Jameis Winston

Jameis has a great matchup this week and even without Mike Evans, he should pile up the yards. With that said, there is some risk in playing him because if his hand injury is bad enough, Tampa could yank him from the game once again. Proceed at your own risk.

After getting multiple opinions on the fracture he suffered on his throwing hand in Week 14, Winston has been cleared to play this week. The question now becomes: Do you want to trust a quarterback playing through a fractured hand while missing his top receiver? There'll be many fantasy owners debating it when they see the Lions on the schedule, a team that's allowed multiple passing touchdowns to 9-of-13 quarterbacks. It's not just the touchdowns, either. They've allowed at least 7.2 yards per attempt to every quarterback not named Kyler Murray or Dwayne Haskins. That's allowed six different quarterbacks to throw for 300-plus yards against them. All-in-all, there have been just three quarterbacks who've failed to post at least 18 fantasy points against the Lions. Kirk Cousins, who threw the ball just 30 times last week while letting their rushing attack take care of business. Philip Rivers, who threw for 293 yards but had no touchdowns. And lastly, Haskins, who doesn't put up points against anyone. If you remove all the rushing totals for quarterbacks, the Lions have allowed the sixth-most fantasy points to quarterbacks. They've also only intercepted five passes all season, which bodes well for Winston's odds of staying on the field. There's certainly a lot more risk in this matchup than we'd hoped, as he would've been a top-five play if we knew he and Evans were healthy. Instead, he's teetering on the low-end QB1/high-end QB2 radar. If completely torn between him and someone else, Winston would be the one I'd play for upside.

Detroit is 25th against fantasy quarterbacks, Winston should be an elite QB1 on the road this week.

There are some knocks against Jameis Winston this season, with him being careless with the football. Ultimately, the pros outweigh the cons, since he ranks as QB5 on the season. This is because Winston ranks top-three in passing yards, (4,185) and passing touchdowns (26). If we took away turnovers, Winston would be the top-scoring QB in passing fantasy points. The other knock against Winston this week is that he lost Mike Evans for the season and Winston has a hurt thumb that could keep him out. Winston hurt his thumb early in the game and actually did not play the first drive of the second half. He would come back into the game and pass for 179 more yards, so if he is active, there is zero worries on my end of reduced performance. While not having Evans obviously hurts, Winston still has Chris Godwin, he is using OJ Howard more, and both Breshad Perriman and Justin Watson have stepped up this season and proved to be fully serviceable for this offense. If that's not enough, Winston also faces the Detroit Lions, who gave up 25.9 and 19.7 points to Mitch Trubisky and 31.6 to Dak Prescott in three of their last five games. They rank as the sixth-worst in opposing passer rating (100.5) and give up the third-most passing yards per game (276.5). Winston is a must-start in fantasy.