Sunday's return by Raiders TE Brock Bowers just happened to coincide with the best fantasy day of the season for QB Geno Smith. The QB delivered 284 yards and a season-high 4 TD tosses on 29-of-39 passing in a narrow loss to the Jaguars. Smith enters Monday night's game as the eighth-best fantasy QB for Week 9, by ESPN scoring. And his three multi-TD games this year have come in the past three contests he played with Bowers. Of course, the game ended negatively for Smith when he failed to find a receiver for what would have been the game-winning 2-point conversion late in OT.
Smith on that play: "We got the alert we wanted. They reacted how we wanted. Tyler Lockett is open in the back of the end zone. We win the game if guy doesn't jump up and tip the ball. Hats off to him. He made the play."
HC Pete Carroll on getting Bowers back: "This is what we've been missing. It can't be more obvious. Brock is such a good football player. This is what we watched all summer long and offseason. Those guys hooking up, it just makes everything better. You have a go-to guy."
Check out Smith's averages in five games with Bowers vs. three games without him so far this year:
| With Bowers (Weeks 1-4, 9) | No Bowers (5-7) | |
| Yards/gm | 246.4 | 156.3 |
| Yards/att | 7.4 | 6.3 |
| TDs/gm | 2.0 | 0.3 |
| INTs/gm | 1.6 | 1.0 |
| FanPts/gm | 20.2 | 8.4 |
Smith has still been inconsistent even in the Bowers games, mixing three games of 22+ fantasy points with an 8-point day vs. the Chargers in Week 2 and a 14-point outing vs. the Bears. Each of those contests found him tossing 3 INTs.
But even that Bears game beat the fantasy scores from all three of Smith's Bowers-less contests.
It's clear that the star TE makes a big difference for the offense, and that makes obvious sense. It's also worth noting that Bowers' four games before Week 9 included the Week 1 contest he left early with the knee injury and three weeks of playing through knee trouble that severely limited his practice time.
Bowers' return isn't enough to make Smith a guy we should regularly count on in 1-QB leagues going forward, especially with the league's worst QB strength of schedule from Week 10 on.
That includes two matchups with the Broncos -- the first coming in Week 10 -- and a Week 16 visit to Houston.
But Smith looks attractive for a Week 11 home date with the Cowboys, at least.
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