Fantasy Football Players Likely to Decline in the Second Half: Sam Howell, Zack Moss, Adam Thielen and Darren Waller

Everyone overreacts to each week of the NFL season, but there are 17 others just like it, and they combine like chapters in a book to tell the story of the season.  Players who started hot will fall off as circumstances change or they deal with injuries, and others who started slow will get increased opportunities and work back from their own maladies.

Let’s take a look at players who have been good fantasy performers over the first half of the season but have reasons pointing toward a drop in production or lost/shrinking role. (I previously looked at players primed to bounce back in the second half.)

I will highlight one player at each position and add a few honorable mentions. This is an incomplete list: there are other players who have reason to expect a drop, but space is limited, and these guys stand out to me as players to be wary of moving forward.

Quarterback

Sam Howell, WAS

Howell has been one of the most surprising fantasy players of 2023. He has thrown for the second-most yards through nine weeks and has the sixth-most QB fantasy points. It’s been an easy slate so far for the Washington quarterback; these defensive fantasy rankings are from Pro Football Reference as of 11/11/2023:

Howell was a top-10 weekly quarterback four times and in the top 14 in seven of nine weeks (according to Fantasy Pros). The other two weeks he was outside the top 20: against the Bills and Giants, the only teams he faced within the top 10 in terms of fantasy points per game allowed to quarterbacks. Essentially, Howell was fantastic against weaker opponents but struggled against the only two tough QB defenses he faced.

Things don’t look quite as rosy the rest of the season:

That doesn’t even include the Week 14 bye; it’s not his fault, but Howell will be out in a very important week of the fantasy season (final regular season week or first playoff week for most fantasy leagues), and that hurts his value.

The average defense against fantasy QBs ranked around 21st in the first nine games. That will drop to about 13th over the back half of the season. Washington faces three top-10 defenses and the 13th-ranked Cowboys twice.

Howell will likely still have a few good games, but his average fantasy performance will be much lower than the heights he’s reached to start the season. Howell might be a sell-high candidate if someone is interested in trading for him as a top-10 fantasy quarterback.

Honorable Mentions

This is a lot easier when it comes to finding guys who will do better in the coming weeks; it’s less fun projecting someone’s demise. It’s also harder to predict things that will cause disappointment, like injuries or a player getting benched/having their role reduced.

These four quarterbacks have all been starting options some weeks while struggling others, and each is in danger of losing his starting job in the coming weeks:

Justin Fields, CHI; Matthew Stafford, LAR; Russell Wilson, DEN; Baker Mayfield, CLE

Fields has been out with injury, and undrafted rookie Tyson Bagent has looked competent in his stead. The Bears have two shots at a top draft pick (owning Carolina’s first rounder) and may be shifting to a new rookie quarterback next season. In that case, they may roll with Bagent as the season goes on, especially if Fields struggles in his return.

Stafford and Wilson are veteran quarterbacks on teams going nowhere; a few more losses may lead their teams to look toward the future. Stafford missed Week 9 with an injury, and the team signed Carson Wentz during this week's bye.

Mayfield has looked decent with the Bucs, not reaching the standard of a former top overall pick but showing he’s a low-level starter/high-level backup in the league. If the Bucs fall out of the playoff race, they may give some reps to Kyle Trask, who has never gotten a real chance to play.

Running Back

Zack Moss, IND

The case against Moss is more about his teammate in the backfield. Moss already has the most carries, rushing yards, total yards, and touchdowns of his career in just eight games. As Jonathan Taylor missed the first four games of the season with injury and contract dispute, Moss played three times (after missing Week 1) and racked up 280 rushing yards. The backs played together in Week 5, and Moss gained 195 total yards and scored twice.

Since that game, however, Moss has only 170 rushing yards over four games and saw his carries decrease each of the last two weeks. Taylor touched the ball more than Moss in those two weeks after it was an even split or in favor of Moss every game before that.

Taylor hasn’t necessarily been efficient, but he is overtaking the lead role in the Indianapolis backfield. The Colts also just gave Taylor a nice new contract while Moss is in the last year of his own pact. The team is likely to focus on Taylor the rest of the season before letting Moss leave in free agency in the offseason.

Moss will probably get a job next year because of the work he did earlier this season, but it’s likely we’ve seen the best of his 2023. Moss is a player I’m looking to unload if someone will treat him like a great flex option with RB2 upside; that’s more Taylor’s level, while Moss will be a flex option at best in the right matchups.

Honorable Mentions

This is tough.  The real answer is, “whoever gets injured,” but that doesn’t help much in this situation. Derrick Henry has a lot of miles on his wheels, and if the Titans fall out of the playoff race, rookie Tyjae Spears would likely get an expanded look.

Wide Receiver

Adam Thielen, CAR

After an anonymous Week 1, Thielen went on a five-game stretch into the team’s Week 7 bye in which he averaged 15.3 standard points per game and finished among the top five receivers three times. Since the bye, Thielen has averaged just 4.8 points over three games and finished outside the top 40 receivers in Weeks 8 and 9, with Week 10 likely to follow.

Thielen was a star with Minnesota, but he continues into his 30s and wasn’t expected to be a top receiver anymore. He defied the odds early, but Carolina’s passing game has helped lead to the recent struggles.

Bryce Young has only thrown for more than 220 yards twice, and he topped out at 247 in a game in which he threw 41 passes. While Carolina is attempting the third-most passes per game, they are averaging just the 28th-most passing yards per game. The team’s 5.5 yards per attempt are last in the league.

Andy Dalton started one game in which he racked up counting stats (inefficiently), but Young has been more conservative and has four games under 200 yards. Things are likely to follow the same pattern in the second half, with the Panthers facing good pass defenses in Dallas, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Green Bay over the rest of the season.

Honorable Mentions

Puka Nacua, LAR: Nacua started the season unlike any rookie we’ve ever seen: five straight games with over 70 yards, three of those over 100. Forty-six receptions during those five weeks. Cooper Kupp returned for Week 5 and had eight catches for 118 yards, and it’s been a roller coaster ever since. Kupp starred in Week 6 as Nakua struggled, Nakua starred in Week 7 as Kupp struggled, and both struggled in Week 8. Stafford missed Week 9, and both players had a second straight slow game.

With Stafford out, both guys are enigmas. The quarterback's status will dictate his receivers' upsides, and neither player can be counted on as a WR1 without Stafford in the lineup.

Terry McLaurin, Jahan Dotson, Curtis Samuel, WAS: If Howell drops off as predicted, that will affect all his receivers, too. McLaurin is in the WR2 group while Dotson and Samuel are WR3/flex options, and they would all drop a level if Howell becomes a middling passer.

Tight End

Darren Waller, NYG

It’s not really fair to pick on Waller right now, as he’s on IR, but it’s easy to see the rest of 2023 being a wash for the tight end (and his whole team). Beginning with Waller himself, he played full seasons in 2019 and 2020 before missing 14 games over the past two seasons. He was healthy this season until leaving early in Week 8 with a hamstring injury.

He will miss at least three more games, which leads into New York’s Week 13 bye. By Week 14, a team currently with just two wins will likely be out of playoff contention and may be hesitant to rush their veteran with an injury history back onto the field.

If he does return, Daniel Jones is done for the season and Tyrod Taylor joined IR at the same time as Waller, so it’s unclear who may be throwing the ball for Big Blue. Undrafted rookie Tommy Devito is currently starting under center, and things don’t project to get much better for the Giants.

This looks like a season in which New York is playing out the string and their veterans mostly fall into anonymity until next year (when they might have a shiny new quarterback in the building alongside Jones).

Honorable Mentions

Jonnu Smith, Kyle Pitts, ATL: Aside from an outlier eight touchdowns in 2020, Smith is about to blow away his career highs in each major counting stat. He’s on pace for 23 more catches (56.1%) and 349 more yards (77.9%) than any other season in his career. It’s hard to deny what he’s done so far, but I don’t expect Smith to keep up those numbers.

Pitts has been outshined by his teammate, but he is unlikely to pick up the slack if Smith’s production drops. Atlanta’s passing game is likely to rob both players of weekly fantasy relevance. The Falcons are near league average in pass attempts per game, passing yards per game, and yard per pass attempt; I see more reason to expect those numbers to end up closer to the bottom of the league than the top by the end of the season as the team cycles through quarterbacks and struggles to find a solution.

Atlanta’s passing game so far has been close to the best they can hope for, and I see more room for them to fall than to rise moving forward.

Hunter Henry, NE: I thought Mike Gesicki could come into New England and team with Henry to lead the New England pass catchers: that was way off. Henry started the season hot but fell off fast, and he can’t be counted on almost any week. Same for Gesicki.