Jacoby Brissett’s fantasy impact on the Ravens

In Baltimore’s 9 games without Lamar Jackson over the last two seasons, Zay Flowers kept his target share and Derrick Henry got more carries. The tight ends were the ones who faded. Jacoby Brissett’s 74 starts since 2016 say his offenses score a little less than average, throw about as often as everyone else and turn it over less.

Baltimore’s quarterback room emptied in a week. Lamar Jackson hurt his thumb on the first snap of his return in Week 8, needs surgery and is on injured reserve for at least four games. Tyler Huntley left the same game with a toe injury. The Ravens traded for Jacoby Brissett on November 4, two days after Arizona benched him, and he’s expected to make his first start for them in Week 10. Rookie Joe Fagnano holds the job until then.

So what happens to the Ravens you have on your roster? Two sets of numbers answer most of it: what Baltimore’s pass catchers did without Lamar, and what Brissett’s offenses have looked like everywhere else.

Baltimore without Lamar

Over 2025 and 2026, Baltimore has played 9 games started by someone other than Lamar: 6 by Huntley, 2 by Cooper Rush and 1 by Fagnano.

The pattern is clear even in a small sample:

• Zay Flowers kept the ball. His share of the targets was 30.4% with a backup, 29.4% with Lamar. His points dipped, 13.8 a game against 16.1, because the whole offense scored less.
• Derrick Henry got more work, not less: 20.3 carries a game against 17.6, and 17.4 PPR against 16.2.
• The tight ends took the hit. Mark Andrews fell from 8.8 PPR a game to 4.9 and Isaiah Likely from 6.9 to 2.7.
• The offense scored 19.0 points a game with a backup, against 27.0 with Lamar, and ran more: it passed on 52.1% of plays, down from 55.4%.

Nine games is not a lot, so take the exact numbers lightly. The direction lines up with what you’d expect when the quarterback who makes everything work leaves: the offense narrows to its best receiver and its running back. And share is the number to trust: as what NFL Week 1 tells fantasy managers shows, a player’s share of the work predicts the rest of his season better than his points do.

What Brissett’s offenses look like

Brissett has started 74 regular-season games since 2016: 29 for Indianapolis, 20 for Arizona, 11 for Cleveland, 8 for New England and 6 for Miami. Here is how those offenses played, next to every NFL team-game in the same span and next to Baltimore with and without Lamar.

Three things stand out. His offenses scored 20.1 points a game, below the league’s 22.9 but above Baltimore’s 19.0 with a backup. They passed on 62.0% of plays, right at the league’s 61.0%. And they turned it over 1.11 times a game, fewer than the league’s 1.31. Brissett has averaged 14.4 PPR a start himself, against 9.6 for Baltimore’s backups.

That passing rate is the number to watch. Baltimore leaned on Henry with its backups. Brissett’s teams haven’t leaned away from the pass with him. Which of those wins in Baltimore is the open question for Week 10.

His top target keeps the ball, mostly

For each season Brissett started, I took the team’s top target (the receiver or tight end with the biggest share of the team’s targets that season) and split his games by quarterback.

In Brissett’s last three seasons as a starter, the top target kept or grew his share: Amari Cooper in 2022, Hunter Henry in 2024 and Trey McBride in 2025, who averaged 21.1 PPR in Brissett’s starts. The exception was 2021, when Jaylen Waddle’s share fell from 28.0% to 19.7%. For Flowers, who already draws about 30% of Baltimore’s targets, the history leans his way.

The short version

• Flowers’ share has held without Lamar, and Brissett’s top targets have usually held theirs.
• Henry’s role grew with Baltimore’s backups.
• The tight ends faded without Lamar.
• Expect fewer points from the offense as a whole than with Lamar. Brissett’s offenses have scored about 3 points a game less than the league average.

Bold. Let’s call it bold: a team trading for a quarterback in November. The numbers say Brissett is a steady hand, not a fix. I’ll be watching Week 10 like everyone else.

How this was computed

• Games: regular-season games from 2016 through Week 8 of 2026 in CUTLINE’s game stats.
• Starter: the quarterback who played the most snaps for his team in a game. By that count Lamar started 16 of Baltimore’s 2025–26 games and a backup started 9 (the Week 8 game, where Lamar left after one snap, is Fagnano’s).
• Points: full PPR. Target share: a player’s share of his team’s targets in a game, averaged over his games. Carries: a game, averaged.
• Pass rate: the share of a team’s plays that were passes.
• EPA a play: expected points added, the change in a drive’s expected points from one play, averaged over the team’s plays. Above zero helps scoring; below zero hurts it.
• League: every team-game in the same span, 5,332 of them.
• Top target: each season’s receiver or tight end with the largest total share of his team’s targets; his games with another starter are those started by anyone else that season. 2019 has no other starter to compare.