Fantasy Football: 5 Bold Predictions for Week 14

Tre'Quan Smith Will Put the Bucs in the Brig

Pretty much everyone has heard by now about Drew Brees' home/road splits. Over his career, his touchdown rate spikes almost two whole percentage points -- that's a lot -- and has adjusted yards per attempt increase by over a full yard. One of the all-time greats gets even greater when he's playing at home.

And perhaps no Saints receiver embodies those splits more than Tre'Quan Smith, their rookie wide receiver. In the five games he's played in while the Saints were at home, he's caught 16 of 21 targets for 309 yards and 4 touchdowns. In the six games he's played on the road, he's caught just 6 of 13 targets for 62 scoreless yards. It's a pretty stark contrast.

Unfortunately, the Saints are traveling to Florida this weekend to take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, so we'll be dealing with the road side of these splits. It's not the news you want to hear, but hold on. As drastic as Smith's home/road splits are, we're only working from an 11-game sample size. And then we're dividing that nearly in half, analyzing the results of two even smaller samples sizes. Those splits for Smith look like a trend right now, but we can't really say one way or the other.

Working in his favor this week is the Bucs' terrible secondary. Were it not for the Saints, the Bucs would be giving up the most fantasy points in the league to opposing wide receivers. We have double the sample size showing us that their defense really is bad, so we should feel more confident about the Saints passing game than usual in this one.

Alvin Kamara usually benefits the most when the Saints are on the road. Over the last 2 seasons he's had 20 more receptions when playing on the road, while his yards per reception tanks by almost three full yards. Based on these numbers, it seems like Brees emphasizes checkdowns to Kamara when playing on the road. He won't have to do that this week against a Bucs defense that allows a league-high 72.4% completion rate to opposing quarterbacks and a league-leading 9.2 adjusted yards per attempt.

This projects to be the highest-scoring game of the week, with a 55-point total, which means there should be a ton of scoring opportunities. The Bucs defense is bad enough to counteract any negative effects the road has on Drew Brees, and Smith is going to turn the tables on his home/road splits and finish as a top 12 wide receiver.