Las Vegas Raiders fantasy outlook: 2020 Week 3 Sit ‘Em or Start ‘Em
Quarterbacks
QB Derek Carr – Start ‘Em
After an unspectacular Week 1 against the Carolina Panthers, Derek Carr responded with one of the better performances of his career against the Saints. Carr was less than 20 yards short of 300 but hit 11 different receivers and kept drives alive with timely throws to his multitude of weapons.
More importantly for our purposes, Carr threw for three touchdowns to three different receivers, and was the 14th highest scoring fantasy QB with 21.58 points using NFL.com’s standard fantasy scoring. He was in the 25-30 range in Week 1 so this is quite the leap for the veteran QB.
Next up he faces a Patriots defense that smothered Ryan Fitzpatrick in Week 1 to the tune of just 191 yards and 3 interceptions, but he is notoriously reckless with the ball. In Week 2 they were shredded by Russell Wilson as he put up 288 yards and 5 touchdowns along with 39 rushing yards.
Carr is nowhere near as bad or reckless as Fitzpatrick and not on Wilson’s level as a passer or runner so we can expect somewhere in between.
The Patriots will take away one of the Raiders’ weapons in either Waller or Jacobs and will force the rest of the supporting cast to beat them so we can expect Carr to have to focus his targets elsewhere. He has plenty of options but we should expect another steady 250-280 yard performance with one or two touchdowns as the Raiders will need to score to keep up with the Patriots.
Carr is a QB2 at best right now or a FLEX if you’re in a funky league with Q/W/R/T slot so keep rolling with him and one of these days he’ll connect with Henry Ruggs on a deep shot to pad that yardage total.