Week 14 MOP Rankings for Fantasy Football

The regular season came to a dramatic conclusion last week for many fantasy football managers. There were plenty of crazy performances throughout the fantasy landscape. Jahmyr Gibbs and Puka Nacua finished atop their respective positions in fantasy points last week. Their huge outings should not come as a surprise given their pedigree.

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But what about some of the other performances from last week? Which players are likely to encounter positive or negative regression going forward? To help answer those questions, I removed every player’s highest-scoring fantasy play from last week’s numbers. The result is the Week 14 MOP Rankings. These numbers are meant to reward volume, which generally leads to more consistent fantasy results. Here are last week’s numbers, along with some of my notes regarding several players at each skill position.

Running Back Takeaways

I do not usually like to discuss the same players in this article as I do in my weekly Flex rankings. However, I think it’s worth discussing the backfield of the Chicago Bears. The results may not have been there for D’Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai last week. Neither player scored in Chicago’s loss to the Green Bay Packers. In fact, neither player accounted for more than 10 yards on a single play. Because of that, both backs finished outside the top-24 in Half-PPR scoring. But the volume remains. Both Swift and Monangai earned at least 16 opportunities in the loss. That enabled both players to land in the top 15 among running backs in the Week 14 MOP Rankings.

Ideally, we want a player who has the lion’s share of his team’s backfield touches. But the Bears are running more than any team in the NFL. So both Swift and Monangai remain viable fantasy options despite working in tandem. Chicago is a heavy favorite in Week 15 versus the Cleveland Browns. The Browns sport one of the best run defenses in the NFL. However, as we saw last week, they can be had. The respective ceilings of Swift and Monangai may be a bit lower than those of other running backs in their general range. But both players should get plenty of touches in this game. That gives each of them a solid floor for fantasy purposes. I give Swift the slight edge, but Monangai could be Flex-worthy as well in this matchup.

Some other players whose place on the MOP leaderboard was better than their actual fantasy points include Derrick Henry, Bijan Robinson, and Aaron Jones Sr. All three players had at least a 10-spot gap between their rank in Half-PPR scoring and their MOP rank. This is not a surprise, as all three players are the unquestioned leaders of their respective backfields. Fantasy managers should continue to start all three with confidence in Week 15. Jones is the lowest among the trio in expected value this week. But a matchup with the Dallas Cowboys should be enough to get him back into the RB2 conversation.

There were plenty of players who landed on the opposite side of that spectrum last week. However, I think most of us can agree that players like Saquon Barkley and Bucky Irving are still every-week fantasy starters. It becomes a tougher sell when someone like Kareem Hunt or Sean Tucker exceeds their MOP rankings. Even though both players scored touchdowns last week, they still finished outside the top-24 fantasy running backs based on Half-PPR scoring. And if you remove those scores, both Hunt and Tucker would have placed outside the top-36. Hunt has a more secure role than Tucker at the moment. However, I would prefer to keep both players benched this week if at all possible.

Check out all of our Week 15 Rankings: Flex Rankings | QB Rankings | RB Rankings | WR Rankings | TE Rankings

Wide Receiver Takeaways

In more Bears usage discourse, Kyle Monangai may not be the only Chicago rookie worth considering going forward. Rookie wide receiver Luther Burden III has continued to see an uptick in his involvement of late. Burden has earned 20 total opportunities in his last three games. That is more than any other Bears wideout in that timeframe. Of course, it helps that Rome Odunze missed last week’s game with a foot injury. Odunze logged a limited practice on Wednesday, so fantasy managers will need to monitor this situation throughout the week. If Odunze is not ready to return, Burden should continue to pick up the slack. He has at least 60 total yards in two of his last three games and could post similar numbers this week.

Las Vegas Raiders rookie wide receiver Jack Bech was a player who popped in the Week 14 MOP Rankings. Bech finished a respectable 32nd among wide receivers in Half-PPR points, and even better (21st) in MOP points. However, his increased involvement was directly correlated to the absence of Dont’e Thornton Jr. Thornton missed last week’s game due to a concussion. In his stead, Bech was on the field for a season-high 82 percent of offensive snaps. Thornton has cleared concussion protocol and returned to practice. Meanwhile, quarterback Geno Smith’s status for the team’s Week 15 game is very much in doubt. The veteran signal-caller is dealing with shoulder and back injuries. This feels like a situation for fantasy managers to avoid. Tre Tucker is the best of a bad lot, and he is far from a safe commodity this week.

Browns wide receiver Jerry Jeudy had the flukiest Week 14 performance if you are strictly viewing things from a MOP perspective. The veteran wideout finished as the overall WR11 last week. However, 82.8 percent of his fantasy points came on one play. Not only was his 60-yard touchdown his longest play of the year, but it was just his eighth touchdown catch since the beginning of the 2023 season. That timeframe encompasses 46 games played. Sure, rookie quarterback Shedeur Sanders has infused a bit of life into Cleveland’s listless passing game. But Jeudy has only seven receptions on 12 targets in Sanders’ three starts. That volume makes it difficult to trust Jeudy as a fantasy starter with your season on the line.

Tight End Takeaways

There was not a whole lot of variance between actual fantasy points last week and the Week 14 MOP Rankings among relevant tight ends. Mason Taylor had the best MOP performance (TE8) relative to his actual finish (TE15). But last week’s effort was the rookie’s only top-20 outing since New York’s Week 8 bye. The Jets’ pass-catching corps leaves plenty to be desired. However, the likelihood that Brady Cook will make his first NFL start on Sunday is not ideal for Taylor to produce huge fantasy numbers. Throw in a neck injury that Taylor is dealing with, and this makes him a dicey Week 15 start.

Mike Gesicki, Josh Oliver, and Dawson Knox all finished as top-four fantasy tight ends last week. That might be the greatest collection of “this helps nobody” fantasy points ever assembled this late in the season. Gesicki is the only one of the three who was rostered in more than 10 percent of Fantrax leagues prior to last week. Gesicki’s 17.6 fantasy points last week almost eclipsed the 18.5 total points he had accumulated in his first eight games played. I suppose there is a world in which Joe Burrow’s return could help Gesicki maintain fantasy relevance over the next few weeks. But I will let someone else take that risk. Oliver and Knox have no fantasy relevance whatsoever and can safely be ignored.