2020 Dynasty/Fantasy Week 11 Game Analysis: Texans 27, Patriots 20

I take notes during the live watch. I re-watch the game on tape looking for hidden clues to report on. Here are my notes/takes on what I saw and how it related to FF 2020. I write anywhere from 1,000-3,000+ words on each game, and I must move fast to get to all of them through the week…so, please forgive any typos/grammar.

I’m not sure what ‘truth’ is to be ascertained from this game… Is it the Texans are getting better/good? Or is it that the Patriots are nowhere near as good as we all think/the name evokes? Week 9…the Texans barely slipped past Jake Luton’s debut. Week 10, they didn’t even show up at Cleveland. Then they beat the Patriots and people want to make Deshaun Watson an MVP candidate all of a sudden.

The Patriots were falling apart a few weeks ago, and then luckily beat the only winless team in football…then beat the Ravens in a monsoon – and heading into this game, we were supposed to think they were the greatest?

Both teams played well enough to win, but the vaunted Patriots defense struggled again…and when the Texans took a 14-10 lead late 2nd-quarter…they never relinquished it. The Texans had two wins coming into this game…both over Jacksonville. Here, they beat the Patriots…not in a fluky way. I think it says more about the Patriots than the Texans.

New England drops to (4-6) and are lucky to not be on a six-game losing streak. Massive gut check game for two teams at NE this week – Arizona at New England. After that game, the Patriots have a terrible road schedule…two L.A. games back-to-back then all the way to the 2nd-worst place for a road team to play in 2020 – at Miami. We project the Patriots to 6 wins, 7 tops.

Houston is now (3-7). My ‘over’ bet on them to get above 7.5 wins is looking bleak, but this kept the candle lit for a miracle. IF they can win at Detroit on Thanksgiving…I got a Cincy game Week 16 looming, so that’s five wins I can identify. But they’d still need to win three of their other 4…including two games with Indy. My projection is Houston finishes with 6 wins.

Fantasy Player Notes…

 -- First up, retribution for my Jordan Akins (5-83-0/6) scouting this season. He got back to his PPR TE1 ways here. He looked terrific…like his old (Weeks 1-4) self. He’s back to being a TE1 threat for sure in PPR.

Also note, the one misconnect throw between him and Watson…an easy 28-yard TD Akins sprinted open on and Watson led him just a bit too far or he races in for a nice TD.

He only played 50% of the snaps here, but he’s still getting back from missing weeks with injury. He may go 60-70% this week, his normal range and be a 5+ catch, 50+ yards, threat.

 -- Patriots RB notes…

Damien Harris (11-43-1, 1-11-0/2) ran the ball here like a premier #1 RB for an NFL team. The sad part was that Belichick took the early lead behind Harris…then forgot about him the rest of the game and lost. They should’ve just run Harris 20+ times and they would have walked away with this game. Honestly, this was an awful display of coaching by the master. Even the locals were miffed.  

I want to push Harris higher for projections, but Belichick is not giving into this fully…and I don’t know what will happen when Sony Michel gets activated.

Rex Burkhead is out for the season, most likely, with an injury sustained in this game. That opened up room for James White (5-19-0, 6-64-0/9) to have his highest snap count game of the year. White is a useful PPR back ahead…maybe. We don’t know what the plan is when Michel returns, or what Belichick does week-to-week with RBs anyway.

 -- Big dip for Jakob Meyers (3-38-0/3), which I expected due to Bradley Roby covering him…but I didn’t see Roby on him all the time. And when I saw N’Keal Harry (5-41-0/8) get better targets and Damiere Byrd (6-132-1/7) have a day…it made me pause my current FF enthusiasm for Meyers. I’m still 100% on board with Jakobi as a technical WR talent…but I don’t trust Cam, and Cam just gave me reason to worry about the luscious over-targeting of Meyers week-to-week. Honestly, I don’t know which way the targeting goes Week 12…will Meyers see 5-6 targets or get back to 10+? Not sure. Did I mention, I do not like Cam for my FF WRs?

I’m not buying the Byrd uprising…because of Cam. I’m not into Harry either, not because of Cam, but because of Harry looking soft…but Cam doesn’t help it either.

 -- Deshaun Watson (28-37 for 344 yards, 2 TDs, 6-36-1) is starting to rack numbers better than his play looks to me on tape. Five 300+ yard passing games in his last 7 games…and one of the two non-300+ games in that span was a cold/windy day at CLE.

Deshaun is averaging 259.2 yards passing on the road/outside, and 317.4 yards per game at home…in a dome. He’s on the road v. DET, but in a dome on Thanksgiving. I think the ‘indoors’ part is the key and Deshaun hits big again this week.

I haven’t been a fan of his 2020 work for the NFL, but I cannot argue with the FF tallies lately.

 -- Keke Coutee (2-10-1/4) and Watson used to have a nice PPR thing going back a few years ago when Coutee rose to slot WR starter, but then Coutee got hurt and fell out of favor with Bill O’Brien. He’ll be starting the next game at least in the slot for Randall Cobb. He might get some decent targeting.

Coutee is just too injury prone for my taste.

 -- Duke Johnson (10-15-0, 3-20-0/5) is terrible, and his play is begging for an RB to take over…but C.J. Prosise (3-4-0, 2-8-0/2) is doing nothing with his touches to get him more/future opportunities. David Johnson will walk right back to a starting role Week 13.

 -- I’ve highlighted Pats rookie SAF Kyle Dugger (6 tackles, 1 TFL) several times the past few weeks. Two more notes here…

1) 75%+ snap share played in his last two games and he’s a starter now (both games). 9.0 total tackles per game as a starter.

2) He’s listed as a safety, but he is playing a lot of outside linebacker…which is going to be great for IDP tallies. He could be a top 10 DB the rest of the season.

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Snap Counts of Interest:

47 = Duke Johnson

15 = Prosise

31 = Akins

27 = Ph Brown

21 = Fells

39 = White

26 = D Harris

12 = Rex