Welcome everyone to the score fantasy football podcast.

I'm your host, Justin Boone, the lead fantasy analyst at the score.

And we have reached the fantasy

playoffs. Yes, we have two games left to be played in week 14. We got this little Monday night

football doubleheader. You've got the Titans and the Dolphins, got the Giants and the Packers. So

we'll definitely see some fantasy matchups and some fantasy playoff spots get decided depending

on the results in those games. I don't have any coming down to tonight, so I'm kind of thankful for that. I'm just really hoping that everybody comes out of those games clean, comes out of them healthy. We do not need any more injuries to deal with here, and that's because we had our usual batch of players getting hurt over the weekend. We're going to talk about that momentarily, and then we're going to go over the top waiver wire ads heading into the final three weeks of the fantasy

season let's start with the injuries though and we're right back to talking about

quarterbacks who got heard it's basically become the theme of 2023 this week we had a couple

big names go down Justin Herbert fractured another finger.

This time it's on his throwing hand, and obviously that's a problem for a quarterback.

Could take a few weeks to heal here.

And at this point, it might just make sense for the Chargers to put him on IR and end his season completely.

But for now, Easton Stick is going to get the start in week 15, and it's a short week for him too. They play on Thursday night on the road against the Raiders. And that means the fantasy managers who had Herbert, they're going to be on the lookout for a new QB. It also means that Keenan Allen and Austin Echler and Gerald Everett, they all get downgraded a little bit here. Though Allen and Echler, they did see a ton of volume with stick under center. So they're still fantasy starters, just might not have the same kind of ceilings that they had with Herbert. And for all the talk that the Chargers are going to split running back touches and they were going to go with the hot hand this week. Guess who turned out to be the hot hand? Yeah, it was Austin Echler. As the game went

along, it was just all Echler all the time near the end. Isaiah Spiller, he did get involved

early. Josh Kelly saw some work, but Echler was the clear leadback and he remains a low end

RB1 in fantasy. Alan remains a low end wide receiver one one and Easton Stick. He's just a desperation

QB2 Superflex kind of play. Superstar rookie C.J. Stroud, so he landed in concussion protocol.

I'm hesitant to project whether these guys are going to clear or not now because early in the season,

nobody was getting cleared within a week, but in the second half of the year, we've just seen a bunch of guys getting the green light to play one week later. And I would suspect that the Texans are going to do everything they can to get Stroud out there, since their playoff hopes they rest in the balance. And since they've already lost Tank Dell for the year, and now Nico Collins went down in this game. I will get to him in a minute.

Don't worry. But the matchup is great this week for Stroud if he can get cleared. He faces the Titans. So even without some of those top weapons, I think he could still be a low end QB1 in that game, but it all depends how he's feeling this week. And if he can't go, Davis Mills would be a risky low-end QB2.

Other quarterbacks who got banged up this week, Gardner Minchu, he appeared to be a little bit wobbly after an early scramble, but he didn't get checked. He stayed in the game and afterwards he denied that he was even stumbling at all. He suggested that he's fine. So we know sometimes symptoms can pop up a day or two later, but for now, we can proceed like Minchu is going to be good for week 15.

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