0:00What's going on, man? Welcome back to the basement. I'm Ronald. One of the most important aspects that gets overlooked in fantasy football is
0:07getting hot at the right time. Last year you could have locked up a one seed with Saquon Barkley and felt really good
0:13about your team.
0:14But if you came up against a team in the playoffs that had Jonathan Taylor, who at the time wasn't really doing so well,
0:21and then in the playoffs caught fire along with guys like Brian Thomas and Tee Higgins, you might have lost your league championship to the guy who got
0:29hot at the right time. So today, we're going to talk about some of those players that are surging right now.
0:34We're going to go through 10 players skyrocketing up my rankings heading into week 14. And not only are they skyrocketing, but we're also going to
0:41touch on their playoff schedules because that is what's most important right now.
0:45The players that are trending up and then also have a really nice end of season schedule for fantasy football. As always, if you enjoy, leave a like,
0:55subscribe if you're new. And the first player skyrocketing up my rankings is Terry McLaurin. Now, how we do this video is every Tuesday night I put on my
1:05rest of season rankings over on the Patreon. And then for this video, I compared my rest of season rankings to my week 13 rest of season rankings, and
1:14I'll tell you how much they are going up or down. If you want access to my complete rest of season rankings, my
1:19week 14 rankings will be out later on today. You can find that over on the patreon, patreon.com/ronstewart in the description and the comment
1:26section down below. Now, this one's pretty crazy. I moved up Terry McLaurin 25 spots. And now you might see Ronald, why was he wide receiver 48 and
1:37now he's wide receiver 23? That just feels pretty crazy. And it's just one of those years where we keep getting news
1:44of, okay, this player is going to come back. He's going to come back. And we're still waiting on a guy like Trey Benson.
1:49We have no clue when Trey Benson's coming back. It seems like maybe this week, but it's felt like maybe this week
1:54for the last 5 weeks. So I've just kind of fell into a habit of just almost banishing these guys that are
2:01hurt or banged up into the shadow realm.
2:03With Terry McLaurin as well, no Jayden Daniels, the whole team has just felt like a mess. And then in his first game
2:09back, Terry McLaurin was amazing. Even though he only played 67% of the routes in his return. This is a great tweet from Adam Levitan here.
2:20He only played 67% of the routes in his return. That's going to go up as we go on through the season. I think what
2:26really stuck out to me is how much they wanted to use him despite the low usage, right? So he didn't even
2:32run that many routes, but when he was on the field, he got targeted a bunch. This is expected fantasy points from this
2:39previous week in week 13. And you can see he had the highest expected fantasy points. Now, some of that is due to
2:44playing in overtime, right? That's going to give you more usage. And expected fantasy points, by the way, is just based on your targets, your A dot, your
2:51red zone usage. How many points should you have put up? He should have put put up 28.7. He still put up 22.6. He
2:57somehow racks up 14 targets on 67% of the the routes. And that's just super impressive. 14 targets, seven catches, 96 yards, a touchdown. Not to mention
3:09that he was going up against Pat Surtain in this game. And now he gets the second best playoff schedule for wide receivers. Now, you're going to
3:17hear a lot in this video, the second best schedule rest of season or the second best schedule uh for the playoffs. I found my data from uh Mike
3:25Clay over on ESPN has a strength of schedule article he does every week. And then Ian Hartitz put out a tweet as
3:30well. Uh he has the Giants, the Eagles, and the Cowboys as his three games for the fantasy football playoffs. Those teams are allowing the third, 17th, and
3:39first most fantasy points to opposing wide receivers. So that's just absolutely huge.
3:45That Dallas game in week 17, like I could very much see being the difference, right? Like Terry McLaurin in your flex spot that you probably
3:53haven't even been banking on all season.
3:55And now out of nowhere, you can just slide into your flex and win you a league. Now, you also get Jayden Daniels
4:01potentially being back. He's practicing this week. And Terry McLaurin is the consensus wide receiver 19 this week against a tough Minnesota Vikings
4:09defense. He's already back into the wide receiver two mix pretty much right away after what we saw last week. Now,
4:19the next player that is skyrocketing in my rankings, and this is a little bit of a twofer here, is Chuba Hubbard is
4:23skyrocketing up my rankings where Rico Dowdle is falling down the rankings. I have Chuba Hubbard moving from RB 50 to RB 30. He was somebody that was like a
4:32cut candidate, and then this past week he actually plays really well. I move him up 20 spots. Rico Dowdle from RB 16
4:38to RB 21. And that still might even be too high for Rico Dowdle. This was one of the first games we saw
4:45since Chuba Hubbard came back from injury where the split was a lot more slanted towards Hubbard than it's been since right when
4:54he first returned from injury. He kind of rushed back from injury. And we'll talk about that in a second, but I think
4:58what happened was he kind of rushed back from injury. And actually, let's bring it up now before we get into that. Is he
5:03rushed back from injury, probably felt some heat from Rico Dowdle playing so well. They give him the start, right in quotation marks, early on. Rico Dowdle
5:11outplays him, and then Chuba Hubbard gets cast aside. Well, this is a good article Theo Greminger points out here. Hubbard admitted he rushed back from the calf
5:20injury. Uh this is a screenshot from an article that I wish I had. I think it's from like the Panthers website or whatever, but
5:27Hubbard admitted he rushed back from the calf injury, which sapped his explosiveness until he got back to form Saturday. Then Theo points out, he said
5:33he looked amazing, he looked explosive, he looked strong. Uh really brought an attitude to our group. It's going to be a a tough split coming out of the bye.
5:40Uh this is also another uh Adam Levitan tweet here saying some good detail with quotes. And I think it's the same
5:48article as well, where it's pretty much we're expecting Rico Dowdle on early downs, Chuba Hubbard on passing situations. That's kind of a clean
5:54split. That's going to be a little bit messy for fantasy football. The Panthers offense has been a little bit better here.
6:00But things are definitely starting to slide towards Hubbard, where Hubbard outsnapped Rico Dowdle 38 to 27 in week 13. That was the first time he's played
6:09more snaps in a game than Dowdle since week 8. Hubbard's 20.4 PPR points against the Rams were a season high, and
6:15it was the first time he scored more than 10 PPR points since week two. Now, I will say their schedule down the
6:22stretch isn't amazing. They have New Orleans, Tampa Bay, and then Seattle. So nothing crazy. This one This is kind of going to be like a trending up trending
6:30down video. I know in the intro we said the guys who are surging. It's a lot more risers than fallers. I will say
6:36this backfield is probably one of them that's losing steam. If you have Hubbard on your bench, you feel a little bit
6:40better as somebody that you can just throw into your RB2 spot in a pinch and be okay with. But I think it's going
6:46to be even split and then purely a hot hand approach of if Rico Dowdle is the one who rips off a 25-yard touchdown early
6:54in the game, then I think that we'll see it slant towards him 65-35. And then the other way around, like when Hubbard took
7:00his swing pass for a touchdown, we could see that happen again. I think they're both going to be in like that RB like
7:06back-end RB2, mid-range RB3 mix for the rest of the season. Then we can talk about our third, and this is just a
7:13group of players here. We have the Tampa Bay wide receivers. I moved up Mike Evans 16 spots to wide receiver 40,
7:19Godwin 14 spots to wide receiver 38, and I moved down Ihmir Smith-Marsette one spot to wide receiver 13.
7:26Love to see that I have uh misspelled Ihmir Smith-Marsette there, but that's absolutely fine. Uh let's first of all talk about Ihmir Smith-Marsette because
7:33we talked about him on the rookie receiver report, and I was just kind of scratching my head of like, he's getting the volume, and he already
7:39showed that he's a good player. I believe he's a good player. So what the hell is the issue, right? Like what's
7:44going on here? And I think that this sums it up well. Ihmir Smith-Marsette since week 7 is the wide receiver seven
7:49in expected fantasy points per game with 17.8. This is from Data Rama. He's the wide receiver 34 in actual points per
7:55game. So that's a huge difference between his volume and his production.
7:58And some of that I think is Baker's doing. Just 30 of his 58 targets, 51% have been deemed catchable in this time.
8:06For context, 36 of his 42 targets were catchable in weeks 1 through 6. So there's a couple ways to look at this.
8:12First of all, you can say, well, this is a Baker issue. Baker hurt his shoulder. Maybe this is Baker not being
8:19healthy and not being the same guy. Or we can say maybe Baker's going to get healthier. He could kind of regress to the mean a little
8:28bit, where early on in the year he was playing like an MVP level. He's kind of slid off since then. But can he bounce
8:33back? We now have Mike Evans back in the mix. We have Chris Godwin back in the mix. And we get this offense back on
8:38track here. The Panthers are also kind of putting their feet to the fire here of you're going to have to earn this NFC
8:43South title this year, unlike in previous years where you can kind of just coast. So I do think we can see Baker Mayfield
8:50bounce back, and we can see these numbers bounce back to kind of a normal rate of accuracy. Now, I will say their
8:56schedule is really tough down the stretch here, the 29th toughest among wide receivers. So this is not like a oh my god, they have an amazing amazing
9:06stretch of games. But they have Atlanta, Carolina, Miami here as their playoff schedule. And we look at the other uh like Mike Evans and Chris Godwin are
9:14the ones that were really moving up here. Uh Mike Evans 21-day practice window open. We'll see when he comes back, but I think the
9:20minute he comes back, he's a he's a wide receiver three at worst. Uh and then we can talk about Chris Godwin, who I guess
9:27they rushed him back too early. He rushed back too early week 4, 91% of the routes, then he comes down to 79%. Then
9:32he doesn't play again until week 12. But he's now gone from 42% of the routes to 66% of the routes. He's climbing. Uh he
9:39hit 20% target share last week, and he is the consensus wide receiver 30 this week. So I think Godwin and Evans are
9:45going to be fine wide receiver threes down the stretch that maybe you've been hoping for a return all this time. After
9:52that, we have Christian Watson.
9:54He has moved up from my wide receiver 35 to my wide receiver 25. He put on an absolute master class on Thanksgiving. I
10:02mean, he was a little bit outshined by Dontayvion Wicks, but 10 targets in this game, which is huge. He has now had It's
10:07pretty crazy this ramp up where he comes back from injury. He has three straight games of four targets. He then has five
10:12targets. He then has seven targets. And then in this most recent game, he has 10 targets against Detroit.
10:20Crazy. 80 yards, a touchdown. And Jordan Love has just been absolutely cooking here. And I do think as well this Josh Jacobs getting banged up
10:29injury has kind of led them to want to pass more. This is kind of just a funny graphic here where the Toyotathon, I
10:35think, takes place from like mid-November through January every year.
10:38Uh first in the NFL in terms of passing grade over that span. 4,000 passing yards, 33 touchdowns, one interception.
10:44This is the time of year where Jordan Love comes alive. I think that he's kind of been getting I don't know. I just seem to get hate on
10:50the internet as like not being a good quarterback.
10:53Every metric has Jordan Love uh as like a top 10 quarterback at worst this this year. And I don't really see
10:58any reason to not really believe that.
11:00Uh the Packers also have the sixth easiest schedule moving forward. They have Chicago. Denver's a tough match up.
11:05And then they have Chicago again. And then Baltimore. Uh I want to say we just saw Chicago give up two touchdowns to A.J. Brown. Chicago's
11:14allowing the the third most fantasy points to opposing wide receivers. So, you get that match up twice for the Packers. I will say a bonus add is that
11:23Jayden Reed gets a little bit of a bump up if he can come back and be healthy.
11:26But, I think Christian Watson is the star of the show moving forward. He's had two top 12 finishes in his last 3
11:31weeks. You know, has back-to-back weeks of 30% or better target shares. And he's the wide receiver 17 by consensus this week. Now, I keep bringing up the
11:40consensus because that is by and large you know, I put out my own rankings.
11:46Everyone puts out their own rankings.
11:47They're all give or take close-ish to the consensus rankings across the industry. Maybe I'll be, you know, five to 10 spots higher or lower here and
11:56there. But, it's just a good look of the industry believes that Christian Watson is a mid-range wide receiver two this week against the Bears. And that's a big
12:03deal for a guy who you probably got off the waiver wire uh early this year. Uh then we can talk about the other side of
12:09this game this week, right? Packers versus Chicago. The Chicago running backs. It's tough to not move them up.
12:14Now, here's the issue. They have a really tough schedule. All right? So, this is not one of the guys. This is
12:19where it's tough because this is a backfield that's surging, right? I moved up Kalen Monangai five spots. I moved up De'Andre Swift four spots. This running
12:26game is awesome with Ben Johnson.
12:29You can see here uh since their bye week from Te St. Brown this year, they are second in EPA per designed rush. They
12:35have by and large the best running game in the NFL since their bye week.
12:43Top three at worst. Their offensive line has been clicking. This Monangai-Swift thing has been amazing where they both get 100 yards and a touchdown last week
12:51against the Eagles.
12:53But, there's a little bit of a split.
12:55So, I don't want to get too over my skis and put Swift up too high or Monangai too high. But, even this week in a tough
13:01match up against Green Bay, Swift is the consensus RB20. Monangai is the consensus RB22. You can kind of start these guys as your RB2 every week from
13:10here on out. Now, I will say again, the schedule is not easy. They have the Packers this week who obviously are tough. You know, this
13:20is brutal. They have the Packers, the Browns, the Packers, San Francisco.
13:26That's tough. But, I will say we did just see the Eagles shut down Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery. And then Monangai and De'Andre Swift walked into
13:34their place and ran it down their throats. The matchups might not matter as much as we might think.
13:41But, that would be my only hesitation is that the schedule moving forward for the Bears running backs is brutal. Now, somebody who has an amazing schedule
13:49rest of season is Jameson Williams who honestly, he's one of these guys surging at the right time. Uh he is the wide
13:56receiver six since week 10. 17.6 points per game over that span. Since week 10 is when Dan Campbell started calling the
14:04plays. Now, of course, his most recent game on Thanksgiving, he goes crazy because Amon-Ra St. Brown goes down. Now, I believe tonight is the Thursday game. I
14:14don't believe that Amon-Ra St. Brown is going to be playing in that game.
14:17This is against Dallas who allows the most fantasy points to opposing wide receivers. Then their next game is the Rams who allow the 16th most. The
14:24Steelers who allow the fifth most. And then the Minnesota Vikings 31st. That's a tough one. Vikings in the fantasy championship might hurt Jameson Williams
14:31there. But, ever since Amon-Ra St. Brown got banged up, Jameson Williams has been the focal point, which obviously we're just talking about that one Thanksgiving
14:38game. But, even outside of that, seven targets in week 10 when Dan Campbell took over, seven targets against Philly when Dan Campbell took over.
14:46He has been amazing since Dan Campbell took over play calling. Has some of this had to do with Sam LaPorta getting
14:52banged up? Sure. But, Jameson Williams is my wide receiver 16 rest of the way.
14:56And he is the consensus wide receiver eight this week against Dallas. Like, he should put up a monster game tonight.
15:03Our seventh skyrocketing player A.J.
15:06Brown.
15:07I moved him up seven spots. I think it's time to just treat him as a wide receiver one again. I know he had a
15:11brutal start to the season. These splits are pretty nuts where weeks one through six, he had 9.7 points per game.
15:19Uh 40th among wide receivers. He was outside of the top 50 in yards per route run, which you guys know. Like, I always side with
15:25A.J. Brown. His yards per route run career average is sometimes better than like Justin Jefferson's peak. Uh now, that's not to say that he's better than
15:34Justin Jefferson or better than your best wide receiver. He's just one of the most efficient wide receivers of all time. Like, it's really not up for
15:41debate. Uh it's nuts. Like, every year of his career, he has 2.5 uh yards per route run. And you can kind
15:48of just set your watch to it. This year, he had a really tough start. 1.44 yards per route run weeks one through six. I
15:55would assume that that is the lowest yards per route run for A.J. Brown over any six-game stretch of his entire career. Like, that is insane from him.
16:03But, since then, since week seven and on, uh I will say the only thing to be wary of is nothing materially changed
16:08from week seven on. Outside of him kind of being like vocal to the media, maybe a couple of like squeaky wheel treatment
16:14games because he was getting loud. But, it's not like they changed play callers or a new thing happened. It's just A.J.
16:20Brown kind of snapped into it since week seven. 20.7 points per game, 2.91 yards per route run. That's ridiculous. Uh 13%
16:28first downs per route run. First read target share of 36.8%. He has just fully been a wide receiver one since then. And
16:36I think it's just time to get in with the times. They have He has the fourth easiest playoff schedule as well, which
16:42is amazing. He has Las Vegas. Then he has Washington. And then he has Buffalo.
16:48They allow the seventh, the fifth, and the 22nd most points to opposing wide receivers. The Bills is the only tough one there. But, Las Vegas
16:55and Washington in the first round and the second round of the playoffs should be really good for A.J. Brown. Then we
17:01can talk about Bucky Irving. Thank god.
17:03Like, we talked about earlier with uh Terry McLaurin and kind of how Trey Benson has been weird.
17:08Bucky Irving back is so huge.
17:11In his first game back, this is a tweet from Ryan Heath. Uh he had 81% of the carries. He had all of the backfield's
17:17carries inside the 10-yard line. And a 7.1% target share. So, really only thing that wasn't there was the pass game work. I think that they're slow playing
17:25Bucky Irving here coming off the injury.
17:26He still had 19 touches. I think we should still see his role grow moving forward. And he has the seventh easiest
17:32schedule moving forward. He has New Orleans, Atlanta, Carolina, Miami. These teams allow the 16th most, 10th most, sixth most, and 14th most fantasy points
17:41to opposing running backs. In this past game, he had a clean 16.1 PPR points.
17:46He's going to get ramped up here. I think Bucky Irving, if you survived, right? Bucky Irving sadly because of the injury has been honestly one of the
17:55worst picks in the second round because you took him over Jonathan Taylor uh most likely or, you know, any combination of Jonathan Taylor, JSN, uh
18:03you took Bucky Irving over them.
18:05When I say you, I mean I also did it as well um in a couple of spots. But, we can also talk about some guys that are
18:11falling. We have two distinct fallers here. Stefon Diggs goes to my wide receiver 20 to my wide receiver 30. Uh playing time is just an issue. He he
18:20hasn't been a full-time player all year.
18:22And there's been stretches where that hasn't been a huge deal because they've just made sure to target him more. But, if you look at the utilization report
18:28from Fantasy Life, uh the last 2 weeks, he went from 78% of the routes in week 10, 89% in week 11,
18:36down to 54%, down to 61%. They've been kind of almost doing I don't know if I'd call it hockey shifts, but
18:43getting guys like Kalen Williams more involved and Mack Hollins more involved and getting the tight ends more involved. And it's just led to a spot where if Stefon
18:51Diggs is going to run less than 70% of the routes, it it just not enough uh for him to be an every-week starter. So,
18:59he's now my wide receiver 30. He has the 22nd toughest schedule moving forward.
19:02That's not like the toughest schedule in the world, but it's not great. Uh he has Buffalo, Baltimore, and then the Jets.
19:10So, Buffalo and Baltimore will be pretty tough. And then I guess he could go crazy against the Jets in the fantasy
19:15championship. But, uh he was getting hot for a second there of like could he ramp up to a full-time receiver off the ACL?
19:22I don't know. He's kind of been more of like almost like late career Keenan Allen or like even like present day
19:27right now Keenan Allen of him kind of running 70 to 80% of the routes attached to a good quarterback. Uh but, yeah, it
19:34hasn't been good from Stefon Diggs. And then the elephant in the room, we talked about Lamar Jackson on the Monday show.
19:39But, I know he was a hot topic.
19:42He's so brutal. Uh I couldn't move him down further than QB7. Uh moved him from QB2 to QB7. This is where I ended up on
19:49the rankings.
19:51Uh Josh Allen, Mahomes, Hurts, Maye, Dak, Matthew Stafford, and then Lamar just ahead of Joe Burrow.
19:57Joe Burrow and Lamar in the same tier though, so if you want to put Burrow ahead, you can.
20:01Lamar has the 10th easiest schedule for quarterbacks moving forward. That's kind of the tough part is this should be a good playoff stretch.
20:08Yes, Pittsburgh, yes, Cincinnati, New England's a tough one and Green Bay's a tough one, but Pittsburgh and Cincinnati these next 2 weeks should be
20:16the spot for him. Now, my rationale for moving him where I did is to me Dak, Stafford, and Burrow are kind of like
20:22the best producing pocket passers in the NFL, and now that Lamar isn't scrambling as much as usual, I think that that's
20:29kind of where he slots in, but it's getting tough. But, I don't know I guess if you wanted to play like Jared
20:36Goff when he's at home or I think Jared Goff has domes rest of the way, so if you did want to play Jared Goff over
20:41Lamar, you could.
20:43It just doesn't feel good this time of year, but that's where I ended up as QB7 on the rankings. As always, if you want
20:49access to those complete rankings, they're on the Patreon, patreon.com/ronstewart, but if you can't support there or you're already signed up, just leave a like,
20:57subscribe if you're new, and I will say as well let me know what you guys want to see because we're at the point in the
21:02year where I can kind of do whatever right now that the trade deadline's behind us.
21:07I kind of floated this out. This is what got voted for when I floated this out in the Patreon. I usually ask those guys
21:13like what kind of videos do you guys want to see? They said rest of season risers and fallers, so that's what we
21:17did here, but like next week we can do I think tomorrow as well instead of a sticky starts video cuz I'm
21:24a little bit held up trying to do a dynasty rankings update. I think I want to show you guys my teams heading into
21:28the final week of the regular season, right? All the ones that we drafted in August, my best ball teams, all of that,
21:34kind of do like a year in review heading into the playoffs. I think that would be a cool video for you guys, but next week
21:40we could do like a 2026 fantasy football mock draft like what the first one or two rounds could look like.
21:47I could do this video again if you guys like this video. I could do like a 2026 dynasty rookie mock draft on my dynasty
21:57channel.
21:59What else? I think that kind of I think that kind of does it. But yeah, let me know what you guys want to see
22:04because we're kind of in a spot where I have a video or two a week that's kind of a free space, so kind of a
22:10you know, something we haven't had since the summer where I can just like wake up and make whatever.
22:14But, that's going to do it for us today and I will see y'all in the next one.
22:23>> [music]
