Fantasy Football Stock Report: Jordan Love on a heater while Lions' depth receivers struggle coming out of Week 9

As I write this on Sunday night, 14 of 15 Week 9 games are in the books (with Monday night remaining) and the fantasy football season is now past the halfway point. Still, things are changing every week. Promising improvements. Concerning trends. Performances that change our early outlook on players and teams. As always, some of these shifting perspectives will have permanent ramifications in fantasy football.

With that in mind, I've compiled another full fantasy stock report. These are the most notable risers and fallers heading into Week 10.

QB C.J. Stroud & Wide Receivers, Houston Texans

I confess, I did not love C.J. Stroud for this Sunday, given how tough the Chargers had been against quarterbacks. My bad.

Stroud had one of his best games as a pro, throwing for 384 yards and five touchdowns (with one INT), plus 20 rushing yards just for kicks. His 36.36 fantasy points were the second-most of his career ... and it wasn't an aberration. Stroud now has 20+ fantasy points in four of his last five games and is averaging 24.18 PPG over that span. A big part of the story: Tank Dell's breakout after a multi-year absence and a monster game from Kayshon Boutte. Nico Collins also had 55 yards and a TD, but it was Boutte's 4-125-2 and Dell's 4-105-1 that really made the difference (oh, and Xavier Hutchinson snagged a TD as well).

This is an eclectic, but clearly talented, receiving corps and Stroud is making it work to his advantage (and that of his fantasy managers). Dell is a great waiver wire add — and/or Boutte in deeper leagues — and Stroud might be a strong trade target before your league's deadline, considering he might be another manager's QB2.

Speaking of monster quarterback performances, Jordan Love might be the hottest QB in the league right now. He looked unstoppable on Sunday against the Patriots, completing 23 of 29 passes for 372 yards and three touchdowns, for a 153.2 passer rating and 36.18 fantasy points. He's now topped 21 points in four of his last five games — with 17.96 in the fifth — and is averaging 24.04 points per game over that span.

The connections with Christian Watson and Matthew Golden are both exquisite right now, as arguably the only trio playing better is Joe Burrow, Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins for the Bengals ... and it's close. Over the entire season, Love has thrown for fewer than 270 yards just twice, both in the first month. His 2,618 passing yards lead the league and have him on pace for — double-checks math — 4,945 yards on the year. Now, of course, the ultimate test comes next week against the Vikings — I would frankly consider sitting him despite the red-hot stretch against this Minnesota defense — and then Love has his bye in Week 11. But with a playoff stretch that includes the Bills, Dolphins, Bears and Texans, Love could be pretty well positioned to win fantasy managers a title in 2026.

Jonah Coleman was the hottest name in fantasy the past week — I called him the waiver-wire pickup of the year on air — and he did not disappoint in Week 9. Despite surprising inefficiency on the ground — considering the matchup with Carolina — Coleman totaled 88 scrimmage yards (with four catches) and a nine-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter. He played a whopping 81.5% of the snaps and handled 81% of the running back carries, putting to bed any lingering concerns about J.K. Dobbins "vulturizing" the rookie (yes, I just made that word up). That's not just "head-of-the-committee" volume, that's true bell-cow volume. Yes, it's possible that when RJ Harvey eventually returns from IR, Coleman might lose a bit of his receiving upside, but that's weeks away. It's also possible the Broncos trade for a running back (Jonathan Taylor?) ... and that might be hours away, depending on when you read this. But hopefully that doesn't happen.

As long as Coleman makes it through Tuesday afternoon as the RB1, he's going to be a league-winner down the stretch. Congratulations if you picked him, kudos if you drafted him and if you're in neither of those positions and can trade for him on Tuesday at 4:01 p.m. ET, do it.

Frankly, Breece Hall just needed to make it back to the field for his Stock to be Up after a five-week absence. But he did more than that, out-carrying Braelon Allen 15-to-8, matching Allen's 4.1 yards per carry and slightly outperforming him as a receiver (with three catches for 26 yards). Given how well Allen had played in Hall's stead, there was some realistic concern that he would be relegated to a pass-catching role or to a distant No. 2 slot in a frustrating committee.

Hall did trail Allen in snap share (43.5% to 58.1%), but that's likely a side effect of the Jets easing Hall back into action. As long as neither back is moved at the trade deadline — which should reportedly be the case — I'd expect Hall to retake the lead in snap share and for his fantasy production to reflect that moving forward. Allen has played well enough that Hall's once-upon-a-time bell-cow workload is probably a thing of the past, but 19 opportunities in his first game back — in a game the Jets lost 35-12, by the way — is extremely encouraging. He should be a strong RB2 moving forward.

In this week's version of the ongoing "Which 49ers Wide Receiver Do We Like?" mini-game, it was Jordan Watkins who stepped up big to the tune of four catches for 86 yards and a touchdown. He's now topped 50 receiving yards in three of the four games he's played this season and is averaging 22.4 yards per reception this season. Dig a little deeper and you get this nugget: Watkins leads all players with 100+ routes run in yards per target at 17.2.

And while he hadn't been consistently involved enough for that to matter much earlier in the year, he led San Francisco with 26 routes on Sunday and tied George Kittle for the team high in catches. Obviously, Mike Evans will return soon and Watkins will drop to the WR2 spot at best , with Kittle and Christian McCaffrey also heavily involved. However, as we've seen with Brock Purdy at the helm, there is room for fantasy goodness a ways down this depth chart. Watkins should be heavily added off waivers, and if Evans struggles to return or stay healthy, he might have weekly starter upside down the stretch.

Kyren Williams had stayed strong for fantasy amid the rise of Blake Corum by finding the end zone more often than not. Without that TD in Week 9, the Rams RB1A — theoretically — scored just 7.6 points on 61 scrimmage yards. It's his second game with single-digit fantasy points over the last month, and Williams has averaged just 11.3 PPG over that stretch after scoring 19.2 PPG over the first five weeks. And while he did play more snaps and out-carried Corum 15-to-11 on Sunday, the latter back was far more efficient, logging 5.3 yards per carry and scoring the goal-line touchdown , while Williams clocked in at just 3.0 yards per carry.

Williams is still a borderline must-start — you'd have to be stocked at running back to sit him in any given week — but the ceiling has been clearly and noticeably lowered with Corum's ongoing involvement (especially in the red zone). If you can get low-end RB1 (or even high-end RB2) value for Williams in a trade, it might not be a terrible idea.

I very actively and vocally disliked Ollie Gordon II in this matchup with the Lions' pass-funnel defense, so the 6.9 fantasy points on an inefficient 17 touches doesn't surprise me. That said, it was his second consecutive game with exactly 6.9 points and has clearly revealed the weakness in Gordon's game: he has no receiving upside (23 total receiving yards on the year) and is not dominant enough to beat strong run defenses. That means that, from week-to-week, Gordon's ceiling is going to depend heavily on touchdowns and opposing defenses.

The good news there is that his remaining schedule is relatively soft, so it's possible we see more "good Gordon" than "meh Gordon" down the stretch. The bad news is that there is a clear cap on his fantasy upside: even in his great outings, Gordon still hasn't scored more than 17 fantasy points in a game this season. He's a low-end RB2 with a high(ish) volume-based floor, but he's still a relatively average back in the Miami Dolphins offense.

TE Sam LaPorta & WR Jameson Williams, Detroit Lions

While Amon-Ra St. Brown was excellent and Jahmyr Gibbs was good enough on Sunday, Sam LaPorta had another fantasy dud and Jameson Williams came crashing back to earth. LaPorta now has fewer than six fantasy points in three straight games and is averaging just 4.2 points per game since the Week 6 bye. It's been a strange change of fortunes after he scored 14+ in three of four weeks heading into the bye, and it was particularly discouraging in what has been a great tight-end matchup with Miami.

As for Williams, he finally did the Jameson Williams thing — after four straight excellent games, with 13+ fantasy points in each, he logged a 4.5-point dud with just one catch (and one rush) all day. The matchup was much worse for Williams than for LaPorta, so we'll give him a little grace there, but this was a stark and long-awaited reminder that Williams is prone to disappear every now and then.

By all accounts, Goff and Co. should bounce back in future weeks, though they do have the Patriots on deck, the Buccaneers in the hole and another meeting with the Vikings in Week 15. Just keep in mind: this offense runs through Gibbs and St. Brown, and everyone else will have down days.

In his first five games with Michael Penix Jr. this year, Drake London averaged 6.4 receptions and 107.2 receiving yards per game ... and scored his lone touchdown of the year. Over the last two weeks, London has six catches and 76 receiving yards combined . He had seen 10+ targets in four of those first five games and has now seen just 11 total targets these last two games. This was his fourth straight game with fewer than 70 receiving yards, and while that's a relatively high bar, his lack of touchdowns requires massive yardage to compensate for fantasy. For reference, every other player with at least 480 receiving yards has multiple touchdown receptions this season — London has 692 yards (eighth in the league) and just one score.

To make matters worse, London's next three weeks are just about as bad as you can get: the Chiefs, the bye, the Vikings. Even if he does return to WR1 upside in December or so, London is entering an extremely ugly stretch. If you can, try to trade him for a more consistent WR1 — maybe Tee Higgins — before a couple more duds or your league's trade deadline make him unmovable.