I started Chris Conley in my flex in one of my biggest money leagues in Week 15 and at halftime, I thought I had made a terrible mistake. But the situation was perfect! The Raiders were getting destroyed by everyone recently and D.J. Chark was out and Conley had a chance to work as potentially the WR1 in a high-scoring affair. It wasn’t an incredibly high-scoring game, but Conley did come through late in the game with two TDs and helped my team advance to the finals. This could be your story too if you had picked up Conley off of waivers last week. If you didn’t, there is still time.

In this article, we’re going to take a deeper look at who Chris Conley is as a player, what the state of the Jaguars offense looks like, and what we can expect from him in the final week of the fantasy football playoffs.

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Player Profile

Chris Conley came into the NFL as a third-round draft pick by the Chiefs in the 2015 NFL Draft. He played his college ball at Georgia alongside Todd Gurley and later with Nick Chubb and Sony Michel. Conley led the team in receiving in his final two seasons, though he didn’t put up eye-popping numbers just surpassing 650 receiving yards in each of those two seasons. Where he did stand out was with his 18.3 yards per reception in his senior season which ranked third in the SEC. The deep threat role has remained a strong suit of his even in the NFL as his 16.2 YPR this season ranks top-12 in the league. This is no surprise from a guy who recorded a 4.35-second 40-yard dash at the NFL combine and finished with a 97th percentile SPARQ score.

Despite his elite athleticism and large frame (6’2″, 213 lbs), Conley had a hard time carving out more than just a bit role with the Chiefs. He has already set a career-high in his first season with the Jags with 681 receiving yards and 79 targets. He’s also knocking on the door to set career highs in TDs and receptions as well.

State of the Offense

The Jags were in one of the worst slumps we have seen from any team this season before Week 15 as they were getting absolutely blown up in every game. The return of Nick Foles from injury did nothing to help the team which made them revert back to Gardner Minshew as their primary signal-caller with the season already out of hand from a playoff perspective.

While second-year wideout D.J. Chark has garnered all the attention this season, and rightfully so, Conley has quietly been seeing rather steady work and performing well with it all season. Before the season kicked off, this Jags WR group was one of the more intriguing yet harder to figure out for me. I knew Chark was capable of something great as he possesses amazing speed as well and we had seen Dede Westbrook operate as a reliable pass catcher in the middle of the field. The third WR was the hardest one to peg between Conley, Keelan Cole, and Marqise Lee. Cole was a fantasy darling just a few years back that everyone was waiting for to show life again, but Conley was the one that wound up sticking into the rotation. He has seen at least seven targets in half his games this season, registered at least 49 yards eight times, and had given us two games with over 90 yards and a TD. Now adding his two-TD performance against the Raiders to the mix, and it’s a wonder why we haven’t talked about him more this season. He’s second on the team with 681 receiving yards and four TDs.

The Jags offense as a whole had been very average for most of the season, but their recent slump brought them down towards the bottom of the ranks when it comes to points for.

Outlook

There is really only one more week that matters for most of us this season in fantasy and that is Week 16 where Conley and the Jags will take on a Falcons team flying high after upsetting the 49ers last week. The Falcons secondary has gotten absolutely destroyed by wideouts this season and though they no longer give up the most fantasy points to the position, they have surely given us some of the top-scoring wideouts in single weeks. Chris Godwin tagged them for 7-184-2 as recent as Week 12 and Michael Thomas put up 13-152 against them as well. A receiver who fits the mold of Conley’s skill set more is Tyler Lockett who also went for 100 yards against this secondary. This is great news for Conley, a guy who has a 70-yard TD under his belt this season.

The biggest question for Conley this week really will rely on the health of his fellow wideout D.J. Chark. Without Chark active last week, Conley finished just behind Cole in targets and receiving yards, but his two clutch TD grabs sealed the deal for a Jags’ win. There is immense upside here for a big game if Chark is out once again against a defense that has been vulnerable to just the type of receiver Conley is. Based on this matchup, Conley sits pretty close to the top of the totem pole when it comes to waiver wire priorities this week. If Chark is out, I will gladly play him again.

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John Ferguson is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from John, check out his archive and follow him @FantasyFerguson.