Fantasy football waiver wire: 4 quarterbacks to target for Week 11

We are now in Week 11 of the NFL season and entering the stretch run of the fantasy regular season. With the bye weeks almost over and the playoffs just three or four weeks away (depending on your league settings), bench depth is going to be less important than it used to be. At this point owners should be riding with their top starters the rest of the way. However, that doesn’t mean the waiver wire loses its value -- we still have some key bye teams to account for.

This week’s bye teams are the Atlanta Falcons, Denver Broncos, New York Jets, and San Diego Chargers. Only two upper-tier quarterbacks from that list (Matt Ryan, Philip Rivers) will be unavailable for fantasy owners, but the waiver wire is not particularly inspiring this week. These are the four best options we could come up with, owned in less than 50 percent of Yahoo! standard leagues.

Wentz had somewhat of a disappointing performance in Week 10. With the Eagles doubling down on a ball-control running game, he didn’t get many chances to fill out the stat sheet, finishing with just 231 yards and no touchdowns on 25-of-36 passing. He also lost a fumble, which put a dent in his fantasy scoring. Went’z fantasy arrow is trending down and now he has to face the Seattle Seahawks. He’s only an option if you’re extremely desperate at QB this week.

Tannehill came out of nowhere to have his best game of the season Sunday, completing 17 of 24 passes for 240 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions against the San Diego Chargers. He hasn’t thrown a pick since Week 5 and is quietly establishing a stable fantasy floor. He’s still a game manager at best with the offense running through Jay Ajayi, but Tannehill projects as a safe QB2 against the Los Angeles Rams’ underachieving defense.

A risk-averse QB2 on his best days, Smith had a miserable performance against the Carolina Panthers, throwing for just 178 yards and an interception on 25-of-38 passing, with no touchdowns. With Jeremy Maclin out, Smith had no reliable pass catchers outside of Travis Kelce, and it showed. He’s only on this list because the Chiefs’ offense is in a prime bounce-back spot against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ awful defense, although you might want to shop around for higher-upside options first.

The 49ers were surprisingly feisty against the Arizona Cardinals, who needed a last-second field goal to escape with the win. Part of that was thanks to Kaepernick, who’s been playing better in recent weeks and had another solid fantasy day both in the passing game (210 yards, one touchdown, zero interceptions) and the running games (55 rushing yards, one touchdown). He’s still hard to trust in 12-team leagues because the 49ers are such a bad team, but garbage time stats should be there for the taking. Kap will be in the QB2 conversation against a New England Patriots defense that looks like it’s badly missing Jamie Collins.