Fantasy Football: 4 Unexpectedly Great Week 9 Performances

Jared Goff, QB, Los Angeles Rams

NFL.Com Start Percentage: 15%
Week 9 Fantasy Points: 28.44

Way back in the preseason, nobody liked Jared Goff as a fantasy football asset. Now the joke's on all of us.

At the season's halfway point, Goff is on the edge of QB1 status. He's the 14th overall scorer at the position (NFL.com scoring) and has over 15 points in 5 of 8 games. He also finished second on our list of top 20 offensive players in Week 9 and has the top two passing performances of the season according to Passing Net Expected Points (NEP), our proprietary metric that measures a player's contribution above expectations to his team's scoring.

Is Goff's success a product of his talent, or that of head coach whiz kid Sean McVay? Honestly, if you're playing fantasy football, the answer is irrelevant. Whenever the second-year signal caller can put up points, he should be considered for starting lineups. That's exactly what he did against the New York Giants' weak passing defense.

In fact, most weeks will probably be good weeks to consider starting Goff. The Los Angeles Rams are second in the NFL in scoring, and only two of their remaining games are against teams in numberFire's top-10 pass defenses.