Yahoo Sports’ Fantasy Football Live crew looks ahead to Sunday’s matchup between Balitmore and Tampa Bay – and how it could impact fantasy managers.
Let’s get to a game that we’re actually excited about.
It would be, I don’t know, Ravens taking on the Bucks.
Obviously, Tampa Bay Baltimore, we got a lot of eyes on this.
A lot of fantasy expectations.
The Ravens favored by 3.5.
Uh This 1, 49.5 is the over under.
I should say Baltimore’s at Tampa Bay.
Uh In this one, I think I may have said that the opposite.
So we have Baltimore at Tampa Bay, Andy Barons, your biggest takeaway on this one, the thing you’re looking for.
Oh, man, we are entering week seven of an NFL season and Baker Mayfield is our current league leader in passing touchdowns.
Uh Mike Evans and Chris Godwin each have five receiving T DS.
They’re tied for the league lead, Kate Otton has been involved.
The running backs have been involved in the past game.
Um Mayfield has also been more accurate than any version of Baker Mayfield we’ve ever seen.
Uh He’s completing over 70% of his throws, the yards per attempt is at a career high.
Also his yards after catch per completion, far and away.
A career high that’s a good measure of accuracy as well.
Uh And if that wasn’t enough, he’s been a proactive runner too.
He’s only 29 y rushing yards away from setting a new single season career high.
So there, honestly, there hasn’t been anything unusually fluky here either.
He’s thrown some picks.
Um, but Baker by, by and large is just playing really good ball this week.
It’s a Baltimore defense that ranks next to last against the pass allows 8.1 yards per attempt.
So it’s a good spot for him.
The Ravens are getting themselves into shootouts more often than not Mayfield.
Just an easy top 10 fantasy quarterback this week and a top five finish would not surprise.
No, the Panthers fans gotta be wondering if maybe it wasn’t just Canalis that made Mayfield great.
Well, we’ll see.
All right, Tara, give us your top fantasy storyline as we talked about the positive with the Bucks.
Let’s talk about the, uh, the scary with the Bucks.
It is the new Bucks backfield here.
Uh, head coach Todd Bowles said that they have a three headed monster in their backfield.
I don’t know if it qualifies as a monster, but it is quite terrifying to try and figure out exactly what is going to happen here.
The plan here is that all three of the guys are going to get a shot here.
Uh, White Irving and Sean Tucker here and they plan to go with the hot hand.
So our job here is to predict which of these guys is going to have the hot hand here.
And how can we trust this backfield moving forward?
Who’s gonna pop early here?
The guy that we know the most in this offense is Rashad White, unfortunately, that might not necessarily be a good thing here.
Efficiency has been the big issue for White his entire career.
We dismissed it earlier as maybe an offensive line issue.
But with the addition of Bucky Irving, it became very clear that the 3.7 yards per carry that White was averaging was unfortunately just Rashad White.
When comparing the stats here, the two backs really, the three backs are kind of comparable through the air.
These are all guys that can be three down back.
So there’s not really any way for us to kind of pigeon hole and say this guy will get the early down work.
This guy will get the third down work.
All of them have the capability to really step up here.
Now, Bucky Irving is the one that we may trust the most here just based off of what we’ve seen this entire season and how he’s performed on the ground.
He’s had the clear edge over White in terms of running.
Uh North south here, Sean Tucker had a fantastic game last week.
There’s just a lot going on here and this backfield could completely flip on us to what we knew.
Heading in and what we think we will know for the rest of the season.
So there’s a big takeaway here.
It’s who can we trust out of this Bucks offense?
Because some back is going to be usable here.
Cross our fingers because it’s a good offense.
There’s tons of goal line opportunities.
Baker is productive through the air and throwing toads to the running back.
So somebody’s got to pop here.
We just gotta wait and see exactly who it is.
Yeah.
Three headed monsters.
It’s more like the three headed cute little like Pixar monsters that nobody’s really scared of.
You’re like, oh, that’s your, that’s where we am on that.
We are on that three headed monster.
I’ll go to an actual monster in this game.
Uh For me, the key is, is always gonna be Derrick Henry and I feel like every week I, I did take a shot every time I talk about Derek Henry, but here’s what’s interesting.
Tampa Bay’s defense has not been particularly great this year.
We know neither side is gonna known from where their defense is playing in this matchup.
The Tampa based defense has performed well against upper tier running backs.
They’ve been a managing to keep great running backs under their yardage total in each of those matchups.
So I look at this and say, ok, the rest of the league is just sort of feasting on this thing.
Is there a process?
Is there a path is there a way to slow down Derrick Henry.
It is wild to me, but Derek Henry is everything to this offense.
And the Bucks do I have the keys to be able to slow him down a little bit.
I’m nervous as much as I’m the president of the Derrick Henry fan club.
The one thing that makes me not nervous is I know that he will get bulk, he will get enough work to try and give them the opportunity.
But man, I think this Bucks defense against Derrick Henry is going to be one of those pop the popcorn.
Let’s sit back.
Let’s see if they’re up to the task.
Matt Harmon, give me your favorite storyline of this game.
Yeah, I’ll stick in Baltimore here Fitz and look, I think it’s might be crazy to say this because the guys won two mvps including one last year, but I think this might be the best Ravens offense of the Lamar Jackson era and it’s not just because of Derrick Henry who you just talked about.
It’s because these wide receivers specifically, Rashad Bavin and Zay Flowers are kind of cooking right now and I know it’s been back to back weeks of really good matchups.
This is another great match up here.
The Bucks are definitely a bottom tier pass defense, but it’s the way these guys are being used right now.
That’s really interesting to me, Zay Flowers 100 yards in back to back games and it’s on real deal wide receiver play routes.
It’s not this Mickey Mouse gadget screen stuff that we’ve seen at time in flowers’ career.
They’re really getting him going in the intermediate area and then Bateman is the outside receiver.
I mean, he’s, he’s gonna get a ton of volume.
He’s more of like a desperation, you know, wide receiver three.
He’s a, a high upside flex play, but 82.4% of Rashad Bateman’s receptions this year have been a first down or a touchdown.
He has been a super efficient player and with the way the Bucks send a lot of blitzes but play more zone coverage than any other team that should push the ball out of, uh Lamar Jackson’s hands quickly to Z Flowers on those crossing routes over the, but also some single high looks for Rashad Bateman on the outside.
So I really like both wide receivers in this matchup and the way that both of these wide receivers are elevating the overall passing ecosystem in Baltimore.
Well, with that being said, we got a question here in the youtube chat.
You guys keep them coming.
Uh Lore Lere says flowers or Mason in the flex spot.
All right, Harmon, how confident are you on flowers, flowers or mason in the flex?
I mean, not that confident.
Uh I mean, I’m, I’m confident in zay flowers, but you know, Jordan Mason, even if he’s a little banged up right now, he is still the starting running back of one of the best offenses in the league in a very high scoring game.
So uh for a Flex play, I will go Flowers over or excuse me, I will go mason over Flowers that has something to do with just the fact that I still do like Zay Flowers in this game.
