The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will face the Dallas Cowboys in Week 16. Here’s fantasy football start-sit advice for every Buccaneers and Cowboys skill player who has the potential to make a fantasy impact during the game.
Looking for more lineup advice? Head over to our Week 16 Fantasy Start-Sit Cheat Sheet, where we cover every fantasy-relevant player in every game.
Baker Mayfield, QB
Baker Mayfield has a level of inevitability to his 2024 profile, and all “inevitable” traits of the 2024 Cowboys are negative, making this the profile of a QB1 without much question.
QB games with 18+ fantasy points, 2024:
- Lamar Jackson: 12
- Josh Allen: 11
- Baker Mayfield: 11
- Jayden Daniels: 10
That, of course, is an impressive list (I’ll take the L on Anthony Richardson weekly, but you have to give me this QB sleeper call from June, but it gets even better when you consider the skill set limitations.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much a fan of reckless Mayfield runs as anyone, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to call him “less athletic” than the other names on that list.
Here’s what that list looks like if we only include games with under 45 rushing yards:
- Baker Mayfield: 11
- Sam Darnold: Nine
- Josh Allen: Seven
- Joe Burrow: Seven
Mayfield takes that form into a matchup against a Dallas defense that ranks 24th in passer rating, 25th in completion percentage, and 31st in yards per attempt. He’s a big reason why you’re in the spot you are right now (10 top-10 finishes), and there’s no reason to pivot.
Cooper Rush, QB
Cooper Rush has thrown for multiple touchdowns in three of his past four games. That’s a start, but without much in the way of yardage (under 215 in three straight), asking him to churn out top-15 numbers, even if playing catch-up, is too optimistic.
Rush has been doing the two things we need from him — hand the ball to Rico Dowdle and weigh down CeeDee Lamb with targets. If he can continue to do that, this will be a successful week.
Rush himself is nothing but a low-end QB2 with a very limited ceiling.
Rico Dowdle, RB
Is there an offense that looks more different statistically now compared to preseason expectations than the Cowboys?
We entered the season praising Dak Prescott and wanting as much exposure to this passing game as possible, labeling the backfield as a bottom-tier room that would promote a pass-heavy script for Dallas.
As we sit here in Week 16, Rico Dowdle is looking to join Priest Holmes, Arian Foster, Nick Goings, and Fast Willie Parker as the only undrafted RBs in the 2000s with four straight 100-yard rushing games in the regular season.
Life comes at you fast. He’s been a top-20 running back in four straight games, and if the Cowboys are going to keep this game tight, it’s going to be because their bellcow is gashing the defense that allows the sixth-most yards per carry before contact to running backs.
Even with an optimistic spin on a few injury situations in my early Week 16 ranks, Dowdle is a fine RB2. If a few backs fall out of the ranks, he’ll move inside my top 15.
Bucky Irving, RB
This kid is the real deal. Bucky Irving had a 40+ yard carry in each of his past three games in which he saw 5+ carries and has a 15+ yard catch in three of his past four overall.
The rookie has been dealing with a back injury, but it didn’t sap him of any explosion last week; in a much more favorable spot this time around, counting on 14-18 touches and 100 scrimmage yards is plenty reasonable (nine finishes inside the top 24 this season).
The Cowboys are the fourth-worst rush defense by EPA, putting Irving in a spot to win in the traditional run, something that should alleviate Irving managers of any concerns when it comes to Rachaad White’s involvement.
Rachaad White, RB
This backfield is slowly moving away from Rachaad White, and I think that’s right, but it’s not going in that direction fast enough to render White useless. Bucky Irving played 62.5% of Tampa Bay’s first-quarter snaps last week, his highest rate since Week 6.
White didn’t help matters by losing a fumble last week in Los Angeles, but he salvaged the fantasy afternoon with an 11-yard touchdown catch as the Bucs poured it on late. I don’t have this projected as a committee situation, and that introduces risk to White’s profile, but as a road favorite with plenty of scoring equity, I don’t have a problem considering him a top-30 back in this matchup.
Even with a diminishing role, White has at least 10 carries in five straight in addition to his consistent usage in the passing game.
Brandin Cooks, WR
Brandin Cooks’ playing time is inching up, but he’s simply going to run out of time. We saw signs of decline last season; even if you think there is gas left in the tank, this Cooper Rush-led offense doesn’t have much of a path to accessing that.
In his seven appearances this season, Cooks is averaging just 0.69 yards per route — he’s well off of fantasy radars in all formats at this point.
Mike Evans, WR
Mike Evans absorbed 42.3% of the targets last week and now needs 83.7 receiving yards per game to close the season to again get to 1,000. The narrative of him chasing that number is fun to track, but that’s secondary right now with the Bucs unbeaten since their Week 11 bye.
Evans has cleared a 28% on-field target share in four of his past five games, a level of involvement that ranks among the very best in the sport. With Baker Mayfield playing as well as he ever has, you should be loving the ability to walk into your Week 16 matchup with Evans facing a defense that allows a touchdown on 26.7% of drives (fourth-highest).
CeeDee Lamb, WR
CeeDee Lamb has six games with at least a dozen targets this season — he joins 2023 CeeDee Lamb as the only Cowboy ever to do that in a season. He set the franchise record with seven such games a year ago and could match it this weekend if they are playing behind for the bulk of this game as is expected.
If you need tangible proof of what this sort of volume looks like, here are the passing plays in succession detailing how Dallas found paydirt on a second-quarter drive last week:
- A 20-yard pass to Lamb
- A 28-yard pass to Lamb
- A 14-yard TD to Lamb (nice adjustment on an end-zone target)
Lamb has been a top-15 receiver in four straight games. While this offense isn’t exactly high-powered, Cooper Rush is doing enough to keep his WR1 in the fantasy WR1 conversation.
Jalen McMillan, WR
I don’t want to say that the current Bucs are functioning at Week 1-2 Saints or peak Jameis Winston Cleveland levels, but we aren’t far, and Tampa Bay’s two primary receivers are dominating.
Since Mike Evans’ return from the hamstring injury, 63 receivers have seen at least 15 targets. Here are the leaders in PPR production over expectation over that stretch:
- Terry McLaurin: +73.7%
- Jalen McMillan: +60.5%
- Jerry Jeudy: +50.8%
- Mike Evans: +50.5%
I’m not comfortable in labeling the rookie as a must-start with your season on the line, but this is awfully good form and an awfully good matchup (Dallas has the worst red-zone defense in the NFL).
McMillan’s aDOT is down 26.2% over the past three weeks from his rate prior, and I think that actually adds to his appeal at this point — the deep role is Evans’, and that’s not going to change.
I’ve got Tampa Bay’s WR2 ranked as a low-end WR3 in this spot, putting McMillan on the Flex radar in deeper formats.
Jalen Tolbert, WR
Jalen Tolbert got on the board last week in Carolina, and that means you saw him while watching “NFL RedZone.” If you saw that one play, that means that you saw about as much of Tolbert as anyone watching a traditional feed.
For the first time this season, Tolbert was not on the field for the majority of Dallas’ offensive snaps and, for the sixth straight game, he failed to reach nine expected PPR points. I made the case to chase the WR2 for the Cowboys earlier this season as I was comfortable in counting out Brandin Cooks and wanted exposure to a Dak Prescott offense.
Cooper Rush isn’t Dak Prescott.
Dallas has been putting up some points in plus matchups of late, but the Bucs are allowing just 15 points per game during their four-game win streak; that level of production puts any secondary piece next to CeeDee Lamb in a near-impossible spot.
Jake Ferguson, TE
Jake Ferguson has been one of my bigger misses this season, and I’ll learn from it moving forward. I’m likely going to be done with messing around in the middle tiers at the tight end position.
Some of the early-season returns were positive (three straight top-10 finishes from Weeks 3-5), but with just one such showing since, it’s clear that he is more of a risky streamer than the lineup lock I had hopes for.
The good news is that the Bucs allow the third-most yards per TE target this season (8.9) — and the Cowboys are likely to be playing from behind. The not-so-good news is the fact that Fergy doesn’t have an end-zone target since the season opener, and his target-per-route rate has dropped from 21.9% to 18.9% since returning from his concussion.
I have him in the Pat Freiermuth and Hunter Henry tier of tight ends that I’d rather not play but will consider if there isn’t a strong role otherwise available (for the record, I have Jacksonville’s Brenton Strange ahead of this tier).
Cade Otton, TE
I’m going to keep saying it: Cade Otton isn’t a reliable fantasy option when Mike Evans is on the field. It’s really that simple. I write a million words weekly, and I just keep copy-pasting that intro until the higher ups tell me that no one is consuming the Otton portion of this article.
With Mike Evans on the field, 2024:
- 14.1% on-field target share
- 19.5% red-zone target rate
- 4.3 aDOT
Without Mike Evans on the field, 2024:
- 21.1% on-field target share
- 30% red-zone target rate
- 7,3 aDOT
Otton hauled in a pass on Tampa Bay’s second pass over the weekend in the blowout win over the Chargers and guess what?
I didn’t blink, and you shouldn’t have either. I’m a selfish person, and I can’t fade a player I don’t roster, so I’ve taken to betting his under receptions of late to leverage the overrating of the Bucs’ tight end. I laddered his total down as low as my sportsbooks would let me (I got under 4.5 heavily juiced and under 3.5 at plus money) last week.
Brenton Strange (JAX) and Stone Smartt (LAC) are good options for the “made up or NFL player” name game for casual observers — they also happen to be tight ends that I’d play in all formats this week with confidence over Otton.
