NFL

Fantasy Football: Bold Predictions for Week 13

Aidan Mcgrath  —  @@ffaidanmcgrath Nov 30th, 2018
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Chris Godwin Will Finish as a Top 12 Wide Receiver

Sometimes a player that sees fewer opportunities than his teammates can shine and leave you wondering why their team doesn't use them more. Nick Chubb and Aaron Jones were clearly better than Carlos Hyde and Jamaal Williams and yet it took their coaches quite some time to officially make the change (or in Chubb's case, the Browns general manager had to intervene).

That's not exactly the case with Chris Godwin. He's not head and shoulders better than the competition down in Tampa Bay, but he has shown he needs to get the ball more. At numberFire we use a metric called Target Success Rate to determine how often a target to a receiver adds value to his team's expected points total. Godwin's 65.57% Target Success Rate leads all Bucs wideouts by almost 7%. His 65.5% rate is actually the third highest Success Rate in the league among wideouts with 30 or more receptions. Whoever passes him the ball, be it Jameis Winston or Ryan Fitzpatrick, Godwin is getting it done.

This week he should have a chance to see his opportunities spike. The team recently sent O.J. Howard to the injured reserve, and DeSean Jackson popped up with a thumb injury that's preventing him from catching -- he only hauled in three of his eight targets last week against a lackluster San Francisco 49ers defense.

That should free up some targets for Godwin, who played his highest snap percentage since Week 8. And the Bucs are going to have to pass a lot in this one to keep up with the Carolina Panthers, who have averaged a top-tier 6.1 yards per play in 2018. The Bucs defense has been one of the worst units in football, which has forced their quarterbacks to throw for insane yardage on a weekly basis. Since passes to Godwin work -- and the talent around him is dissipating -- it's not hard to see him getting a lot of volume.

Chris Godwin is going to convert that volume into fantasy production against a mediocre Panthers defense and finish as a top 12 wide receiver in Week 13.

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