Yahoo Sports’ Fantasy Football Live crew looks ahead to Sunday’s matchup between Kansas City and San Francisco – and how Brandon Aiyuk, George Kittle and Travis Kelce could impact fantasy managers.
My, my resignation might be my favorite thing that we’ve heard on this show.
All right, it’s time to turn our attention.
The Fantasy game changer for this week powered by Ram Trucks where we’re identifying some of the most impactful players in one of the top Fantasy matchups on the schedule.
Super super rematch, the undefeated chiefs who we keep saying need help, but they’re undefeated are traveling to Santa Clara to take on the three and three niners.
Uh San Francisco 49ers favored by 1.5 over on this one.
A little light to me 47.
All right.
So Fantasy game changer, Matt Harmon, what do you got?
Yeah, I’m gonna do to myself what I just did to Andy here, I’m gonna try to bring the Zen, uh, and, and keep things level headed here as I talk about 49ers wide receiver Brandon Auk who is one of my favorite receivers in the league.
Uh, he’s a guy, I’ve always been very high on super happy to see him get paid in the off season after what was a little bit dramatic.
Hold out to use Auk’s own words.
He took that a little farther than he probably needed to.
But regardless, we knew there was gonna be a slow ramp up to start the year.
There was a slow ramp up to start the season.
The first three weeks, he didn’t really do too much.
But let, let me just tell you how things work here.
Like this is the way it goes.
Right.
Auk has that big game against the Cardinals.
Right.
He, he, he finally gets it going.
It’s like AYU is back baby.
100 and 47 yards.
We are cooking man.
Things are finally where they need to be.
That doesn’t mean he’s just gonna be great for the rest of the season, right?
And we know this with the San Francisco 49ers wide receivers that there’s volatility because there’s so many good players and specifically when Brock Purdy in this 49er passing game sees a bunch of zone coverage.
AYU is not usually that guy that’s usually the kittle weeks, the debo weeks last week against the Seattle Seahawks depending on, you know, which source you look at.
He might have only seen Purdy like 567 drop backs against man coverage this week.
He, it’s the Chiefs defense who has the eighth highest man coverage rate according to fantasy points data.
Those are typically the I UKE games.
So this guy’s too talented.
He’s too good.
He’s too highly paid to just be on your fantasy benches or somebody you’re dropping.
I I’m playing Brandon Auk where I have him this week and I am accepting the volatility.
All right, that means Andy Barns give us who you have as your fantasy game changer.
Yeah, let’s, let’s discuss an Iowa tight end for whom things are actually going.
Well, uh, in a, in a season in which the tight end position as a whole has just been a spectacular disappointment.
George Kittle has almost single handedly kept this position relevant.
Uh, Kittle has five touchdowns in his last four games.
He’s now tied for the NFL lead in touchdowns.
He’s also averaging seven targets per game, which is well ahead of his rate in recent seasons.
It’s not quite where he was, uh, 56 years ago when he was basically the team’s only competent receiving option, but it is a big number.
Um, Kittle is headed for 900 to 1000 yards on the year and double digit touchdowns pretty clearly and a tight end one finish on the season, uh, is very much in play, so he is un bench in any matchup and now he’s got one against Kansas City.
Uh, the team that has actually allowed the most fantasy points to opposing tight ends this year.
So it is a surprisingly good setup for Kittle in this particular game.
Uh, he leads all tight ends and red zone targets and targets inside the 10 yard line right now, expect the touchdown streak to extend.
I love that, but I feel like every time we do this, you two just gang up on one team.
You’re just all in on one team.
And right now I can hear Chiefs fans everywhere.
Tara is screaming.
We’re undefeated, we’re Super Bowl, we’re back to back Super Bowl champions.
Where’s our love?
Give us a game change of terror.
I got your back, Kansas City.
Uh Our game changer here is Travis Kelsey.
This one feels pretty simple to me.
Uh Since Rusie Rice went down, Travis Kelsey has stepped up and it has become very clear that while everyone was a little bit worried that the early season struggles were an older Travis Kelsey being quote unquote washed.
It’s clear that this was more of designed usage early on where they were doing just leaning heavily on rice.
Now that they don’t have that luxury, they have shown that they can just turn it on and give the volume to Travis Kelsey and he can produce Xavier worthy is obviously very talented and it’s possible that coming out of the bi week, they figured out some more creative and more steady usage for him and the promise in uptick can be there for him.
We also got the contributions from Juju Smith Schuster stepping in, but ultimately, Travis Kelsey is the most reliable option in this offense.
The matchup is absolutely not a game where they want to pull away from Travis Kelsey.
He’s had 19 targets over the past two weeks and that is compared to averaging less than five targets through the first three games of the season.
We’re still waiting for that elusive first touchdown of the season from him.
This could be the game where we get it.
We feel comfortable finally with Travis Kelsey.
