Tyrod Taylor has been a bit of an enigma when it comes to fantasy football production this season. Taylor himself and the Bills offense isn’t that impressive if you watch the film, but he keeps falling backward into production. Last week against a Pittsburgh, Taylor as able to muster just 16.32 fantasy points. The important part about last week’s production is that Taylor’s running bolstered the rest of his game, which is a formula you can come to expect from Taylor. He has gone over two touchdowns just once this season, but at the same time, he has had a fairly consistent go of fantasy production this year.
[embedit snippet=”jeff-ads”]
Tyrod has had over fifteen fantasy points ten times this season, with two of those coming in his last three games. His running ability and limiting of turnovers make it so that he has a fairly high floor. It’s the same sort of argument you’ll see for 2015 Alex Smith or this year’s Colin Kaepernick. They have a fairly high floor due to the value of rushing yards (2.5x more valuable than passing) and the ability to protect the football. While he fell apart against the Bengals and the Ravens this season, he has done fairly well the rest of the year and hasn’t fallen apart completely in any other game.
Luckily for Tyrod, he will be taking on the second worst pass defense this season against quarterbacks. The Browns have allowed multiple touchdowns in every game this season but two, and have allowed three passing touchdowns in seven games this season (out of thirteen so far), which literally means that this year it is more likely the Browns give up three passing touchdowns than they don’t. Not only are they abysmal at giving up touchdowns, but they have only two interceptions in their last seven games (both by Joe Flacco in week ten) and seem to be packing it in for the year.
Tyrod Taylor is a reasonable play this week if you are a Matthew Stafford owner, or if you suddenly feel like you can’t trust Dak Prescott or Colin Kaepernick. He should be a solid if unspectacular play this week against the Browns. He isn’t the player you play if you need some boom in your fantasy playoffs, but if you just need some solid production, Tyrod is the man for you. He’ll be a back-end QB1 by the time it’s all said and done, but he doesn’t really have top-three upside. He should have an easier time producing quality numbers with his main pass catcher, Sammy Watkins, back, as well.