Fantasy Football Week 7 Sleeper: Jace Amaro

By Michael Woolfson on October 16, 2014

Usually, it is not a great idea to pick up a tight end facing the New England Patriots in fantasy football. But after last week’s performance by the Buffalo Bills‘ Scott Chandler, you could do way worse than the New York Jets‘ Jace Amaro this week.

The reason for this is two-fold. The first reason is Amaro is coming off his best game of the year and the Jets don’t have many other options offensively. In last week’s game against the Denver Broncos, Amaro received 12 targets, which resulted in 10 catches, 68 yards and a touchdown.

The targets will probably continue to rack up for Amaro because he has high upside as a player and the other Jets weapons have significantly less talent outside of the oft-injured Eric Decker. Add in the fact the Jets will probably be behind a lot, which will lead to a lot of throwing, which only adds to Amaro’s value.

Now, to Amaro’s opposition this week — the Patriots. New England is typically very good against tight ends fantasy wise, but this year they are middle of the road. They rank 13th in terms of fantasy points against tight ends, a number which inflated when Chandler had six catches for 105 yards. The Patriots have only let up one touchdown to a tight end this year and that was Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs in the Week 4 blowout loss.

Playing Amaro this week doesn’t come without risk. The Jets’ passing game is anything but steady — as evidenced by their shutout loss in San Diego two weeks ago — and the Patriots have only given up a touchdown to a tight end once this year. Amaro, though, does have a lot of upside, and is a good waiver wire pickup for the future, at minimum. But he is also a good fill-in option this week, especially for owners that have Jimmy Graham, or any other injured tight end.

If Amaro is still available in your league, do yourself a favor and at least store him on your bench — you don’t find guys who will get double-digit targets all the time.