Nico Collins (WR, HOU) - Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Pickups for Week 14

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14+ Team Leagues

ROSTERED IN: 29% of Leagues

ANALYSIS: There is something funny happening in Houston this season. Actually, there has been something funny happening in Houston for years now, considering the team has basically sucked for a long period of time so no fantasy GM has ever trusted any of the Texans players. It happened to Brandin Cooks in the past, and it seems to be the case with Nico Collins these days.

Cooks missed one game this season before this Sunday but he couldn't make it to the field this weekend either making that two DNPs this season. From W1 to W12, Cooks had accrued 102.7 PPR points over 10 games played for an average of 10.3.

Nico Collins, the second-year receiver and WR2 in the Texans depth chart, has appeared in the same amount of games and has 97.1 including last Sunday's 12.5-PPR effort. Not that much difference, with the exception that Houston is going nowhere this season and in the next few years.

In other words: Houston should be primed to hand Collins all of the opportunities he can deal with while slowly but surely fading Cooks ROS (assuming he even plays). Collins grabbed only three passes last Sunday but he got 10 targets making it 7+ in four consecutive games (he didn't appear in W7, W8, and W9). Can't complain about any wide receiver (let alone one that doesn't actually lead his team's depth chart) getting 36 targets over a four-game span.

Nico finished 3-of-10 for 35 yards against Cleveland and scored 1 TD, his second of the season. Collins has now scored 9.8+ PPR points in the last four weeks of play with the Texans bye already in the books. He'd reached 9.8+ PPR points four times before this month-long run, too, with only three games below that mark and one (W1) not even reaching 5 PPR.

Over the season, Collins has scored fantasy points at around a WR3-pace on average. Removing his low W7 score (he left the game with 30 snaps played, 46% of all Texans' offensive plays), he'd be averaging 10.1 PPR per game and WR44 finishes.

Collins should be a weekly WR3/Flex starter ROS with upside to enter the WR2 realm in one or two games if Brandin Cooks misses time and/or the Texans decide to finally move on from him and focusing on the future of the franchise by developing Collins and handing him a larger workload.

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