Fantasy Football: Top smash plays, upgrades and fades for Week 12

Week 12 of the NFL season is here, and so is the weekly look at the top smash, upgrade and fade plays for fantasy football. I'll integrate NFL totals, spreads, implied points and proprietary PFF matchup data each week, looking for players who score highly or poorly across all metrics.

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We will also look at the projected DFS rostership for additional context for building tournament lineups.

KEY:

• SOS: PFF's Fantasy Strength of Schedule (SoS) metric provides a league-wide, season-long view of opponent matchups for each fantasy position.
• OL Pass Block Advantage (OL PBA): offensive-line pass blocking matchup; derived from the OL/DL Matchup tool (pass blocking advantage — the higher the percentage, the better the matchup for the offensive line, and vice versa).
• OL Run Block Advantage (OL RBA): offensive-line pass blocking matchup; derived from the OL/DL Matchup tool (run blocking advantage — the higher the percentage, the better the matchup for the offensive line, and vice versa).
• WR/CB Matchup Advantage (WR/CB MU): wide receiver versus cornerback matchup; derived from the WR/CB Matchup tool (matchup advantage grade — the higher the grade, the better the matchup for the receiver, and vice versa).
• TE Matchup Advantage (TE MU): tight end versus linebackers and safeties; derived from the TE Matchup tool (matchup advantage — the higher the percentage, the better the matchup for the tight end, and vice versa).
• Projected PPR Points (PPR Proj)

QUARTERBACKS

For quarterbacks, we are looking for big point totals and implied points. The spread doesn't matter as much for pass-heavy teams, but we are looking for trailing scripts that could cause run-heavy offenses to throw more than usual.

Smashes

For the third time this season, none of the quarterbacks meet enough of the criteria to qualify as a smash play.

Upgrades

Hurts has only one finish outside of the top 12 all season and is the No. 1 QB. He leads all quarterbacks in designed rushing attempts at 24% and is second in scramble rate (11%) on the NFL's run-heaviest team over the last four games (62%). Opposing quarterbacks are averaging 22.1 points per game against the Giants, and importantly for Hurts — they allow 25.8 rushing attempts per game (11th).

• Scoring Environment: average game total and the No. 6 implied points
• Matchups: eighth-ranked QB SOS and third-best OL PBA

Wilson has been terrible in his first two games back from the finger injury with QB22 and QB27 finishes. However, Washington allows a league-high 27.6 points per game to quarterbacks.

• Scoring Environment: the fifth-highest game total and average implied points
• Matchups: No. 5 QB SOS but a negative OL PBA

Fades

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