Lions quarterback Jared Goff is a must-start in fantasy football for Week 10 vs. Chargers

Week 10 looks like a tough bye week for fantasy football owners. In terms of quarterbacks, Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa are off this week. It's entirely possible those who drafted one of those three quarterbacks also drafted Lions quarterback Jared Goff as their QB2. Strategically, lining up Goff to be the bye week fill-in for Mahomes, Hurts or Tagovailoa in Week 10 looked good on draft day.

Of course we are here now, as the Lions get set to take on the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 10.

The Chargers enter the week allowing the third-most fantasy points to quarterbacks (20.9 per game; Yahoo! scoring). They are allowing the most passing yards per game, and the only reason they're not worse is having faced Tyson Bagent and Zach Wilson over their last two games. They have allowed 12 touchdown passes-ninth-most in the league.

"Road Jared Goff" is a thing his fantasy football owners have to be aware of. He has defied his home-road splits at times this year, and while this game is on the road it's in the comfier confines of SoFi Stadium and the matchup is impossible to ignore.

Jared Goff is a must-start in fantasy for Week 10 vs. Chargers

Goff has had multiple passing touchdowns three times this season. He has been a top-six fantasy quarterback (top-five in some scoring formats) all three of those weeks. Outside of those three games, he has not been a top-12 fantasy quarterback any other week. Such is life when a quarterback offers nothing as a runner to boost his fantasy stock, though he does have two rushing touchdowns this season.

Lions-Chargers has the highest over/under on the Week 10 slate (48.5 points via FanDuel Sportsbook, odds subject to change). The spread is just three points on FanDuel currently, so a close, high-scoring game is easily expected.

Throw out the Week 7 blowout loss to the Ravens, and a game-long garbage time-skewed 53 attempts, and Goff has otherwise had more than 35 pass attempts in two other games this season. He's in line to do it again on Sunday, and have a fourth straight game with at least 37 attempts.

Multiple passing touchdowns is the baseline requirement for Goff to pay off as a fantasy starter, along with higher pass volume to drive his yardage to the higher end. Both things are far more likely than not against the Chargers this week, which lines the Lions' signal caller up to finish as a top-10 fantasy quarterback and likely shut any possible buy-low window on him as trade deadlines near.