The Las Vegas Raiders will face the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 16. Here’s fantasy football start-sit advice for every Raiders 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.
Aidan O’Connell, QB
The outlook is cloudy, come back later.
I can’t be the only one who feels like this Aidan O’Connell health situation is a run of randomly assigned eight-ball quotes, but here we are. At this moment, his status isn’t clear, but what is pretty obvious is that, for your QB slot, it shouldn’t matter.
I’ll address the ramifications on O’Connell’s two pass catchers, but a player with a 3.3% career touchdown rate operating at less than full strength without a stable run game just isn’t going to cut it for me. And it’s not difficult to make the case that a compromised version of O’Connell could still be the preferred path for your Raiders pieces.
Alexander Mattison, RB
Alexander Mattison out-carried Ameer Abdullah 7-3 with Sincere McCormick going down early last week and profiles as this team’s leader in rush attempts against a vulnerable Jacksonville defense this week (24th in RB rushing TD%).
That said, last week wasn’t an intimidating matchup either, and yet, Desmond Ridder (28 yards on five carries) was as effective as it got on the ground for Vegas (RBs: 17 carries for 37 yards).
We’ve seen this Mattison story before (under 4.0 yards per carry in four straight games) and I’m not betting my fantasy season on him flipping the script in an offense that offers very little in terms of versatility.
Ameer Abdullah, RB
Ameer Abdullah had nearly as many receptions (seven) as rushing yards (eight) last week against the Falcons, and due to Sincere McCormick’s (ankle) injury, another viable PPR stat line is very possible against the fifth-worst scoring defense in the NFL.
There’s an inherent risk that comes with betting on the Raiders, but if you’re looking this far down the rankings, you’ve come to terms with some downside. The upside here is about as high as any streamer — we saw the Raiders come out with an ultra-conservative game plan on Monday night and I’d expect nothing different for the remainder of 2024.
I have Abdullah ranked as a low-end Flex, checking in alongside Tennessee’s Tyjae Spears.
Sincere McCormick, RB
I’m generally skeptical about players self-reporting news, but Sincere McCormick’s posting on Instagram that he’ll “be back next season” seems pretty cut and dry. The 24-year-old undrafted back out of UTSA was thrust into duty for a floundering offense for a few weeks and managed to pick up 4.9 yards per carry.
He had a 15+ yard touch in all four games in which he touched the football and is a name to keep in the back of your head for next season. It’s difficult to know what this backfield will look like in eight months and if this offense as a whole will be any better, but I was encouraged by the production we got in a tiny sample from McCormick.
Jakobi Meyers, WR
You know we are deep into the NFL season when we are heartbroken when news breaks that Aidan O’Connell is inactive.
But, I mean, how bad could it really be?
As it turns out, worse than we could have imagined. Jakobi Meyers ended up with a fine stat line for boxscore watchers (10.9 PPR points), but this offense didn’t target a receiver in the first half.
You read that right. It doesn’t show a Meyers target or a receiver catch — no player designated as a “WR” on this roster was even looked at for the first 30 minutes.
There are a few of these situations where a bad offense is in a good spot (NYG at ATL, CLE at CIN, etc), and I’m generally betting against bad offenses with my season on the line. Maybe it’s fair, maybe it’s not, but in the middle of the season, I’m more likely to roll the dice on a profile like this than in December with my fate on the line.
Brock Bowers, TE
The only conversation surrounding Brock Bowers at this point is whether or not he is the TE1 this week and moving forward. I lean the direction of Trey McBride, simply because the volume is similar and I like the upside that comes with his looks over the mess that the Raiders have at this point in the proceedings. But reasonable minds can differ, and there is no denying that Bowers’ abilities to rack up YAC is already elite.
Word to the wise — Bowers is a unicorn. His excellence this season doesn’t erase the learning curve that we’ve seen at the tight end position. “Just look at what Bowers did in a feature role last season” is a sentence I expect to hear following the NFL Draft when a below-average offense brings in a TE prospect who charts well.
Be careful.