10 Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Targets Heading Into Week 8

Cody Kessler, QB, Jacksonville Jaguars

Yahoo Ownership: 1%

After being just a few plays away from defeating the New England Patriots last year in the AFC Championship game, things have gone decidedly sour this season for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Could the Blake Bortles era be officially over?

It looks like this will now be a quarterback competition, and that could be good for Cody Kessler, who relieved Bortles this week. In looking at Bortles' 2018 numbers, he was one of the worst signal-callers in the league with a Passing NEP per drop back mark of -0.01. Prior to Week 7, only three quarterbacks had a Passing NEP per drop back mark worse than Bortles (Dak Prescott, Baker Mayfield, and Josh Allen).

In looking even closer at his marks, among quarterbacks with 10 or more drop backs in a single game this year, he joins Nathan Peterman as the only player with two performances in the bottom 10 of Passing NEP per pass. Ouch.

While Kessler didn't light the world on fire in relief of Bortles, recording a mark of -0.11 over 30 drop backs, he was nearly twice as effective as Bortles in Week 7 (-0.20). Keep an eye out for Kessler, especially in deeper formats, as Bortles was pretty fantasy relevant as QB13 in each of the last two years.