Welcome back to Lucid Streams. Our goal here is to help you find emergency help that’s potentially available on the waiver wire or on the back of your bench when you’re scrambling for options due to injuries or plain old poor drafting at wide receiver and tight end. We also want to equip you with the tools to go out on your own and find the best fantasy football sleepers yourself in case the options listed here each week aren’t available to you. Our goal is to find WRs who have at least a reasonable chance to contribute 10+ PPR points to your lineup this week and TEs who can chip in at least seven points in PPR.
Last week, we hit the majority of our picks at WR. That’s just OK, but what was a lot better than just OK was nailing two of the WRs to finish in the top eight last week, Adam Thielen and Nick Westbrook-Ikhine, the latter of whom we will now just refer to as Mr. Touchdown for short. Marquez Valdes-Scantling managed to be our third hit despite only earning three targets, thanks to his TD-scoring prowess.
At TE, we went a perfect four for four, though only Austin Hooper was able to crack the top 12. Nevertheless, in a week where there were very few reasonable options rostered below 30-percent that had a decent shot at giving us a low-end starter week, we’ll be happy with a perfect record. Heck, I might even lose the dartboard this week and just have a celebratory shot of tequila!
The Process
What we are looking for each week is to find the players most likely to pop for one of several reasons. They may have an increased role in their offense due to the misfortune of a player ahead of them on the depth chart, or they may be facing a defense that will have trouble defending them due to a positional mismatch. Maybe that’s a chronic problem of the defense, or maybe it’s due to injuries in the coverage units, which will allow a unique opportunity for success by our streamer. At the intersection of high opportunity and low rostership is where we want to pan for gold in the stream. Remember, these are recommendations for those who are really in a bind for a starter and should not be played over anyone you’d normally start.
We’ll use a variety of tools to help us, including schedule-adjusted fantasy points allowed to the WR and TE positions. If you’re not familiar with this metric, it removes the variance that can skew fantasy points allowed by a defense due to the quality of the passing attacks they’ve faced. For example, if Defense A has faced four top-tier passing offenses in the first four weeks while Defense B has faced only weak passing offenses over that same period, it could appear that Defense B is better at defending WRs than Defense A, when in reality, Defense A might be the tougher matchup. The further we get into the season, the more relevance this analysis has.
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Streaming Wide Receivers Week 14
Parker Washington, Jacksonville Jaguars
If you’d have told me at the beginning of the season that I would seriously be recommending Jacksonville’s fourth WR, catching passes from Mac Jones here in Week 14 …. I actually would have totally believed you, because that’s how the late season rolls in our fake game. We’ve gone from our sexy rosters to just digging through the bottom of the dumpster, looking for treasure. Washington earned 12 targets last week, and the Jaguars’ downfield passing game consists entirely of Brian Thomas Jr., Evan Engram, and our man Parker. Fire him up.
Elijah Moore, Cleveland Browns
The Steelers’ pass defense is no joke, but Jameis Winston believes in his own right arm more sincerely than a five-year-old believes in Santa Claus. If Winston can get Moore to eight catches for 111 yards on 14 targets against the Broncos’ stingy defense, he can get Moore home against the Steelers, too.
Ray-Ray McCloud, Atlanta Falcons
Kyle Pitts is deep into a tailspin despite the fact that the Falcons have been having to air out the ball on a weekly basis. If Pitts can’t earn targets, then Ray-Ray will slide right in to fill that vacuum. The Vikings’ defense gives up lots of passing yards every week so the Sunday forecast is McCloudy but with only a small chance of TDs.
Brandin Cooks, Dallas Cowboys
CeeDee Lamb has been gutting his way through a shoulder injury, but last week the Cowboys shut him down at halftime, giving a lot more looks to Cooks over the second half of the game. Hopefully, three extra days of rest will set Lamb right again, but if not, Cooks will scarf up the leftovers. It also helps that Cincinnati’s defense provides all the resistance of toilet paper subjected to a fire hose.
Honorable Mention
- Dontayvion Wicks: Romeo Doubs is out again this week with a concussion, and the Packers will be trying to keep up with the Lions’ offense.
Streaming Tight Ends Week 14
Just a quick reminder that to qualify for recommendation in this column, players must be less than 30-percent rostered on most major fantasy platforms. It’s getting hard to find decent options below this threshold, so if there is a Hunter Henry, a Jonnu Smith, a Zach Ertz, or a similarly talented TE available to you, they will all be better options than what you see below.
Juwan Johnson, New Orleans Saints
The Saints are another team that’s just running out of warm bodies on offense. I’ve actually had to block their phone calls this week because I’m just not in game shape anymore. Since I’m not available to play, they’ll be relying more heavily on Juwan Johnson to move the chains. He also has a solid history as a TD-scorer when used around the end zone. The Giants are actually pretty good at containing opposing TEs, but Johnson is more likely to operate as a big slot this week.
Grant Calcaterra, Philadelphia Eagles
Once again, Dallas Goedert is injured, and the Eagles will turn to Calcaterra to fill the void. Devonta Smith looks like he will be back in the starting lineup this week, but he may not be 100-percent. This week’s opponent for Philadelphia, the Panthers, have struggled mightily to defend against TEs, so we’ll target them again as we’ve successfully done several times this year.
Ja’Tavion Sanders, Carolina Panthers
After a very scary injury, it sounds like Sanders will be back in action this week. If for some reason he’s not, just feel free to sub in Tommy Tremble instead. Bryce Young has looked like an actual good starting NFL QB for the past few weeks, so it’s getting easier to recommend Panthers in the passing game. This week’s challenge, the Eagles’ defense, is a stout one, but if they have a weakness, it’s in covering TEs.
Noah Gray, Kansas City Chiefs
The Chiefs are the opposite of a narrow target tree, as Patrick Mahomes will commonly target eight or more receivers in any given game. But volume is king, and there’s plenty to go around. Mahomes has been steadily funneling more targets to Gray, and, while the good times could end any given week, we’ll keep going with what’s working until it doesn’t anymore.
Honorable Mention
- Mike Gesicki: We’re retiring the dartboard and tequila this week in favor of Gesicki, who is playing on one of the highest-scoring offenses in the NFL.
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