Fantasy Football Week 6 Quarterback Rankings: Geno Smith over Russell Wilson? You'd better believe it

Chris Towers breaks down his quarterback rankings for Week 6

By Chris Towers

Oct 16, 2022 at 10:38 am ET • 2 min read

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Geno Smith's play so far this has been one of the more remarkable storylines of the 2022 NFL season, and Fantasy Football players have to seriously consider him as a starting option at this point.

Smith ranks as QB8 for the season, so maybe we should have been taking him seriously before this, but we hardly had reason to expect that. He started three games for the Seahawks last season and averaged fewer than 200 yards per game, with just one multi-touchdown game. In fact, Smith had just nine multi-touchdown games in his first 39 NFL starts.

But he's been tremendous this season. Obviously, playing with two dynamic wide receivers like Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf helps his cause, but it would be unfair to say Smith is being carried by those guys. Metcalf did a lot of heavy lifting on his catch-and-run touchdown Sunday, but Smith made it possible by escaping the pocket and making an excellent touch throw moving to his left to set the play up:

Geno Smith has been a mad man this year. Week 5 vs this Saints he put on a Dime clinic.

Ridiculous throw compilation. pic.twitter.com/ubtvr3NLPN
— Brett Whitefield (@BGWhitefield) October 10, 2022

Smith leads the league in completion percentage on throws 15 yards or more down the field, and he's attempting them at a decent rate -- 20.5% of his passes have traveled at least 15 air yards, the 13th-highest rate in the league. And now he gets to face a Seahawks defense that is allowing the eighth-most Fantasy points to opposing quarterbacks.

I don't know if Smith can keep this level of play up. He's a 32-year-old whose five starts this season are his most since 2014, so smart money would suggest you should bet against it. However, with scoring down across the NFL and many quarterbacks disappointing so far, all I can say is, you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't at least consider him as a replacement for Derek Carr or in favor of the likes of Trevor Lawrence, Aaron Rodgers, or, yes, even Russell Wilson.

Here are my rankings for Week 6. And, remember, with bye weeks starting this week, the Lions, Titans, Raiders, and Texans are all out -- that means no Jared Goff, Ryan Tannehill, Derek Carr, or Davis Mills this week. At least at QB, those absences shouldn't be too hard to overcome.