Coming off of their Week 10 bye week, the Washington Redskins get an extremely favorable matchup against the struggling Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Tampa Bay is currently giving up the second-most receiving yards per game with 287 yards per game. Additionally, they are ranked 24th in the NFL when it comes to defending the TE position. On average, they allow 6.5 catches and 70 receiving yards with a 25-percent chance of a touchdown to TEs. Therefore, this bodes extremely well for one of the best young TEs in the league, Jordan Reed.
The matchup for Reed, even though it seems almost too good to be true, does come with some concerns. The first concern was Reed’s usage last week against the Minnesota Vikings as he ran more routes than he did the previous week, but was only targeted once. In his Week 8 matchup against the Dallas Cowboys, Reed was targeted seven times while running fewer routes. Fortunately, this is something that can and should be rectified with QB Robert Griffin III coming out of their bye week. There is virtually no chance that Reed only gets one target in a second-straight game unless he suffers an injury.
Another concern with this matchup involves Tampa Bay’s recent play against TEs. Despite their seasonal deficiency at stopping the position, the Buccaneers have actually allowed the fourth fewest fantasy points to TEs since Week 6. However, this is somewhat of a false-positive for Tampa Bay’s effectiveness against the position. In Week 6, they faced a Kyle Rudolph-less Vikings team and backup TE Chase Ford recorded six catches for 61 yards which is not a bad stat line. The following week, they faced the Cleveland Browns without Jordan Cameron , so they got off easy in that matchup since stopping Gary Barnidge and Jim Dray is a much easier task. As for last week, they faced the Atlanta Falcons in which the TEs were used more for pass protection than pass catching. Therefore, Levine Toilolo‘s production was non-existent and it clearly shows that the group of TEs that Tampa Bay has faced since Week 6 are subpar at best. Reed is actually a better TE than any of the ones that have been mentioned and that also holds into consideration if Cameron and Rudolph were 100-percent healthy.
Owners of Reed can rest assured that his lack of production from last week was more of an outlier than the actual mean. Reed should be considered a low-end TE1 start in all league formats and should easily finish as a top-10 TE for Week 11. As a matter of fact, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that he will finish as a top-five TE with a final line of five catches, 70-plus yards and a TD.
Roje Smith is a Fantasy Sports writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @RoKnowsDFS, “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.
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