It's Week 9 of the NFL season, and for your Fantasy football squads, this is a pivotal week. With more teams on bye and major injuries to starting quarterbacks around the NFL, the fringe plays are now more mainstream and for good reason. Your stat/sit decisons have just gotten a lot more difficult and the matchups play an even more important role now than ever.
That's where Dave Richard's Week 9 matchup breakdown comes in. From defensive coverages and pass-rush pressure to backfield workloads and target distribution, we'll examine the factors that matter most to help you identify trustworthy starters, avoid potential disappointments and make the best possible lineup decisions. Dave Richard's Week 9 rankings: Top 150 | QB | RB | WR | TE | K | DST Joe Fagnano has extensive college experience (starting at Maine for four years before transferring to UConn for two more years) and has proven to be a reliable, quick-game pocket quarterback.
Asking him to be anything more than that might be problematic, even if his pass protection won't be too rough. Last year at UConn he connected with Skyler Bell on a ton of quick throws, but not necessarily all short throws, for huge numbers. My best guess is that the Ravens scheme up a slew of targets to Zay Flowers against the Jaguars' zone-heavy defense with the hope he breaks a couple of plays for big yardage.
The Jaguars happen to rank bottom-five in both yards per attempt and average depth of throw allowed to receivers on throws under 2.5 seconds, but it's not like they've been crushed on quick passes -- Darius Cooper had a long touchdown against a coverage bust and Keenan Allen had a lot of quick-game volume to help push their numbers to decent totals. Tight ends like Foster Moreau and Mike Gesicki have had more success, so maybe that helps raise the outlook for Mark Andrews, who leads all tight ends and is second on the team with 21 targets on quick throws this season. It's probably not enough to call him anything more than a low-end streamer, though.
That leaves Flowers as the only Ravens pass-catcher with decent Fantasy potential as a No. 2 receiver. Kyle Pitts wasn't the problem last week -- his quarterback in the rain against a suffocating Buccaneers pass rush was. Pitts generally stuck to short-area routes as an easy option for Michael Penix Jr., though he was wide open on a deep corner that Penix overthrew.
Penix otherwise melted down and threw four picks and three other shoulda-been picks. Pitts also didn't see any red-zone snaps until the final drive of the game when Penix was pressured and either misfired or had his ball batted down on three straight plays. Weather won't be a factor in Spain's stadium, and Cincinnati's pass rush has blitzed at the lowest rate this season with a league-average pass rush pressure rate.
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