Fantasy football Top 150 rest of season rankings: Jahmyr Gibbs, Mike Evans rise on Big Board

The​​​​​​​​​​ Big Board takes into​​​​​​​​​ consideration​​​​​​​​​​ past​​​​​​​​​​ returns,​ current​​​​​​​​​ situation/performance​ and​​​​​​​​​ expected​ future gains​​​​​​​​​ in​​​​​​​​​​ determining​​​​​​​​​​ who​ should be included​​​​​​​​​ among​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ the​​ Top 150 fantasy football players. Essentially, the Big Board is a cheat sheet designed for a GM who is planning to participate in a draft today. Half-point PPR scoring settings are used as the baseline for the Big Board.

Whether it’s just a matter of days, or another couple weeks, the window to make trades in your league is, most likely, closing soon. In addition to checking out my latest Big Board player rankings, you can also peruse this week’s trade Q&A with Gene Clemons for more trade insights.

Before we dive in to the Big Board rankings, here are a few observations I had when compiling this latest update:

• I had to drop Davante Adams and Tony Pollard significantly this week — and I’m still thinking it wasn’t enough. Having scoured the game logs of all the top running back and wide receivers, in addition to going through the exercise of dropping each player’s highest and  lowest half-PPR game totals, then calculating the average of their remaining games played to curb the impact of outlier performances, I decided it was time to call a spade a spade. Pollard is at 10.0 PPG after removing his outliers, while Adams holds a 9.4 mark — not good. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results — like expecting mid-level RB1/WR1 production from Pollard and Adams despite them, more often than not, delivering RB3/WR3 results.
• After grousing about the state of the QB position last week, it’s like the fantasy gods heard my cry, because the position seems to have replenished itself quickly. Kyler Murray returned, and showed enough to convince us his old self will be there after he shakes off some rust. Dak Prescott has caught fire. Joshua Dobbs continues to do his best (better?) Justin Fields impression. Speaking of Fields, he’s back this week. Sam Howell is taking fewer sacks, turning the ball over less, and has run off  five Top 10 QB finishes in his past six games. Then there’s C.J. Stroud, who is… well, he’s amazing, and for my money, throws the most beautiful ball in the league. Suddenly things look a little more well-rounded at QB. Don’t get me wrong, the QB 21-32 tier of NFL starting QBs might be the worst it’s been in a mighty long time, but at least there’s a little more optimism in that Top 20.
• Is Brian Robinson this year’s Jamaal Williams? What I mean by that is that Williams spent much of last season living in the RB1 class in terms of production, and he finished as the No. 8 RB when the dust settled. But his industry consensus in rest-of-season rankings through November generally lived in the back-end of the RB2 class. Robinson currently ranks as an RB1 on the season in half-PPR PPG (min. 5 games played), but his industry rank among those who updated their ROS rankings as of Wednesday of this week is No. 30 at RB. I’m higher than the industry in terms of his RB rank (25), and he’s 55 on my board compared to a completely disrespectful No. 81 on the industry board. When you consider that Robinson has finished as a Top 16 fantasy RB six times this season, and has only finished outside the Top 26 one time, it’s easy to argue I’m still too low on him.
• De’Von Achane is returning soon, possibly this week. I’ll admit, he’s a mystery. He left us with our mouths agape — averaged over 12 yards per carry, 172.7 yards from scrimmage and scored 7 TDs in Weeks 3-5 before landing on the IR — but it’s unfathomable that he can keep up that kind of production upon his return. What, ultimately, will a “normal” Achane outing look like down the stretch? My guess is that it’s something like what we are getting from Jahmyr Gibbs of late, with maybe a little more workload inconsistency. I have him a little behind Gibbs because we don’t know how much workload he’ll see as he gets back into the swing of things. In terms of trade value, I think anything in the 20-35 range on this board is a reasonable place to start your discussions.
• Final notes: You can access an Excel file of this Big Board at the bottom of the column. Also, I included bolded lines at various points of the Top 150 table to denote where I felt there was a noticeable tier drop.

(Photo of Jahmyr Gibbs: Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports)