Chiefs vs. Colts Fantasy Football Worksheet, Week 12

The Worksheet, a comprehensive fantasy football preview by Rich Hribar, breaks down everything you need to know about the Week 12 matchup between the Chiefs and Colts.

Find a breakdown of every Week 12 NFL game in our Worksheet Hub.

Trust = spike production for that player

Quarterback

Patrick Mahomes (TRUST): Mahomes has finished outside of the top-12 weekly scorers in back-to-back games for the first time this season.

He has run into two tougher draws on the road in Buffalo and Denver to give him somewhat of a pass.

Both of those teams have found ways to slow down this passing game.

What will be interesting here is if we see the Colts deploy something similar to what Buffalo threw at Mahomes, which is similar to the approaches Lou Anarumo has used against Mahomes in the past.

The Bills used 6 defensive backs on the field for 68.4% of their snaps in that matchup, the second-highest rate for a team in a game this season.

They blitzed Mahomes on only 7.9% of his dropbacks, sending five or more pass rushers on only 4 snaps all game.

The Bills played a two-man front on a season-high 21.1% of their snaps

In six career games against Mahomes, Anarumo has blitzed him only 14.5% of the time.

Those Cincinnati defenses played man coverage 27.5% of the time.

Buffalo had success with that approach because they could still get pressure without blitzing.

Mahomes was pressured on a season-high 47.4% of his dropbacks in that game.

For as great a season as Mahomes has had, he has struggled this year when pressured.

Mahomes has completed 41.8% of his passes under pressure, which is 29th in the league.

He has an inaccurate throw rate of 20.4% under pressure, 32nd in the league.

Mahomes just faced back-to-back defense in the top-5 in pressure rate this season.

I don’t believe the Colts can replicate that, especially without DeForest Buckner.

The Colts are 22nd in pressure rate (34%), which dips to 31.4% without Buckner on the field.

With the addition of Sauce Gardner and a bye week to get him acclimated, the Colts could be more aggressive and deploy man coverage.

The Colts are already 11th in the rate of man coverage (26.1%) and played man coverage a season-high 41.9% rate in Gardner's first game with the team.

The Chiefs have had their issues beating man coverage this season.

Mahomes has completed 56.3% of his passes against man coverage (22nd) for 5.3 yards per attempt (27th).

Overall, Mahomes has averaged 17.7 fantasy points per game over those six games against Anarumo, with a high of 20.9 points.

He has done a good job limiting Mahomes' ceiling, but we could see a high-scoring game here in Kansas City.

Mahomes is averaging 26.0 fantasy points per game at home this year, second to Josh Allen (29.6).

We already highlighted the Colts' lack of pass rush.

They have an added element with the trade for Gardner, but they have allowed a QB1 scoring week to nearly every capable passer they have faced.

Bo Nix (20.2 points), Matthew Stafford (27.4 points), Jacoby Brissett (20.7 points), and Justin Herbert (27.9 points) have all had front-end weeks against the Colts, with only Herbert stacking junk points in his matchup.

Daniel Jones: Jones comes out of the bye off two down weeks compared to where he opened the season.

In Week 9, Jones was the QB20 (14.1 points).

In Week 10, he was the QB15 (15.5 points).

The negative plays that followed Jones throughout his career revealed themselves before the bye.

In Pittsburgh in Week 9, Jones had 5 turnovers and took 5 sacks.

Against Atlanta in Week 10, Jones had 2 turnovers and took 7 sacks.

Now he will be going on the road against a Steve Spagnuolo defense.

The Chiefs are allowing 10.6 passing points per game (4th).

They are eighth in pressure rate (39.3%) to keep up the heat that Jones has faced in recent weeks.

The Colts have played only two games outdoors this season and one on grass.

In those games, Jones was the QB11 (15.8 points) and QB20 (14.1 points).

Putting together this game being outdoors, a tough defense, and his recent turnovers, I am handling Jones as a boom-or-bust option on the QB1/QB2 line.

There is still upside here and a few paths for Jones to get over if he protects the football.

The first is in the play-action game.

Jones is second in the NFL in rate of play action (33.2% of his dropbacks).

Using play action, Jones is averaging 9.2 yards per pass attempt (5th) with a 70.8% completion rate (12th).

The Chiefs have allowed a league-high 81.9% completion rate and 10.8 yards per pass attempt (31st) on play action compared to allowing 5.9 Y/A on non-play action passes (2nd).

Jones could also use his legs here as another outlet to fantasy points.

The Chiefs have allowed a league-high 5.4 rushing points per game to quarterbacks.

One additional note here will be how the Colts approach this game.

This season, the Colts have been aggressive throwing the ball to build a lead and then using Jonathan Taylor and the run game to close out wins.

Will they flip that here to keep the ball out of the Kansas City offense's hands, or will they try to dictate a high-tempo game?

The Colts are fifth in dropback rate (64%) overall and sixth in the first half (65.3%).

They are 30th in the second half (51.6%) and 30th in the second half with a lead (37.5%).

Running Back

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