Week 13 fantasy options most helped and hurt by the blitz

Kyle Rudolph has seen just 113 of his 429 receiving yards this season on blitzes, but he showed the Lions how blitzes can help his fantasy production on Thanksgiving. Two of Rudolph’s four total targets came against blitzes, and both of those were touchdowns. The first was on a play-action pass at the goal line where the Lions failed to cover Rudolph on an all-out blitz. The second was a beautiful 22-yard pass to Rudolph between two defenders as Case Keenum got hit hard by an unblocked pass-rusher. Keenum continues to impress in his first year with the Vikings, and even if he looks more to Adam Thielen as his security blanket than Rudolph most weeks, his effectiveness as a passer should continue to support Rudolph, Thielen, and Stefon Diggs as fantasy-relevant receivers.

Most teams have stronger tendencies than the Vikings, and that creates good and bad matchups for their receivers based on their opponents’ blitz patterns. Here are the players I recommend to use and avoid because of their blitz matchups in Week 13.

Players to target

Hunter Henry, TE, Los Angeles Chargers

Henry came out of his four-game stretch of opponents that rarely blitz with an exclamation point, catching 5 balls for 76 yards and a touchdown against the Cowboys on Thanksgiving. But that game was not a demonstration of Henry’s expanded usage. The Cowboys just happened to blitz a lot more than they normally do. For the season, the Cowboys have blitzed on just 25.6 percent of their opponents’ pass plays. On Thursday, they blitzed 48.5 percent of the Chargers’ pass plays, and three of Henry’s catches and 66 of his yards came against those blitzes.

A team can deviate from its normal blitz patterns for a number of reasons, but I don’t think there’s any reason to suspect more typically shy blitz teams are going to heavily blitz the Chargers this season. Most of the Chargers’ opponents have blitzed their usual percentages against them. That should be good news for Henry against the Browns this week. They have been the No. 1 blitzing team in football this season, blitzing on 46.1 percent of pass plays. Meanwhile, Henry has averaged 1.7 more catches, 28.2 more yards, and 0.15 more touchdowns per game against teams that blitz more than 30 percent of the time than against teams that blitz less than 30 percent of the time.