Fantasy football 2024: One QB, RB, WR and TE primed for huge Week 15 performances

Happy fantasy football playoff time to those of you who are still in it!

For the majority of leagues, this week is the beginning of the fantasy postseason. There's no more room for mistakes. If you don't win now, your season is over.

With that in mind, let's make sure you're making the best possible decisions for your fantasy lineups.

Let's take a look at one player at each skill position who is set to have a strong 2024 Week 15 performance for fantasy football.

Quarterback: Justin Herbert - Los Angeles Chargers

Not having Keenan Allen and Mike Williams anymore has really had an impact on Justin Herbert, as he's averaging a career-low 212.6 passing yards per contest.

In fact, coming into this week Herbert has 220 or fewer yards in three consecutive games. That's despite some very solid matchups, with all three games against teams that rank in the top 12 for most fantasy points allowed to opposing quarterbacks. Herbert's weekly finishes in this span were QB12, QB30 and QB19.

Rough stretch, but we can't ignore that this week features the best matchup all season as he has a home game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Tampa allows 21.7 fantasy points per game to opposing quarterbacks, more than any other team in the NFL. Sure, Herbert's dealing with a fairly weak group of receivers, especially if Ladd McConkey is out, but this matchup is simply too juicy to ignore.

Running back: Rico Dowdle - Dallas Cowboys

Rico Dowdle has arrived.

After splitting touches with Ezekiel Elliott for some reason, Dowdle has been let loose over the last three games, with 18 or more carries in each of those contests.

Dowdle's also gone over 100 rushing yards in back-to-back games after not hitting that mark all year. He played 70% or more of Dallas's snaps in those contests, something that had only happened once all season. Dallas seems to finally understand what they have in Dowdle. He's not an elite running back, but I would argue he's a top 20 back in the NFL.

This week, Dowdle is the lucky recipient of the coveted "Playing Against The Carolina Panthers" award. Carolina allows 27.0 fantasy points per game to opposing backs, the most in the NFL by a pretty wide margin. The gap between Carolina and No. 2 Jacksonville is 2.1 points per game. That's the same gap there is between the Jags and the team that allows the fifth-most points, Indianapolis.

This should be another strong showing for Dowdle, who might just be a fantasy league winner considering his low cost earlier in the season.

Wide receiver: Jakobi Meyers - Las Vegas Raiders

The Raiders have a juicy matchup this week against the Falcons. They also have a ton of question marks.

The biggest is at quarterback, where an Aidan O'Connell injury means that Desmond Ridder is set to take over under center for the team.

This is a revenge game for Ridder as he faces the Falcons team that drafted him and then fairly quickly gave up on him. Of course, the whole idea of a "revenge game" is just confirmation bias—when we see one happen, we yell REVENGE GAME but when a player struggles against a former team, we just kind of ignore it. So I'm not saying Ridder is necessarily going to set the world on fire.

What I am saying is that if there's a week where Vegas can handle having to start Ridder, this is likely it, as the Falcons pass defense has struggled. Atlanta has allowed the eighth-most passing yards in the league this season and is tied with Houston for the most passing touchdowns given up with 26.

Now, I know what you're thinking here: Justin, you're talking about Desmond Ridder, but the heading of this section says "Wide receiver: Jakobi Meyers - Las Vegas Raiders."

It does! Because I'm not going to get too crazy here by suggesting you actually start Ridder in the fantasy playoffs. He has a poor NFL track record and could easily end your season.

But I do think there's a lot of upside to playing his top wide receiver, Jakobi Meyers. He has double-digit targets in three consecutive contests and while the quarterback switch could mess that up a bit, he still projects to be a huge piece of this offense against a team that allows the third-most fantasy points per game to opposing wide receivers.

Tight end: Kyle Pitts - Atlanta Falcons

I spent a good part of my late teens as part of my local music scene, putting shows together at various venues around my home county. Every time, I had these big hopes for how successful the show would be, but most of the time something went wrong. Someone got kicked in the throat. Someone punched a hole in a hotel conference room wall. Everything was primed for success, but that success often failed.

But sometimes, rarely, it all came together, and it created these magical moments.

I say all this for two reasons. First, I've just been feeling nostalgic lately. But second, thinking about Kyle Pitts today made me think about this time in my life because well...it's the same situation. Most of the time, something goes wrong with Pitts, like the fact that over the last three games he has one total reception. But sometimes, there's magic. He has two top-three fantasy finishes this year, occasionally flashing a reminder that there's a talented player buried in the disappointing box scores.

Pitts is ranked outside the top 15 at the position this week, but a juicy matchup against the Raiders makes this a potential boom week for him. The Raiders allow the fourth-most fantasy points per game to tight ends and while Pitts has been struggling, it isn't from a lack of opportunities. He only caught one pass last week, but he was targeted six times.