Fantasy Football: 5 Bold Predictions for Week 9
Corey Davis is About to Break Out
I don't think this season has gone quite the way the Tennessee Titans planned. They're currently sitting at 3-4 -- which is still somehow good enough for second place in the AFC South -- and would have the fewest points scored in the league were it not for the Buffalo Bills' historically bad season on offense. The Dallas Cowboys are currently 6.5-point favorites over the Titans in a Monday Night Football game featuring the second-lowest over/under of the week.
But they're about to turn the corner, offensively at least. Marcus Mariota can finally feel his hand again after injuring it in Week 1. I haven't tried, but I imagine it's very difficult to throw a football without having feeling in your hand, let alone at a professional level. His recovery should signal the coming of an offensive bounce-back.
Mariota's injury has been the focal point for anyone addressing their offensive woes, but one under-reported contributor has been their schedule of pass defenses. Per Warren Sharp's Strength of Schedule app, only five teams in the NFL have faced a harder schedule of opposing pass defenses than the Titans through Week 8. This week they get the Cowboys, who rank 24th in defensive efficiency against the pass according to his metrics. Looking deeper at their previous games, they hadn't faced a single defense ranked outside of the top half of the league in defensive pass efficiency since Week 1 -- the game in which Mariota became injured.
Corey Davis has struggled, thanks in part to Mariota's injury and their brutal schedule, but he has some extremely desirable attributes for a wide receiver that have been obscured by the lack of production. He ranks in the top 10 among all wide receivers in Air Yards Market Share (tenth), Target Share (fifth) and Josh Hermsmeyer's Weighted Opportunity Rating metric (sixth). He smashed against the Philadelphia Eagles' weak cornerbacks earlier this year, and is poised to do it again against the first below-average pass defense they've faced since Week 1.
Now that Marcus Mariota is healthy again, Corey Davis is going to finish Week 9 as a top-12 fantasy wideout.
