Marvin Jones, Kenny Stills and Week 8 Sunday Surprises 

Another low scoring fantasy week for a lot of teams, unless you had a nice combination of Calvin Johnson and Matthew Stafford. Johnson did not surprise anyone this Sunday as he caught 14 passes for 329 yards and a touchdown.

Drew Brees, Cam Newton and Colin Kaepernick also put in nice days, as we would expect from them. Kaepernick still not making plays in the passing game, but two rush touchdowns on 54 yards isn’t bad at all.

This week was a bit vanilla. Pretty much the teams that should have won, ended up winning, although there were a few exceptions.

Here are our Week 8 Sunday Surprises in fantasy football.

10. Emmanuel Sanders, WR, Pittsburgh Steelers 

I had a slight feeling about Sanders this week with the Raiders’ secondary and I was right.

Sanders had a nice Sunday afternoon after catching seven passes for 88 yards and a touchdown. A solid 16 point fantasy performance for a very talented player out of SMU.

9. Christian Ponder, QB, Minnesota Vikings

Ponder is only adding fantasy value to himself from time to time with his random ability to run the ball. He only through for 145 yards against the Packers on Sunday Night, but he managed five rushed for 38 yards and a touchdown on the ground.

What’s bad is that he got just as many points as Adrian Peterson mustered up, with 14.

8. Dexter McCluster, WR, Kansas City Chiefs

McCluster is hardly a household name in fantasy football. Many had hoped he’d turn into a Darren Sproles type player, but he has just done very little.

However, he was targeted 10 times against the Browns, partially because Dwayne Bowe was covered by Joe Haden. McCluster brought down seven of those passes for 67 yards and a touchdown. His five additional rush yards earned him a 12th fantasy point for the day.

7. Cincinnati Bengals Team Defense 

It may have been just holding the New York Jets to nine points, or it could have been the two interceptions returned for touchdowns that gave the Bengals one of the top defenses in fantasy for week eight.

Matt Schaub and Geno Smith would get along so well!

When Marvin Jones wasn’t scoring on the offensive side of things, the Bengals did their part to terrorize Geno Smith and company en route to a 49-9 thrashing of the Jets. Their fantasy performance earned them a very nice 25 points.

6. New York Giants Team Defense

The Giants did not score a touchdown and won the game. You can thank the defense holding Philadelphia to just seven points.

Josh Brown needed five field goals to give the Giants a “comfortable” 15-7 lead, but it worked.

Michael Vick started the game and left with an injury, which led Matt Barkley to finish the game out. Both quarterbacks were intercepted once a piece, while the Giants added four sacks. Not a bad 15 point output for one of the worst defenses in the league.

5. Drew Davis, WR, Atlanta Falcons 

With the injuries to Julio Jones and Roddy White, Drew Davis was forced into his first start of his career.

He was targeted seventimes, caught five passes and managed to finish with 77 yards and a touchdown. That’s a very solid 13 point fantasy day.

Keep him in mind for deep leagues.

4. Andre Ellington, RB, Arizona Cardinals

This is now Ellington’s third double digit point week of the season. Of course, he managed to light up the field this week against Atlanta.

Not only did Ellington run well, he did it with ease. The rookie managed just 15 carries, one more than twice what he has carried in a game prior. Yet, he ended up with 154 yards and a rushing touchdown, also grabbing two passes for eight yards.

Ellington surely ate his Wheaties before the game. He’s becoming an interesting start.

3. Kenny Stills, WR, New Orleans Saints

Against New England, Still caught three passes for 64 yards and a touchdown. We had wondered if it had become the start of something big.

So far, it looks like Stills is attempting to emerge in this Saints system. With just the same amount of receptions as two weeks ago, Stills caught two touchdowns and 129 yards.

His 24 fantasy points were huge for his 1.1% of fantasy owners.

2. Jason Campbell, QB, Cleveland Browns

I’m not quite sure what happened, but Jason Campbell actually played well enough for the Browns to win on Sunday.

The undefeated Chiefs were a bit shocked, and for good reason. Many expected Campbell to throw for 115 yards, one interception and completing just six of his 20 passes.

Maybe we’re being a bit too hard on the new Cleveland starter. Against arguably the league’s best defense, Campbell completed 22 of his 36 passes for 293 yards, two touchdowns and ZERO interceptions.

It’s strange, but it happened. Campbell was a very valuable 20 fantasy points last week.

1. Marvin Jones, WR, Cincinnati Bengals 

Jones has been making some plays in the last couple of weeks, but none would be as big as his Week 8.

The Jets just did not see this coming as Jones would go on to catch eight Andy Dalton passes. Of those eight passes, half of them were caught in the end zone for a touchdown.

Eight catches, 122 yards, four touchdowns and 36 fantasy points later, Jones’ 1% of owners really paid off one of the top fantasy scorers in the league this week.