Jets @ Giants Week 8 Game Preview
Jonathan Fuller breaks down the Week 8 matchup between the New York Jets and New York Giants from a fantasy football and betting perspective.
New York Jets at New York Giants
This game is so ugly on paper that I’m kind of excited to see how it plays out.
The 36.5-point game total is comically low, but I can’t really disagree with it. A Tyrod Taylor vs Zach Wilson matchup doesn’t scream shootout, but there are enough fantasy-relevant players in this matchup that I sure hope they prove me wrong.
Both teams rank in the bottom 10 for situation-neutral pass rate this season and will likely attempt to establish their star RBs on the ground in an effort to control this game and take the pressure off their QBs.
The Jets offense has increasingly become the Breece Hall show in recent weeks, and for good reason, as Hall’s 6.4 YPC ranks third among all RBs and is actually better than Zach Wilson’s 6.0 yards per pass attempt on the season.
The matchup against the Giants defense is a good one for Hall, and he checks in as the RB7 in Fantasy Life’s consensus rankings for Week 8.
The only other Jet that should be in your lineups is Garrett Wilson, thanks to his 32% target share, which is top 10 among all WRs this season.
The Giants are coming off their second win of the season after beating the Commanders 14-7 last week. Although 14 points wasn’t an impressive scoring output, it was actually a decent effort for the offense as Tyrod Taylor threw for 279 yards and two scores while Saquon Barkley went over 100 all-purpose yards.
It was also Darren Waller’s best game of the season, so fantasy managers are understandably feeling better about the Giants’ offense than they have at any point this season.
Unfortunately, the Giants face a tougher test this week with a Jets’ defense that has been effective at slowing down opposing passing games.
It will be worth monitoring the health of the Jets’ secondary as the week progresses. The return of Sauce Gardner would be a big boost for the Jets' defense and could potentially force an even greater target share to Waller if he consistently has the best matchup.
The Jets' defense hasn’t been as strong against the run, and Barkley is an every-week starter, so there isn’t much to analyze there. The more difficult area to decipher comes in the Giants WR room.
Last week saw Jalin Hyatt connect on a deep ball from Tyrod Taylor, which helped him reach 75 yards on just two catches. Hyatt appears to be an ascending player in this offense, but his role as the deep threat with relatively limited target volume makes him tough to trust as anything more than a DFS dart throw.
Wan’Dale Robinson’s usage fell off a cliff in Week 7 after he had seen 6 or more targets in each of the Giants games from Week 4-6.
Similar to how there are only two fantasy-relevant players on the Jets, I hope you aren’t in a position where you have to consider starting anyone outside of Barkley or Waller on the Giants, as this game environment suggests fantasy points will be hard to come by.