Jaguars @ Browns Week 14 Game Preview
Jonathan Fuller breaks down the Week 14 matchup between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Cleveland Browns from a fantasy football and betting perspective.
Jacksonville Jaguars @ Cleveland Browns
This game will likely feature an increasingly common matchup of backup QBs after Trevor Lawrence was diagnosed with a high-ankle sprain following their loss to the Bengals on Monday Night Football.
The Browns trotted out their fourth different QB of the season when Joe Flacco got the start against the Rams last week. For his part, Flacco looked a lot more competent than many of the QBs getting playing time around the league and actually led the NFL in air yards on the week.
With a game total of barely over 30 points, we shouldn’t expect a whole lot of offensive production in this contest, but there are plenty of fantasy-relevant players in this game, so let’s dig into the matchup.
The Cleveland offense didn’t put up a ton of points, but there were some positive signs in last week’s outing. They posted their highest dropback over expected (DBOE) rate of the season, and Flacco was willing to throw downfield, so there may be some value in this passing game after all.
Amari Cooper is in concussion protocol on top of the rib injury he was already nursing coming into last week. His status for Week 14 is up in the air, which could lead to additional targets for Elijah Moore and David Njoku if Cooper misses.
Moore delivered solid fantasy production on ten targets last week, while Njoku had a season-low in receiving yards but still saw a reasonable 15% target share. Moore is a low-end FLEX option in the Fantasy Life consensus ranks, while Njoku checks in as the TE10.
The Cleveland backfield continues to be a fairly even split between Jerome Ford and Kareem Hunt. Ford is the more explosive of the two and has the larger role in the passing game, so he projects for the more valuable usage, but in a game with minimal TD equity available, I hope you have better starting options.
Jacksonville hasn’t officially ruled out Trevor Lawrence for this game, but it seems highly unlikely he will be able to play this week.
Assuming C.J. Beathard is under center, pretty much everyone takes a hit for fantasy purposes. Add in a difficult matchup against a tough Browns defense, and it is difficult to get too excited about anyone’s outlook.
The one potential exception is Travis Etienne, who is likely to be featured even more with their star QB out. He ranks as the RB11 in the Fantasy Life consensus ranks for the week, and he should see plenty of work, so fantasy managers just need to hope he can get in the end zone in order to deliver a good score.
With Christian Kirk expected to miss the rest of the regular season, larger roles are on tap for Parker Washington and Evan Engram, who served as two of Beathard’s favorite targets in his snaps last week.
Calvin Ridley and Zay Jones will continue to run as the top perimeter options, but I would like to see some chemistry with their new QB before rolling them out if at all possible. You may not have a better option than Ridley, but this brutal matchup with a backup QB throwing to him is the time to sit him if you can.