Things To Know Before Thursday Night Football
(Photo by Nell Redmond/Associated Press vis bleacherreport)
I hope you’re all ready for the juggernaut match-up of the season! The Panthers (2-0) head to Houston to take on the Texans (1-1), who will be flying on the shoulders of their recently promoted rookie quarterback, Davis Mills. It’s the quarterback battle we all marked on the calendars at the start of the season, Darnold V Mills, absolutely nothing like it.
Ok, enough of the jokes, let's get to know this Mills character so you have a general idea of what to expect.
Davis Mills, Houston’s 2021 3rd Round Draft Pick out of Stanford where he played two years. In those two years he was 287 for 438, totaled 3,468 yards with 18 touchdowns and 8 interceptions. Nothing crazy. Now, in week 3 of the season he is going to be starting against a Carolina Panthers defense that looks like it may have improved over the off-season.
After 2 weeks the Panthers have allowed the least amount of yards to opponents, 380 yards to be exact. That breaks down to 287 yards through the air, and 93 on the ground. The number one defense in the league as far as yardage allowed. Not a great situation for a rookie quarterback on a short week with a very limited arsenal of weaponry. To put it in short, don’t expect a hell of a lot out of Mills, who may be in for a very long Thursday night.
With that being said, there is only one player on the Houston offense that I would be starting if I had any shares of him in Fantasy Football, and that’s Brandin Cooks. The Houston WR1 has had an impressive first two games of the 2021 season despite their situation. He has 14 receptions on 21 targets for 210 yards and a touchdown. On Sunday, when Tyrod went down, it seemed like Cooks was the only person Mills targeted, and that bodes well for Fantasy Football if you’re in any kind of PPR League, or in DFS.
With the Panthers only allowing 93 total rushing yards on the ground so far this year, I don’t want anything to do with the carousel that is the Houston backfield. But here is an interesting stat that may mean nothing, or maybe it does. Their lead rusher, Mark Ingram, has a total of 126 yards on the ground after 2 games. That’s more than Chris Carson, Austin Ekeler, Jonathan Taylor, Ezekiel Elliot, Alvin Kamara, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, Saquon Barkley, and Aaron Jones. Ingram also has a rushing touchdown, and 4 of those names do not. Some food for thought.
The Panthers side is a bit harder to decipher if I’m being honest. They’re performing better than expected.
Christian McCaffrey is no mystery, you start him weekly, he’s a set and forget, and will be basically forever. End of story.
Sam Darnold. Man, I told people at the beginning of the year that this might be his time to show everyone what he is made of. He struggled, just like literally everyone else on the Jets under that idiot Adam Gase. He held everyone back, and I’m kind of excited to see what Darnold can do in Carolina now. So far he is 50 for 73, with 584 yards and 3 touchdowns. Throw in one interception, and you have a QB Rating of 100.5. Right now Darnold has more Fantasy points than Dak Prescott, Josh Allen, Aaron Rodgers, Justin Herbert, and Baker Mayfield. Houston ranks in the bottom third for team defense in passing yards allowed, so expect the trend to continue for Darnold to be good, and very start-able.
The wide receivers for Carolina however have been kind of lackluster, unless your name is D.J. Moore. Moore has been the best of the bunch, easily. So far, after 2 games Moore has 14 receptions for 159 yards and 1 TD. The next closest on the team is McCaffrey. Robby Anderson only has 4 receptions for 95 yards and 1 TD, with most of that yardage coming in one play week 1. He has been pretty much invisible to Darnold, and if you have shares of Anderson in Fantasy Football and production doesn’t come soon, you may be hitting the panic button.
As you can see, the options are limited for fantasy relevant players for Thursday night. Most of your players will come from Carolina, as the only start-able option I see from Houston being Cooks. DFS may be hard, you’re going to run into a ton of lineups that are similar, so picking one dart throw that not a lot of people are starting can win you the big money, but it’s finding that player that could be the issue. If I’m doing DFS, and I will be, I’m looking at throwing Terrace Marshall Jr. as my dart throw, or possibly even Carolina’s tight end Dan Arnold, who apparently had a great camp with Darnold. Or maybe you throw Mark Ingram in there and pray he accidentally falls into the end zone.
Good luck, it won’t be an easy game to predict for Fantasy Football.
SKOL
- JD