The Houston Texans will face the Los Angeles Chargers on Wild Card Weekend. Here’s fantasy football start-sit advice for every Texans skill player who has the potential to make a fantasy impact during the game.
Are you looking for advice for other players in your lineup? Read our Wild Card Weekend Fantasy Start-Sit Advice Cheat Sheet for every fantasy-relevant player in every game.
C.J. Stroud, QB
If you want to be different, C.J. Stroud is the way to do it. The bird’s-eye profile checks the boxes — a QB who has succeeded at the NFL level with a top-10 receiver to throw to in a game where a passing game script is likely to occur.
That sounds good, but we just haven’t seen Stroud connect the dots this season, and the Chargers defense certainly isn’t a get-right type of spot. He threw 116 deep passes (15+ air yards) a season ago and 122 this season. The attempt count was similar, but the success rate was very different.
- 2023: Nine touchdowns and zero interceptions
- 2024: Five touchdowns and seven interceptions
These are two of the eight slowest-moving offenses in the NFL; if the Chargers take a lead, they’ve proven capable of bleeding the clock with the best of them. If you want a piece of Houston, I’d go with just one skill player instead of stacking up Stroud to gain leverage on the field.
Joe Mixon, RB
The Texans are either managing Joe Mixon for this spot or are indirectly telling us something by not handing the ball to their starting running back more than 14 times in four straight games (and five of six).
Without high-end value, Mixon isn’t likely worth your precious DFS dollar (4.1 yards per carry this season without a carry gaining more than 10 yards in five of his past eight games). He’s not a zero in the passing game, but his catch rate is at a career low and his usage hasn’t changed following Tank Dell’s injury.
The Chargers allow a touchdown on a league-low 45% of red-zone trips this season (NFL average: 57.6%; playoff team average: 54.2%), which impacts their league-leading RB rushing score rate (1.2% of attempts).
If you think Mixon can get to the 84 carries that it takes to project a full rushing score against Los Angeles, yes, go ahead and lock him into lineups. Call me crazy, but I don’t see a rebound to the elite volume we were getting earlier in the season (there were 21.5 carry over/unders available in November), and I’m not sold that the quality of touches in this spot is especially high.
John Metchie III, WR
ADD
From a roster-building perspective, pass catchers as slight underdogs playing in a weather-proof situation are going to be appealing. John Metchie III checks all of those boxes and he’s even seen his usage tick in the right direction over the past month.
- Weeks 15-18: targeted on 23.2% of routes
- Weeks 1-14: targeted on 12.2% of routes
On top of having only a 67-target NFL sample size for Metchie, he entered the week with head injury concerns. He’s basically free in all formats and that is the leg your standing on – not that he himself projects well, but that the discount on him buys you flexibility elsewhere.
If that’s your goal, I’d rather go to the NFC (Packers, Commanders, or Rams). I don’t love Houston’s chances in this game, and if we are talking about a single game of usage, I’m not sure this is the spot for Metchie. The Chargers have given up some production to receivers this season, but it’s largely been by the big names who get weighed down with targets.
Top-scoring WRs vs. LAC, 2024:
- Mike Evans: 36.9 points in Week 15
- Tee Higgins: 29.8 points in Week 11
- Jakobi Meyers: 27.3 points in Week 18
- Ja’Marr Chase: 26.5 points in Week 11
- Calvin Ridley: 25.4 points in Week 10
If the Texans advance to the divisional round, I think it’s a lot of Nico Collins early and a lot of Joe Mixon late. Metchie’s development is interesting, but it’s something that I’m more taking note of for redraft in 2025, not for playoff leagues.
Nico Collins, WR
Get in, get out, get on with life.
Nico Collins made a cameo last week, enforced his will (four catches for 32 yards and a touchdown), and started looking ahead to the postseason. We are talking about one of the very best pass-catchers in the game. If his ownership in weekly leagues doesn’t reflect that, I’ll be ready to pounce.
The postseason-long drafts are a little more tricky, as many are picking the Chargers to win this game on the road (including yours truly). That adds obvious risk to a profile that you will have to spend up early on, but it also creates a leverage spot, as the Charger pieces are coming off the board a touch earlier than you’d expect given the general optimism that they could make a run (they are the AFC Packers).
By selecting Collins in a format like that, you not only get his upside, but you get production that would come at the expense of the managers who go with Justin Herbert, Ladd McConkey, or any other Bolt. From a game theory point of view, I like the idea of drafting Collins at his cost.
This team isn’t going anywhere without him putting big numbers on the board, so if you’re essentially betting on them to win a game or two, rostering their star receiver is the right way to play that.
Robert Woods, WR
When Tank Dell went down, we wondered who would fill the void.
Three weeks later, we are still searching for answers.
Robert Woods saw six targets in that Chiefs game where Dell was injured, with the team essentially operating in panic mode and trusting the 32-year-old with over 1,000 NFL targets to figure things out. However, we’ve heard little from him since (30 routes, five targets, four catches, and 60 yards).
The decline is nothing unique to Woods at this point on the age curve. He was targeted on 18% of routes last season, and that dropped to 15.3% this season with a nearly identical aDOT — in essence, there’s nothing tangible to result in this sort of decline outside of the natural progression.
Without volume, you need dangerous looks. Good luck. Woods has been targeted on 9.7% of red-zone routes (down from 19.2% last season, never mind 25.5% in his final season with the Titans). If you want to get cheap exposure to this offense, it is John Metchie III or, dare I say it, Diontae Johnson.
Dalton Schultz, TE
For me, Dalton Schultz is Houston’s Will Dissly. By that, I mean he has a path to being the second-most targeted pass catcher on this team without having to squint too hard, but the upside is limited.
The two are priced near each other in the DFS streets, which makes complete sense to me. At this range of the position, I’m viewing rostering a punt TE play as a bet on the quarterback. And if I’m going that route, give me Justin Herbert over C.J. Stroud with a bullet.
So no, I’m not going to have exposure to Schultz this week. Stroud has been inconsistent, which has resulted in his tight end failing to reach 35 receiving yards in 13 of 17 games. If we assume that the yardage is going to be difficult to come by, you need TD equity that simply doesn’t exist — no end-zone targets in 10 of his past 11 games.
I guess you could look at Schultz vacuuming in at least six targets in three of his past four healthy games (I’m ignoring Week 18) and cite Houston’s seventh ranking in pass rate over expectation this season in a way to get some cheap PPR value. There’s a path for a 5-50 type of stat line, but I like the Chargers in this game, and the better scoring environment has me siding with their TE if I’m living in this range.