NFL Week 14 Fantasy Football Recap: Detroit Lions vs. Minnesota Vikings

• Justin Jefferson: 11 receptions, 223 yards

• D.J. Chark: 6 receptions, 94 yards, 1 touchdown

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D’Andre Swift’s momentum comes to a halt: Swift’s role increased last week, leading to double-digit carries, more than 100 yards and a touchdown. This week, he was back to the same role he played for most of November.

Justin Jackson was the primary third-down back, taking snaps that would ordinarily go to Swift.
Swift made up for that with more snaps on early downs than in past weeks — but not as much as last week.
This led to only six carries for 21 yards and three receptions for 18 receiving yards.
The Lions ran the ball with running backs 26 times and passed the ball 39 times for 330 yards. The fact that Swift didn’t see more touches and yards given the Lions' offensive output is concerning.
Safety C.J. Moore led the Lions in rushing yards thanks to a 42-yard run on a fake punt.

Jameson Williams’ role expands: Williams ran more routes in his second NFL game, and he caught the game’s first touchdown on a 41-yard pass where he was wide open.

Most of his snaps came in 12 personnel. He played seven of the team’s eight snaps from that personnel group. This cut into the playing time of all of the wide receivers.
He also took every snap from 13 personnel. The Lions have constantly put wide receivers near the bottom of the depth chart in for this personnel group throughout the season.
The few snaps he took in 11 personnel came at the expense of Josh Reynolds.
We can expect Williams to see more playing time going forward, and it will likely come in 11 personnel at Reynolds’ expense.
Williams can remain on fantasy rosters, but he’s likely a bench piece until he sees at least 50% of offensive snaps.

Don’t worry about Dalvin Cook: Cook was held to 36 total yards and 1.5 yards per carry, but brighter days are ahead for him.

He plays the Colts, Giants and Packers over the next three weeks. They’ve ranked eighth, 15th and seventh, respectively, in allowing fantasy points to running backs.
The latter two teams have sub-48.0 PFF run-defense grades, ranking them among the bottom seven teams in the league.
Two of those three squads are largely out of playoff contention, so they should be games where Minnesota can establish a lead and run a lot late in the game.
Cook is still playing the vast majority of offensive snaps even though his snaps had been declining in early October.

Table Notes

• Snaps include plays called back due to penalties, including offensive holding or defensive pass interference. The other three stats have these plays removed.

• Targets may differ from official NFL sources. The most likely discrepancy would be from a clear thrown-away pass, where the NFL may give the target to the nearest receiver, while this data will not.

• Carries are only on designed plays. Quarterback scrambles won’t count for the total number of carries in the game.