Pass Plays: Key playoff acquisitions

One of the recurring themes of Walter Isaacson's brilliant biography of Steve Jobs was Jobs' willingness to bet his company's future on a product. Sometimes these bets didn't look to be the highest percentage moves, but Jobs knew there were times in life when taking a huge chance was the right move to make.

A good number of fantasy football team owners might do well to take that lesson to heart. The gut instinct can be to not make many roster changes out of respect to the fact that these players got the team this far, but the truth is that there are many cases where it can pay to take big chances in the playoffs.

The key is to find those players with huge upside, and that is where this week's Pass Plays will aim to help.

Pass Plays

QB Andy Dalton (available in 71.1 percent of ESPN leagues)
Dalton is hands down the most undervalued player in fantasy football.

Don't believe that? Check out how Dalton compares with one of the most celebrated players in fantasy football, Tim Tebow.

Tebow has been Denver's starting quarterback for six games. In that time frame, he has scored 103 fantasy points.

By contrast, in his past six starts Dalton has scored 83 points. That's only 20 fewer points than Tebow over a six-week span, or a difference of 3.3 points per game.

That is impressive enough, but it should also be noted that Dalton had a West Coast road trip, a game at Baltimore and a game against Pittsburgh among those six starts. That would be enough to rattle any rookie, but he also didn't have star wideout A.J. Green in the lineup for most of the Pittsburgh contest and all of the Baltimore matchup.

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KC Joyner

NFL Insider

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• NFL and CFB analyst for ESPN Insider
• Known as "The Football Scientist"
• Uses proprietary metrics from game tape study