NFL Week 11 Recap: Instant Fantasy Football Tips from Cowboys-Raiders Monday Night Football

• The Dallas Cowboys‘ wide receivers shine despite missing first drive: George Pickens and CeeDee Lamb did not play on the first drive for undisclosed disciplinary reasons, but dominated once they started playing, combining for more than 200 receiving yards and two touchdowns.

• The Las Vegas Raiders embrace multi-tight-end sets: The Raiders used more than 11 men in the first half, with Brock Bowers lining up and wide more than normal.

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Dallas Cowboys @ Las Vegas Raiders

The Raiders fully embrace multi-tight end sets: Las Vegas ran more plays with three tight ends than three wide receivers in the first half, even with a 10-play, two-minute drill in between.

The Raiders have invested more draft capital in tight ends than any team in recent years. They selected Michael Mayer with the 35th pick in the 2023 draft and Brock Bowers with the 13th pick in 2024. However, through the first three weeks, they used 12 men on just 23.6% of their snaps – below league average – and ran just four plays out of 13 men. During that stretch, Bowers played 70.9% of the snaps, a notable drop from the end of last season, with Mayer taking over work from him at 11-man and Ian Thomas transferring snaps at 12-man.

Mayer missed Week 4, while Bowers was absent from Week 4 to Week 8. In Weeks 9 and 10, the Raiders relied heavily on multi-tight-end sets, leading the league in personnel usage of 12 at 54%, while no other team topped 44%. Bowers played 82.3% of the snaps in that stretch, while Mayer played 72.6%. The team also traded Jakobi Meyers between those games, shrinking the wide receiver room. As a result, Bowers saw more snaps in the slot and out wide, as the Raiders essentially used him more as a wide receiver.

This week, Las Vegas took that approach even further. In the first half alone, the Raiders used 13 personnel 10 times. Before that, they had just one game all season with more than three snaps in 13 personnel, seven of which were their previous high. They also had 12 personnel on 18 snaps — including during their two-minute drill — and used 11 personnel on just nine plays. Even while trailing by several scores in the second half, the Raiders continued to treat 12 personnel as their base attack.

Las Vegas also stopped rotating Bowers off the field in certain early 11-personnel snaps, something they had been doing for the first ten weeks he was active. As a result, Bowers posted a season-high offensive snap rate, marking the first time his usage resembled what we saw late last year. His slot alignment percentage also reached a season high, while his snaps from a traditional tight end position reached a season low. All of this should help his fantasy production moving forward.

With the increase in multi-tight end usage, fewer wide receivers saw the field. Tre Tucker continued as an all-down option, while Dont’e Thornton Jr. and rotated Tyler Lockett into the other wide receiver spot. That leaves Tucker as the only Las Vegas wideout worth considering for the rest of the season.

CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens will not start for the Cowboys: Both wide receivers were suspended for the first three plays for an undisclosed disciplinary reason.

Teams around the league have taken a similar approach: the Bills made Keon Coleman inactive on Sunday after missing a practice, and the Vikings kept Jordan Addison on the bench for the entire first quarter of Week 5 after he missed a walkthrough. In this case, Lamb and Pickens were on three-and-out runs. Ryan Flournoy and Jalen Tolbert opened the match, while KaVontae Turpin joined them in 11-man.

Lamb and Pickens returned to the field on the second drive, but were both substituted a little more often than usual for the rest of the game. The result was only a small decrease in the number of routes run for each player.

The Cowboys made a more meaningful adjustment at the third wide receiver spot. In Week 9, Flournoy played 45 offensive snaps, compared to 13 for Turpin and seven for Tolbert, clearly operating as the team’s third wideout. This week the rotation was tightened, with Turpin seeing more work at 11 personnel, while Flournoy handled more snaps in one- and two-wide receiver sets, giving him a larger overall workload. It remains unlikely that any Cowboys receiver outside of Lamb and Pickens will have fantasy value this season, but if injury strikes, Flournoy is the most plausible beneficiary.

Various comments

• The Cowboys waived running back Malik Davis on Tuesday, re-signed him to the practice squad on Friday and then elevated him from the practice squad for this game as the primary backup. Jaydon Blue was a healthy inactive for the second time in a row.
• Cowboys wide receiver Jonathan Mingo was a healthy scratch — his third straight inactive after starting the season injured. He hasn’t played a game for Dallas yet this season.
• The Raiders dropped back Geno Smith to pass more than 90% of their play in the first half. This was only the second time in the past decade that a team had a draft run less than 10% of their game in the first half. The Raiders trailed by several scores at halftime, leaving Ashton Jeanty with minimal fantasy rushing production.
• Raiders wide receiver Tyler Lockett was limited in practice on Thursday with a knee injury, but was able to practice fully on Friday and Saturday.
• Las Vegas opted to keep four tight ends active and only four wide receivers, deviating from their usual approach of dressing three tight ends and five wideouts. As a result, tight end Carter Runyon was active while wide receiver Alex Bachman was inactive.

Table notes

• Snaps include plays called back due to penalties, including offensive holding or defensive pass interference. These plays have been removed from the other three statistics.

• Objectives may differ from official NFL sources. The most likely discrepancy would be due to an obviously thrown pass, where the NFL could give the target to the nearest receiver, while this data does not.

• Carries are only possible on designed plays. Quarterback scrambles do not count toward the total number of carries in the game.