The Fantasy Life Staff takes a look ahead to uncover who will be this year's fantasy football league winners.

With just one more week of the fantasy regular season to play, and certain players starting to rise up into more prominent roles, we thought it would be a good time to ask our Fantasy Life staff: Who is your Fantasy Football league winner? 

It would be easy to point toward players like Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Justin Jefferson, and Saquon Barkley as league winners. That's too easy. We're digging deeper. Some of these players were on waiver wires this year. Some buried on benches before rising up to starters' status. There's even a rookie who has taken over a large role on an ascending offense. 

If you have these players, insert them in your lineups with confidence. If you're facing them, well, better hope you have plenty of firepower on your own roster because it's going to be a dogfight. 

Time to divulge this year's fantasy football league winners.

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Scrap Heap, to Top of The Heap

Cooterdoodle: In a world where fantasy managers were blowing all of their FAAB in Week 2 for a backup TE who has scored in only three matchups this season (Hey, Isaiah Likely) … a very real and very unexpected fantasy savior has emerged from the mucky muck. 

In the last seven weeks since MIA’s bye, Jonnu Smith has:

• Finished TE3 (or better!!) 4X
• Scored 4X
• Scored 15 points or better (0.5 PPR) 4X

Most recently, he’s seen an uptick in targets and yardage. His last three weeks:

• Week 11: 6 receptions, 101 yards, 2 TDs (TE2)
• Week 12: 9 receptions, 87 yards, 1 TD (TE3)
• Week 13: 10 receptions, 113 yds (TE2)

Has Smith had some terrible-no-good-very-bad weeks earlier in the season? OF COURSE! But all of the best TEs have in 2024, so who are we to judge? 

This is about the here and the now. And right now, Jonnu is lighting up fantasy lineups and dragging mid-level teams to victory. 

Where Are The Handcuffs?

Ian Hartitz:Nobody knows what a fantasy football league winner means, but it’s undoubtedly provocative. The term truly gets the people going.

That said: Every year there is seemingly someone who comes out of nowhere down the stretch to (wait for it) win people their fantasy leagues.

There are a number of established players we could pick from, but I’m going to go a different route and touch on a handful of RBs who are *one* injury away from likely turning into instant top-15 options at the position.

With a whopping six teams on bye in Week 14, don’t be afraid to pounce on these elite handcuff options if you’re lucky enough to find them available on your waiver wire:

• Falcons RB Tyler Allgeier (rostered in 41.5% of ESPN leagues)
• Titans RB Tyjae Spears (40.8%)
• Cardinals RB Trey Benson (24.1%)
• Jets RB Braelon Allen (22%)
• Bears RB Roschon Johnson (15.4%)
• Rams RB Blake Corum (14.2%)
• Bills RB Ray Davis (11.3%)
• Chargers RB Kimani Vidal (10.7%)

Of course, I didn’t include 49ers RB Isaac Guerendo, who is suddenly at the top of the depth chart and accordingly deserves to be prioritized on the waiver wire in fantasy leagues of all shapes and sizes.

Quest For 1,000

Dwain McFarland: Mike Evans has averaged 17.7 points in healthy games with a 70% route participation or higher this year. For the stretch run, the Buccanneers should be one of the most motivated teams in the NFL with a 58% probability of making the playoffs. The schedule sets up well for fantasy purposes: Raiders, Chargers, Cowboys, and Panthers.

The Chargers are the only tough defense on the schedule, and with Chris Godwin out, a healthy Evans should dominate targets. In Week 13, the 31-year-old registered a whopping 35% target share on his way to 25.8 fantasy points against the Panthers.

Since returning from his hamstring injury in Week 12, Evans has been the clear-cut top option in the Buccaneers' passing attack.

Evans is a midrange WR1 the rest of the way and will help fantasy managers win championships.

Bonus: Big hat tip to Matt Swing, who picked my other choice before I could get to him—Jakobi Meyers is set up for a MASSIVE finish. You can read more about it in this week's Utilization Report.

Not That Raider

Matt Swing:The Prestige is, perhaps, my favorite Christopher Nolan film (and one of his more underrated). The film follows two rival magicians as they attempt to one-up each other for the greatest magic trick anyone has ever seen.

Michael Caine’s character gives the opening monologue where he explains the three acts of every magic trick:

1. The Pledge: The magician shows you something ordinary, like a deck of cards.
2. The Turn: The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary, such as make a card disappear.
3. But making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to have a grand finale. Which is why magic tricks always have a third act: The Prestige.

Now, to me, the Raiders are performing a magic trick of their own:

1. The Pledge: The Raiders draft a tight end in the first round.
2. The Turn: The tight end is on track for the best rookie season of all time at his position.
3. And just when everyone is enamored by the star TE over the last two weeks, a certain LV wide receiver quietly put up 22.1 and 15.7 fantasy points and a 32.5% collective target share against two of the best defenses in the NFL (DEN & KC).

With a smash schedule of ATL, JAX and NO in the fantasy playoffs, Jakobi Meyers is 2024’s Prestige.

Brown Out

Geoff Ulrich: Nick Chubb may not be popping off with a ton of sexy efficiency metrics right now (3.0 YPC isn’t sexy, just FYI guys), but he is gaining some of that juicy M-word: Momentum!

Chubb took 77% of the rush attempts for Cleveland in Week 12, rarely coming off the field for Jerome Ford, who played just 20 snaps. Kevin Stefanski seems likely to try and finish off the season with as many Ws as possible so he can gain a little job security and getting Chubb into shape quickly is likely his best route to accomplishing that goal. 

Chubb’s playoff schedule may not look great at first glance, but a deeper dive shows it could be good enough to launch you into the championship game. 

Week 15 at home against KC looks bleak, but the Chiefs defense was run on last week by

Ameer Abdullah and Sincere McCormick for 103 yards on 22 carries. Either way, a home meeting with Patrick Mahomes certainly smells like a 15-plus-carry spot for Chubb. 

Week 16 is where it gets juicy. The Bengals have allowed 4.8 YPC over their last three starts and just gave up a big game to another lead RB in Najee Harris, who went 16-75-1 on the ground. 

In Week 17, Chubb then has a matchup with the Dolphins for all the marbles, who have allowed 11 rushing TDs on the season to opposing RBs (seventh most in the league). 

Since returning, Chubb has been a workhorse. With a positive playoff schedule, I expect we’ll see several big performances from him down the stretch. 

Ridley Me This

Matthew Freedman: It's Week 14. For many fantasy managers, this is a must-win week. You know who's going to win?

Calvin Ridley is staring at a #RevengeGame at home against the Jaguars, who are No. 32 in defensive dropback EPA (0.312, per RBs Don't Matter) and could be without No. 1 CB Tyson Campbell (thigh).

He's also gonna win in Week 15 against the Bengals, who are No. 30 in defensive pass DVOA (25.0%, per FTN).

His matchup isn't perfect in Week 16 against the Colts (47.5% defensive dropback success rate, No. 22), but it's still advantageous—and then he once again gets the perfect matchup against the Jags in the all-important Week 17.

In his six games since the Titans traded away WR DeAndre Hopkins, Ridley has 31-496-2 receiving on 51 targets with a 95% route rate and 29% target share (per our Fantasy Life Utilization Report).

Without Hopkins, Ridley has had alpha usage. For the next month, I expect him to have alpha production.

A Fine Ladd

Jake Trowbridge: Forget his limited college production. Forget his smaller stature and his baby face. In 13 short weeks, rookie WR Ladd McConkey has transformed from a boy into a MAN (or from a lad to a geezer, if you will).

After a somewhat slow start to the season, at least yardage-wise, McConkey broke out in Week 8 against the Saints. Since then, he’s been the WR11 in PPG thanks to his 88% route participation and 26% target share. 

This overlapped with the Chargers shifting toward a more pass-forward offense, which should remain the case with J.K. Dobbins on IR and some tough rushing matchups on the horizon. 

Not sold? In Week 13, McConkey accounted for 80% of his team’s receiving yardage! (I don’t even dominate that ferociously when I create a player in Madden.) Granted, Justin Herbert threw for only 147 yards, but this still speaks to McConkey’s importance in the offense and the confidence you should have in him as a high-end receiver for the fantasy playoffs. Keep an eye on the injury report, as he did sustain a knee injury last week. Be healthy, Ladd!

Where There's a Will

Paul Charchian: Sometimes the fantasy community writes off a player early in the season, and is slow (or worse, resistant) to accepting his tangible, objective improvements. That's happening right now with Tennessee quarterback Will Levis.

Over the past month, Levis is QB11, making him starter-worthy in typically sized leagues. Not only has Levis stopped making eye-rollingly bad decisions, he's quietly playing competent football. Here are some encouraging Levis stats from the past four games:

• Passer rating: 8th best (101.4)
• Touchdowns: 8th best (8)
• TD-to-INT rate: 10th best (3.5:1)
• Yards per pass: 4th highest (8.3)

We're starting to see signs of reliable explosive output from Levis in the form of Nick Westbrook-Ikhine's mathematically improbable deep-scoring strikes. As presciently noted by Freedman up above, a Calvin Ridley upturn is likely coming.

Levis' recent success likely continues thanks to the league's easiest remaining schedule for quarterbacks, including two more games against the Jaguars.

• Week 14 vs. Jacksonville: On the season, Jacksonville has allowed the most fantasy points to opposing quarterbacks. They've improved slightly over the past five weeks, nudging from 32nd to 27th in fantasy points allowed.
• Week 15 vs Cincinnati: On the season, the Bengals rank 30th in fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks. And it's only gotten worse lately with back-to-back-to-back awful games, allowing per-game averages of 333 passing yards and 3 scores since Week 10.
• Week 16 at Indianapolis: The Colts represent another strong opportunity for Levis, allowing a staggering 70% completion rate, which helps solve one of Levis' ongoing problems, completion rate. Levis' downfield arm could be on display against a defense that's seeing the 6th-deepest average pass.
• Week 17 at Jacksonville: See above.

Ready for a Rookie Uprising?

Pete Overzet: Don’t look now, but this week Jonathon Brooks practically tripled his snaps (5 > 14) and rush attempts (2 > 6) from Week 13, while also earning 3 targets.

It might not seem like much, but Brooks should continue to see his role grow in a big way down the stretch.

Most encouraging, the team trusted him as the lead back for a series in the red zone deep into the game vs. the Bucs.

Chuba Hubbard isn’t going anywhere, but Brooks can easily force a Gibbs/Montgomery-esque timeshare and deliver some strong RB2 finishes down the home stretch. 

There’s nothing intimidating about the schedule either. After a tough matchup vs. the Eagles this week, Brooks gets the Cowboys, Cardinals, and Buccaneers in the fantasy playoffs.

Stay patient, Brooks nation. Your loyalty is about to be rewarded.

More Than a Thielen

John Laghezza: As a collective, we really need to stop making such definitive assertions on first and second-year quarterbacks. I’m guilty myself. Of course, had you just landed on Earth around Week 9 of the NFL season, there’d be no wondering why Bryce Young went ahead of C.J. Stroud in the 2023 NFL Draft. During that timeframe Young made tons of difficult throws, boasting a better EPA/dropback, completion rate, passer rating, and TD:Attempt ratio than his sophomore counterpart—all while taking an incredible 75% fewer sacks! Could the answer to this year’s fantasy riddle be … the Panthers? This version of the simulation is easily my favorite.

As well as Young has played, the Panthers still needed (at least) one more reliable pass catcher. Enter wiley veteran and resident target hog Adam Thielen. The 34-year-old UDFA returned Week 12 to a part-time role where he was decently productive (3-57-0), but most importantly finished healthy. Thielen re-assumed a full workload last Sunday, leading the team in targets (10), target/route (25.7%), catches (8), yards (99), yards/route (2.54), air yards (112), and touchdowns (1). He also should’ve had a second score but apparently I don’t understand the rules which is a different story for another day.

Earning targets remains the most marketable skill in this game of ours, especially if they’re of decent quality on an ascendent offense. It’s not easy to find. Let’s be honest, there’s definitely a non-zero risk of Carolina faceplanting again. However, I think it’s more likely we’re seeing the first signs of progression from a player lots of people thought had what it takes to succeed. Thielen’s a must-start FLEX player with a great fantasy ceiling/floor combo who could make the difference.

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