Falcons fantasy stud and dud from Week 12 vs. Saints

Bijan Robinson is helping you make a playoff push in fantasy

There are some games which serve as shots of adrenaline into a football team’s season, completely helping to turn it around. The Atlanta Falcons seem to have had one of those shots in the arm with a massive victory against the New Orleans Saints this weekend.

The Birds currently sit at 5-6, but in another down year for the NFC South that’s good enough to give them first place in the division on account of their stellar 3-0 divisional record tiebreaker.

The playoff push may be on for the Falcons and it certainly is on for your fantasy team, and there seems to be one star player in the middle of it all who is breaking out.

There is a lot of great content available here at The Falcoholic, and I encourage you to check it out if you want some in-depth analysis. This article will look at things strictly from a fantasy football perspective (that means looking at nothing other than pure statistics). Here is Atlanta’s fantasy stud and fantasy dud from Week 12’s victory against the New Orleans Saints.

Fantasy Stud/Dud 2023 History:

Past Studs: Bijan Robinson (4), Tyler Allgeier (1), Kyle Pitts (1), Desmond Ridder (1), Drake London (1), Younghoe Koo (1), Jonnu Smith (1)

Past Duds: Kyle Pitts (3), Drake London (2), Bijan Robinson (2), Tyler Allgeier (1), Younghoe Koo (1), Desmond Ridder (1)

Fantasy Stud – Bijan Robinson

Stat Line: 16 carries, 91 rushing yards, 1 rushing touchdown, 3 catches, 32 receiving yards, 1 receiving touchdown: 24.30 standard league points; 27.30 PPR points

Arthur Smith needed to make an adjustment on offense to more or less save the Falcons’ season, and that adjustment seems to be letting Bijan Robinson loose. After a near even split in backfield touches between Robinson and Tyler Allgeier through nine games (131 – 127), Robinson now has 42 touches to Allgeier’s 20 in the past two games.

The result has been an explosion in production for the rookie, who is the overall RB3 in both standard leagues and PPR formats going into the Monday Night Football game this week. He averaged 5.7 yards per carry, was the team’s second leading receiver and became the first Falcons rookie to secure both a received touchdown and a rushing touchdown in the same game since Lynn Cain in 1979.

Robinson now has three touchdowns in the past two games after having three in the first nine. The Falcons have once again begun running the ball relentlessly due to their clear limitations in the passing game, and there’s no reason to believe that the talented rookie will have his work scaled back by any means. Fire Bijan up as an elite RB1 through your playoff run.

Dud

Kyle Pitts: 2 catches, 22 receiving yards: 2.2 standard league points; 4.2 PPR points

The flip side of the coin to Atlanta shifting more of a focus onto the run game is that former top 5 overall pick Kyle Pitts suffers the most, statistically, with the dilution of the passing attack.

Desmond Ridder attempted just 21 passes on Sunday, and he seemed in sync with Drake London (7 targets, 6 catches, 91 yards) while also giving Robinson his opportunities in the passing game (6 targets, 3 catches, 32 yards and the massive 26-yard touchdown). That left Pitts as the odd man out once again, as he had just two targets all game.

It’s been an immensely disappointing two years for Pitts fantasy owners and a nightmare for dynasty managers, as he has failed to live up to expectations at every turn following a brilliant rookie season. This game is just another reminder about how low his floor is in Atlanta’s offense, and a message that if you have Pitts in your lineup, you are one of the many fantasy managers who is currently in tight end purgatory.