One QB, RB, WR and TE ready for huge performances in Week 11

My wife is a Chiefs fan. Fun story: KC hasn’t lost since having a baby last December. Our son was born just a few days after Kansas City’s last loss and now he is ten and a half months old and the Chiefs still haven’t lost. The boy literally never lived because of the Chiefs loss.

I thought that streak would end on Sunday when the Broncos lined up for a relatively easy game-winning field goal.

And then the cut.

The hold.

The shovel.

Blocked.

What will happen first right now: my son’s first birthday, or the Chiefs losing a game?

Okay, enough talk about how a baby can be a good luck charm. On to fantasy footballthat’s why you clicked on this article. We’re quickly approaching the fantasy playoffs, so now is the time to make sure you’re making the best possible moves for your roster.

Let’s take a look at one player at each skill position who will have a strong performance for fantasy football in Week 11 of 2024.

Russell Wilson has now started three games for the Steelers. Last week he threw for a season-low 195 yards in a win over the Commanders, but he also managed to throw three touchdown passes to still give him a strong overall performance.

This week, Wilson has a juicy matchup against the Ravens, a team that allows the second-most fantasy points per game to opposing quarterbacks.

The defense in particular has had a difficult time lately. Take last Thursday night’s game against the Bengals. Sure, Joe Burrow is an elite quarterback, but even elite quarterbacks don’t often throw for 428 yards, especially when a player as important as Tee Higgins is out. But that’s what Burrow did: destroy Baltimore’s defense.

Late-stage Russell Wilson is no Joe Burrow, but he proved this year that he can still be a capable NFL quarterback and whatever the past two seasons in Denver were… well, it’s in the past now .

Look, no one needs to tell you that Joe Mixon should be in your fantasy lineup. Of course he should be. If you benched Mixon, we’d have to have a serious conversation about whether you know what you’re doing or not.

But some of you may be reading this article for DFS advice, so I want to highlight why Mixon is in the top three this weekend.

Coming into this game, Mixon has finished as a top 10 prospect in five of the seven games he has played, and he has found the end zone in six of the seven games he has played.

Houston’s passing attack looked sluggish at times, but Mixon kept going. He continued to have 100-yard games with four in a row before hitting a bit of a dip last week, finishing with 46 rushing yards in a loss to the Lions.

This week, Mixon should be primed for a big rebounding effort against a Dallas Cowboys defense that allows the fourth-most fantasy points per game to opposing running backs.

The Boys are coming off a game where they were defeated by the Eagles run game, giving up 187 rushing yards. Only 66 of those went to Saquon Barkley as the Eagles spread the accents a bit, but don’t expect Houston to emulate that approach. They will feed Mixon early and often against a defense that struggles to slow down the run.

The Titans traded DeAndre Hopkins after the Bills game. It’s no coincidence that Calvin Ridley has been on fire since that match.

Over the past three games, Ridley is averaging 10.7 targets, 6.7 receptions and 100.0 receiving yards per game with a pair of touchdown receptions.

Now he’s set to take on the Minnesota Vikings, a team that allows the third-most fantasy points at the wide receiver position.

Ridley is ranked as a low-end WR2 this week, but he has the upside of doing much better than that. Since the Hopkins trade, he has already finished in the top five of fantasy receivers twice. The former Falcon and Jaguars is in the midst of a career resurgence. Maybe the road he took to get to this place has been a lot windier than anyone expected, but he’s currently playing the best football of his life and proving he can be a No. 1 receiver in the NFL.

We perform it with Jonnu Smith. Last week I wrote about Smith and the results were…meh. He caught three of his four targets for 45 yards and finished as the overall TE20. Not great, but 7.5 points in full PPR isn’t the end of the world. If you streamed Smith, he didn’t kill your lineup.

I’m on the Jonnu Smith train again this week. Maybe I’m a masochist? Don’t know. What me Doing All we know is that Smith and the Dolphins are going up against a Raiders team that is allowing the fifth-most fantasy points per game to opponents.

Smith enters the week with 45 or more yards in four of his past five games. He has three top 15 fantasy finishes in that stretch. In general, I’m looking into what Smith is doing, even though I’d like to see an uptick in his volume at some point.