It is said the real NFL season doesn’t begin until after Thanksgiving.

And even if that’s a touch of hyperbole, that statement is at least true for the fantasy season. And, in actuality, with the fantasy postseason beginning in the majority of leagues in Week 14, the real fantasy season begins in Week 12, with the final two weeks of the stretch run deciding a host of playoff berths.

That in mind, we’re going to look back over the past month – covering the final two weeks of the fantasy regular season and the first two playoff weekends – and highlight some of the unexpected top performers during that pivotal stretch who have helped shape fantasy 2019.

Here goes …

Ryan Tannehill, QB, Titans

Week 12-15 position rank: 3. 105.8 total fantasy points/26.5 per-game average

Tennessee’s new Titan continued his impressive run Sunday, throwing for 279 yards and two touchdowns and rushing for 10 yards and another score in a tough, 24-21 AFC South showdown loss to the visiting Texans. It was Tannehill’s sixth 20-point fantasy outing in eight games since taking over from Marcus Mariota as the team’s starter in Week 7, and only Lamar Jackson and Jameis Winston have totaled more QB fantasy points since.

Mitchell Trubisky, QB, Bears

Week 12-15 position rank: 4. 104.2/26.1

Trubisky and the Chicago offense were a study in dysfunction for the first three quarters of the season, and the QB only had two 20-point fantasy outings in nine games heading into Week 11. But since, he’s posted four straight, including back-to-back three touchdown pass outings in Weeks 13 and 14. But it wasn’t all about Trubisky’s arm. After rushing for a total of only 58 yards and no scores in his first nine contests, he’s rushed for 114 and two TDs over the last four games as he tries to prove to the Bears’ brass that he deserves another year as the team’s starter.

Kyle Allen, QB, Panthers

Week 12-15 position rank: 8. 92.1/23.0

Lost in his 15 interceptions and three lost fumbles since Week 8, Allen has quietly followed the Winston Lite path to fantasy success with nine total touchdowns (to offset eight turnovers) over the last four games. But unlike his division-rival Winston, who’s put up league-winning numbers down the stretch along with his usual bushel of turnovers, Allen merely has played just well enough – particularly while trying to rally late in games – to keep a number of his two-quarterback fantasy teams afloat over the last month with four steady but unspectacular outings between 17.6 and 27.3 points.

Carson Wentz, QB, Eagles

Week 12-15 position rank: 9. 88.8/22.2

Wentz has bounced back nicely from an ugly midseason lull that featured only one 20-point fantasy outing between Weeks 5 and 11. Since then, though, the Philly QB has averaged 22.2 points, with eight TD passes and only one interception over his last three contests. What’s even more impressive is that Wentz has done so during a brutal, injury-filled span that has decimated his supporting cast, particularly a wide receiver corps that has seen its top three Alshon Jeffery, DeSean Jackson and Nelson Agholor miss extended stretches, including each of the last two games.

Austin Ekeler, RB, Chargers

Week 12-15 position rank: 4. 61.1 (point-per-reception scoring)/20.4

It may seem like bad timing here with Ekeler coming off one of his worst fantasy days (13.1 PPR points) of the season in Sunday’s blowout loss to the visiting Vikings, but he was coming off his second-best game of the season (31.3 points) with 213 total yards and a TD on only 12 touches, lifting many of his teams to victory in the opening round of the fantasy playoffs. More importantly, for the longer-term fantasy view, he continues to outperform fellow Bolts back Melvin Gordon, averaging 17.4 points to Gordon’s 14.0 since the latter’s 2019 debut in Week 5, despite logging 52 fewer touches during that span.

Miles Sanders, RB, Eagles

Week 12-15 position rank: 5. 79.2/19.8

The rookie back picked a highly opportune time for his best game of the season, rolling up 35.2 fantasy points Sunday in D.C. with his first 100-yard rushing game (122 and a TD on 19 carries) and reeling in a season-high six catches for 50 additional yards and another score. He also became the Eagles’ first 100-yard rusher since LeGarrette Blount in Week 4 of the 2017 season – a streak of 41 games. And to think, a number of fantasy GMs would’ve rather started fellow Philly RB Boston Scott (13.5 points Sunday), following the latter’s surprise showing (24.8 points) a week ago. With Jordan Howard’s lingering injury absence, though, Sanders is Philly back you want as he’s totaled at least 15 touches in each of the last four games.

Kenyan Drake, RB, Cardinals

Week 12-15 position rank: 7. 56.4/18.8

Sure, 39.6 of Drake’s 56.4 fantasy points over the last month came in one amazing swoop Sunday when he paced the league on the strength of his 146 total yards and four TDs in a  beatdown of the Browns, but the lesson from the outing is more about what’s happening in the Arizona backfield overall. While Drake was notching a career in rushing yards, David Johnson touched the ball only three times – all rushing attempts – for six yards while Chase Edmonds didn’t get a touch. It’s increasingly looking like it’s unquestionably Drake’s backfield in Arizona – for the rest of 2019 and entering 2020.

Raheem Mostert, RB, 49ers

Week 12-15 position rank: 8. 74.9/18.7

As the newly crowned lead back of the league’s second most proficient rushing team, Mostert has found his way into the end zone in each of his last four games and has averaged 16 touches and 107.3 yards from scrimmage over his last three contests. There will always be other backs in the mix in a (Kyle) Shanahan offense, but the lead dog in a Shanny attack is always a cherished fantasy asset nonetheless.

A.J. Brown, WR, Titans

Week 12-15 position rank: 1. 90.0/22.5

A full 50.2 percent of the rookie’s total fantasy-point output has come over his last four games as he’s reeled in 20 of 29 targets for a league-most 447 yards and four TDs over that span. It’s taken the Titans until late in the season to finally fully realize what a weapon they have in the 6-1, 225-pound Brown, who was targeted a season-high 13 times in Sunday’s divisional showdown against the Texans – five more than other game this season – and it naturally resulted in a career-high eight receptions as well. Don’t look now, but the Titan(ic) Triplets – Tannehill, RB Derrick Henry and Brown – are as impressive as any in the league right now, especially when it comes to fantasy.

DeVante Parker, WR, Dolphins

Week 12-15 position rank: 8. 78.0/19.5

Only a day after signing a sparkling new four-year, $40 million contract extension, Parker accounted for the Dolphins’ only TDs in a 36-20 road loss to the Giants, catching four of seven targets for a team-high 72 yards. It was the second multi-TD catch outing in three weeks – sandwiched around a concussion-shortened Week 14 matchup against the Jets – and his seventh game with at least 15 fantasy points in his last 11 outings, including the concussion contest. The Dolphins said as much with the new contract, but we’ve finally arrived in Parker-Is-A-True-No. 1-WR territory.

Anthony Miller, WR, Bears

Week 12-15 position rank: 11. 76.7/19.2

Robert Woods and Saints stud Michael Thomas (barring a catch-less Monday night) have are the only wide receivers who have caught more passes since Week 12 than Miller, who’s snared 27 for 377 yards and a pair of TDs. It’s been quite the turnaround for the second-year wideout who entered Week 11 with only one double-digit fantasy-point game but has gone 5-for-5 in that category ever since, including a season-high 26.8 points Sunday with nine catches for 118 yards and a TD on 15 targets. Only Julio Jones (20) and George Kittle (17) were targeted more Sunday.

Breshad Perriman, WR, Buccaneers

Week 12-15 position rank: 14. 69.7/17.4

The Bucs’ top wide receivers (Mike Evans last week, Chris Godwin on Sunday) keep going down with “not-good” hamstring injuries, and Perriman keeps stepping up to fill the void, with four of his 11 targets and eight receptions going for TDs the last two weeks, including a trio on Sunday in Detroit. By comparison, Perriman only had seven career scoring receptions entering the game. A former washout as a 2015 first-round pick in Baltimore, Perriman looks as if he might’ve finally found a home in his third NFL stop, and he’ll likely get a chance to prove as much as the Bucs’ projected No. 1 wideout over the final two games.

Darius Slayton, WR, Giants

Week 12-15 position rank: 18. 64.6/16.2

The rookie fifth-round selection out of Auburn has transitioned from rookie QB Daniel Jones to veteran Eli Manning without as much as a hiccup, recording three TD grabs among his seven receptions over the last two weeks, giving him eight on the season. His scores have come by the pair more often than not as he has a trio of two-touchdown games (Weeks 8, 10 and 14), and the only wide receivers with more TD grabs on the season overall are Kenny Golladay (10), Godwin (nine) and Marvin Jones (nine). Not too shabby at all for an overlooked late-round pick who’s become the Giants’ most productive pass-catcher.

Tyler Higbee, TE, Rams

Week 12-15 position rank: 4. 72.4/18.1

There was another chapter penned Sunday in this true out-of-nowhere story as Higbee caught a career-high 12 passes for 111 yards on 14 targets in a loss at Dallas. This comes on the heels of his first career 100-yard receiving games (107 and 116 yards in Weeks 13 and 14). Higbee’s 354 receiving yards lead all tight ends over the last four weeks, and only Christian McCaffrey, with 35, has more receptions than Higbee’s 31 since Week 12. As for targets, only Zach Ertz has more among tight ends than Higbee’s 39 during that same span. To put things in further perfective, Higbee’s 31 receptions over the last four games are a full 10 more than he had, total, in his first 10 games this season or in any of his first three seasons from 2016-2018.

Jason Witten, TE, Cowboys

Week 12-15 position rank: 7. 42.0/10.5

This 37-year-old future Hall of Famer isn’t washed up yet. In the same game Higbee was stealing the tight end show, Witten had the most impressive catch, a highlight-worthy one-handed 19-yard scoring grab in the opening quarter that kick-started the Cowboys’ 44-21 romp. Witten has been targeted at least five times in six of his last seven games and has caught a TD pass in two of the last three weeks.

Mike Gesicki, TE, Dolphins

Week 12-15 position rank: 8. 41.0/10.3

Sure, we realize this emerging second-year tight end hasn’t been too great of late with five receptions for 53 yards on 13 targets over the last two games, but he’s been targeted at least six times in six of his last seven outings and had his first two career scoring receptions in Weeks 12 and 13. He’s the No. 2 pass-catching option on the league’s second-most pass-heaviest team (66.2 percent of all plays), and you can’t ask much more than that out of a fantasy tight end if you don’t roster any of the few elite options at the position.

EXTRA POINTS

• So, of course, the week after it was pointed out here and elsewhere that Julio Jones has steadily underperformed for much of the season and was mired in the longest TD drought of his career (nine games), he comes up with best fantasy outing (38.4 points) in more than two seasons Sunday with 13 catches for 134 yards and two TDs on 20 targets against one of the league’s better defenses. His last TD catch was nothing short of a game-winning grab, coming on the final offensive play of the game and sending reverberations throughout the entire NFC playoff outlook as the Falcons stunned the host 49ers. However, it was only Jones’ third top-10 weekly wide receiver fantasy performance since Week 3.
• The Bengals keep losing on their march toward the No. 1 overall draft pick next spring, but that hasn’t stopped RB Joe Mixon from writing one of the most compelling turnaround narratives of the season. On Sunday, despite a seemingly game script-unfriendly 34-13 loss to the Patriots, Mixon churned out the day’s second-best rushing performance (136 yards) on 25 carries and added three receptions for 20 more yards. Since the Bengals returned from their bye in Week 10, only McCaffrey, with 877, has churned out more yards from scrimmage than Mixon’s 745 and no running back is within 13 carries of Mixon’s league-high 130 rushing attempts during that span in which he ranks fourth at the position with 105.5 total fantasy points. Before the bye, Mixon was unstartable in the majority of leagues with only two fantasy outings of 12 points or more and four with 7.4 or fewer in his first eight games. But, over his last six contests, Mixon has scored fewer than 17 points only once.
• Speaking of Mixon, he’s one of 10 running backs currently on pace to log 300 touches this season. Six (McCaffrey, Leonard Fournette, Ezekiel Elliott, Chris Carson, Nick Chubb and Dalvin Cook) are already there, with Derrick Henry, Mixon, Josh Jacobs and Le’Veon Bell on pace to reach the standard over the season’s final two weeks. There were only five, six and six 300-plus touch players, respectively, over the previous three seasons and 2012 was the last season with 10 or more RBs reaching the 300 mark.