Fantasy football last-minute pickups for Week 10: Justin Herbert, Jonnu Smith lead the way

As we head into Week 10 of the fantasy football season, there are decisions to make. With both Jordan Love and Geno Smith on byes and Dak Prescott expected to miss multiple weeks due to a hamstring injury, let’s start this week’s column with the quarterbacks. I have two available signal-callers who can be streamed as starters this week, and one of them is playing his best football of the season based on the tape I’m watching.

While we are still light at the running back position again, I do have four wide receivers who could crack the lineup this week, and multiple tight ends to check out as well. Plus, I’ll give you an opportunistic defense that gets a matchup with a rookie quarterback on Sunday.

Players listed below are deeper-league targets, rostered in less than 50% of ESPN leagues entering this week’s waiver period. Although you might notice overlap with Eric Moody’s waiver wire column that publishes Mondays, an important distinction is that the options mentioned in this column are solely for this week’s matchups and not based on the players’ values for the remainder of the season.

Quarterback

Justin Herbert, Los Angeles Chargers (47.1% rostered; vs. Titans)

Herbert looks healthy based on his pocket movement and the ability to get to the edges of the formation. And the numbers are climbing. Herbert has thrown for multiple touchdowns in back-to-back games, with 19 or more points in each. Plus, Herbert has 275 or more yards passing in three straight games. He’s driving the ball. With the development of wide receiver Ladd McConkey, plus the big-play juice of Quentin Johnston, I like Herbert this week against Tennessee.