Top fantasy football waiver wire pickups for Week 11

Ownership: 0.8%

You didn't forget that Jameis Winston was the No. 3 overall scoring fantasy football quarterback in the entire NFL last season, did you? Now, he has a chance to bring back the numbers we came to love — that ridiculous 400-yard, four-touchdown, three-interception stat line — at the helm of the Saints offense. Drew Brees exited the game to an injury, one which may be more serious than it seemed, and the idea of Winston working with Alvin Kamara, Michael Thomas, Emmanuel Sanders and company is an enticing one, especially with weak defenses like the Falcons and Broncos on the horizon.

Ownership: 41.1%

With a touchdown celebration like the one showed above, how could you not want Hines on your team? Okay, there are some reasons, like his incredible inconsistency. Take, for instance, the fact that Hines has finished in the top-eight fantasy running backs three weeks this season. In the other six, he's finished outside the top 35 and has been borderline unusable in standard formats.

However, the one thing he has going for him in terms of consistency is his role in the Colts offense. While Jonathan Taylor and Jonathan Wilkins can't seem to keep a firm grip on a role in the backfield, Hines is always going to be the top pass-catcher and actually had a season-high 12 carries in Week 10. Should that trend continue, his floor should rise and he could become someone you can start without as much skepticism.

Ownership: 39.2%

Devonta Freeman isn't eligible to come back for the Giants until Week 13 at the earliest, and he has been the clear leader in snaps among the Giants running backs over the past few weeks, with a 59 percent share compared to Alfred Morris' 21 percent and Dion Lewis' 20 percent shares. He also led the team with four red zone looks, converting two of them into touchdowns against the Eagles. The schedule isn't great going forward, but there is at least one more good matchup in there, as the G-Men have a Week 12 date with the Bengals.

Ownership: 2.7%

If Myles Gaskin was a big surprise — which he was, considering the 2019 seventh-round pick was a top-20 running back in fantasy football from Week 3 to Week 8 — then Salvon Ahmed's emergence is a monumental surprise. Ahmed, a UDFA out of Washington, leapt to the front of the Dolphins' running back depth chart in Week 10, following injuries to Gaskin and Matt Breida, and Jordan Howard's benching. Howard was released on Monday, meaning that Ahmed has the team's trust, and though Breida should return soon, Ahmed may have a leg up considering his 85-yard, one-TD performance against the Chargers.

Ownership: 7.0%

Like his teammate Hines, I've put Pittman on this list before. I even put Pittman on my list of WR steals to target in the draft back in May. This isn't to toot my own horn, but to say that Pittman's breakout Week 10 performance wasn't exactly unexpected in the grand scheme of things. Now, we just know it's real.

He's led the Colts in targets in back-to-back weeks, something that no Colts offensive player had done prior to this point in the season. And though he hasn't scored a touchdown in either of those games, he was Rivers' most frequent red zone target against the Titans. The sky's the limit, and he seems to be the wide receiver with the most upside in an offense with some good matchups coming up.

Ownership: 0.8%

A deep sleeper, Snead is another wide receiver who seems to be rising up his own team's depth chart in terms of QB targets. After all of Hollywood Brown's complaining about his target share, it's actually been Snead who is leading the wide receiver corps in targets the past three weeks, with 18 targets to Brown's 13. Snead is right on Mark Andrews' heels, and no other Ravens wide receiver has more than six in that span.

While Baltimore's offense continues to struggle, they haven't exactly been dealt an easy hand recently. In the past three weeks, they have played against the top-tier defenses of the Steelers and the Colts, and the Patriots in some of the worst weather conditions we've seen in some time. The schedule gets a lot friendlier coming up — matchups with the Titans, Cowboys, Browns, Jaguars and Giants are five of their next six — and Snead could do some damage if Jackson continues to favor him through the air attack.

Ownership: 27.0%

You don't need to be great to be a starting tight end candidate in fantasy football. With preseason top options Travis Kelce, George Kittle, Hayden Hurst and Zach Ertz out of action for various reasons in Week 10, the points leader in standard formats was Rob Gronkowski, with 11 points.

In eighth place was Logan Thomas, who is steadily producing for Washington and sits in fourth place behind Kelce, Gronk and Kittle in points per game at the position over the past five weeks. That's a wild stat to consider, but then again, it only takes Thomas scoring 7.9 points per outing to accomplish. That's an achievable number, especially given the fact that Thomas has drawn at least four targets in every single game this season, including 12 over the past two weeks.