Fantasy Football Week 2 Preview: Justin Fields And Jets Offense Keep Flying Against Bills
Ian Hartitz identifies the fantasy football mismatches for Week 2, highlighting Justin Fields and the New York Jets offense staying hot against the Bills.
It was all there in plain view. After an offseason where the beating drum was that Justin Fields was inaccurate and not going to throw the ball enough the Garrett Wilson to make the wide receiver viable for fantasy football, Fields completed 16-of-22 passes for 218 yards and a score, adding 48 rushing yards and 2 scores on 12 carries against the vaunted Steelers defense in an unexpected 34-32 shootout loss. He was the QB3 on the week with 29.5 fantasy points. As for Wilson? He had just 7 catches for 95 yards and a TD (9 targets). So much for the offseason narrative.
Now Josh Allen and company come visiting after pulling off the incredible 41-40 comeback win over the Ravens on Sunday night. But did Lamar Jackson provide the blueprint for carving up the Bills' D?
This brings us to today's goal: Breaking down some of the week's biggest mismatches in an attempt to get an edge in fantasy football land.
A lot of this will be done through my weekly Mismatch Manifesto charts that combine commonly-used matchup metrics in an attempt to turn things into a one-way street as opposed to always having to go, "Offense ranks x, defense ranks y." To put the following data simply: Blue is good for the offense in question, and red is bad. Cool? Cool.
As always: It's a great day to be great.
Note: This is part of a Week 2 Fantasy Football Mismatch series featuring:
- Top Running-Game Matchups
- Kyler Murray Blowup Spot
- Will the Raiders let Geno Smith cook?
- Will the Eagles-Chiefs Super Bowl rematch shoot out?
Could this Jets offense keep on keeping on?
The combination of Justin Fields and company balling out and Lamar Jackson and the Ravens largely torching the Bills has the J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets sitting pretty with the top combined run and pass explosive play rates in Week 2.
Of course, we can't simply rest on a one-week sample and ignore the last four years of Fields' career, but hey: Give the much-maligned dual-threat talent a lot of credit for consistently winning with his arm last Sunday. We've always known Fields is a special athlete; speeding up the processing while maintaining accuracy (especially over the middle of the field) like we saw last week makes for a dangerous signal-caller.
The Bills, like the Steelers, don't make a habit of playing a ton of man coverage, something that can become a swift death sentence against someone like Fields considering the dangers of having defenders turn their back to the QB. Ultimately, the Jets' Week 1 performance was enough to at least add a layer of optimism to the potential upside here for the passing game's two key parties: Fields comes in as Fantasy Life's consensus QB6 and Garrett Wilson is the WR14.
Oh yeah, and that Breece Hall guy was pretty damn good too last week! I haven't seen him look that spry with the ball in his hands since that magical 2022 rookie campaign. The presence of Fields and Braelon Allen near the goal line will continue to cap things, but this run game could be a problem with the weapons at hand behind an offensive line that finished ninth in PFF's Week 1 run-blocking grades.
Explosions in the sky: The Bills, Seahawks, and Bears are also set up quite well in their quest to create big plays in the passing game. Of course, in the Seahawks' case, that basically just means Jaxon Smith-Njigba is set up well as long as he continues to essentially be a one-man band for this Sam Darnold-led passing attack.
It's 2025 guys get it together: The Broncos, Panthers, Giants and Bengals stand out as the offenses least expected to produce some explosive chunk gains through the air. Of course, the latter squad is only included because of their rough performance against Myles Garrett and company last week—something that we touched on in this very column! I'll be more worried about Joe Burrow and his pair of stud receivers if they can't get things together this week against the Jaguars' far-less-intimidating pass defense.
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