averaging 11.1 yards per target. If the Titans morph into an aggressive passing team over the back half of the season, there is hope Jones can still pay off down the stretch.

Tight End

Tyler Higbee: Higbee continues to play a ton, but the results and targets just have not followed. He has run a route now on 81.0% of the team dropbacks (fourth among tight ends) on the season, but he has not had double-digit points in a game since Week 3 or more than 46 yards in a game since Week 1. Higbee has cleared six targets just once on the season. Tennessee is allowing a league-low 4.4 yards per target to opposing tight ends and a 56.0% catch rate (third) to the position, leaving Higbee as a usage-based TE2 option that needs to find the end zone.

More Week 9 Fantasy breakdowns from The Worksheet:

NYJ at IND | ATL at NO | LVR at NYG | NE at CAR | CLE at CIN | HOU at MIA | MIN at BAL | BUF at JAX | DEN at DAL | LAC at PHI | ARI at SF | GB at KC | TEN at LAR | CHI at PIT