In this edition of Win the Dynasty Waiver Wire, Curtis Patrick shares his top waiver targets for Week 15 in dynasty fantasy football leagues.
After a long season of churning our fantasy depth, the playoffs are finally here and your rosters should be tuned up. In leagues that don’t shut down the waiver wire for the playoffs, claims now serve a dual-purpose of fortifying your own options as well as blocking your opponents from improving, too. This is not a time to get lazy; stay on your game until the hardware can be hoisted above your head!
*For the purposes of this week’s article, I’ll be using FFPC “percentage rostered” data.
Quarterback
Jalen Hurts (AVAILABLE IN 67.0% OF 1QB LEAGUES)
I’ve been a huge supporter of Jalen Hurts throughout the evaluation process, having called him the highest-upside fantasy QB in the draft class last winter and unearthing some stats that even got some love from Oklahoma Head Coach Lincoln Riley. I could probably just write the supporting documentation for a Hurts claim using tweets from the past year.
Since 2000 —
Every CFB QB w/ single season line of:
3000 pass yards
30 pass TD
1000 rush yards2015 Deshaun Watson (1st rd pick)
2016 Lamar Jackson (1st rd pick)
2018 Kyler Murray (1st rd pick)
2019 Jalen Hurts— Curtis Patrick (@CPatrickNFL) April 10, 2020
Since 2000 —
List of all CFB QBs with passer rating of 190+ in a season with 250+ passing attempts
Russell Wilson
Baker Mayfield
Kyler Murray
Tua Tagovailoa
Joe Burrow
and
Jalen Hurts— Curtis Patrick (@CPatrickNFL) April 10, 2020
There might not be anyone happier than me to see Hurts get a real shot at the Eagles job. I think the NFL missed on his evaluation. Rather than give you more of the same praise you’ve read or heard from me this season and last offseason, I’ll shine a light on a different RotoViz writer who featured Hurts in his piece for our special reaction pieces, called The Blitz. John Keenan writes:
Hurts the Prospect
One game, albeit an extremely encouraging one, isn’t enough to tell us whether Hurts is a star in the making or a flash in the pan, so we can turn to Hurts’s college production to try to get a little better handle on the situation. In his pre-draft profile, Jack Miller made a case for Hurts going right around Justin Herbert and well ahead of Jordan Love. While Herbert has exceeded everyone’s expectations and him performing like Herbert is a big ask, there’s still a lot to like about Hurts. He was historically efficient, especially in his final season at Oklahoma, and he racked up 3274 rushing yards over his college career, including 1298 his senior year.
Using the RotoViz Prospect Box Score Scout, Hurts’ top sims are a mixed bag: right at the top you have Dak Prescott, who’s been a strong fantasy QB since entering the league, and Andy Dalton, who had several solid years in Cincinnati. However, right after that you have Tim Tebow, Tyrod Taylor, and Colt McCoy, who all struggled to hold starting jobs throughout their careers.
If anything, this shows Hurts is far from a sure thing long term, which shouldn’t come as a surprise from a second-rounder. However, comps like Tebow and Taylor, while not great for his NFL prospects, are actually a pretty solid sign fantasy-wise. It has become well established that running QBs are cheat codes in fantasy, and Tebow and Taylor exploited this to be very startable QBs when they played. If Hurts can keep up his rushing value alone, he doesn’t even need to be that great at passing to be an upgrade for teams struggling at the quarterback position.
Hurts won’t be available in your SuperFlex league and probably not in your deep dynasty league either. But he’s still available in two-thirds of the skinny FFPC dynasty format, so if that’s your format, go get him.
