You know the drill. Everyone else is sunshine and rainbows, but for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You can’t add the shiny new hotness without removing someone from your roster. With that in mind, here are some players available in at least 50% of Yahoo! leagues whose rostership could stand to take a haircut.
QUARTERBACKS
Jared Goff, Detroit (90% rostered)
Goff and the Lions are humming along, scoring 52, 38, and 34 points in the last three games, and Goff has scored under 14 points in two of those three games. He had five touchdowns back in week two when they were doing everything humanly possible to put the Bears and Ben Johnson into the dirt, but outside of that, he hasn’t really been a fantasy football fountain. The Lions run the rock and don’t ask Goff to do a ton, and that means that his fantasy roster rate doesn’t accurately reflect his real-life success.
Joe Burrow, Cincinnati (69%)
I’m going to keep putting him here until people listen to me: Joe Burrow isn’t coming back in time, especially with the Bengals circling the drain with Jake Browning.
Geno Smith, Las Vegas (53%)
This is likely a botched stream from frantic Jayden Daniel managers as he went up 25% in roster rate this week. But, two 3-INT efforts in his last three games, and he gets the stingy Colts pass defense and the run funnel Titans defense in the next two weeks. You can put him back on the wire.
WIDE RECEIVERS
Malik Nabers, New York Giants (100% rostered)
Tyreek Hill, Miami Dolphins (100% rostered)
These two highly drafted receivers both suffered season-ending leg injuries in week four.
Jameson Williams, Detroit (94% rostered)
Much like Goff, Jameson Williams is a victim of his team’s success. They don’t need him to get manufactured touches underneath to boost his floor, since Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jahmyr Gibbs & Sam LaPorta handle those. As such, he’s a boom-bust WR4 or WR5 at this point. You likely have someone worse you can drop in ten-team leagues, but he just hasn’t produced so far: he has ten catches in four games, and has 45 or fewer yards in three of four games this season, leading to fewer than 7 PPR points in 75% of his games so far.
Calvin Ridley, Tennessee (89% rostered)
Long story short, the team is a mess, and Elic Ayomanor is the only one getting any targets. Ridley is running wind sprints. I go in-depth on this here.
Keon Coleman, Buffalo (71% rostered)
We will always have week one, when everyone emptied their FAB wallets on Keon Coleman (if they weren’t emptying them on Harold Fannin). If you count the three weeks since people snatched him up, he has 11 targets, nine catches, and 91 yards, for an average of 6 PPR points per game, and three-straight weeks outside of the top-45. His yards per route run bounced back over 1.6 again last week to 2.3, but he ran only 20 routes. He’s not getting involved enough with a Buffalo attack that spreads the ball around.
Josh Downs, Indianapolis (52% rostered)
With Tyler Warren’s emergence in the intermediate game and Michael Pittman resuming his role as the alpha on this roster, there isn’t a role for Josh Downs. He has five or fewer targets in three of four games this season, and has had 34 or fewer yards in those three games. With seven or fewer PPR points in three of four games and failing to finish inside the top 36 yet, while seeing his role diminish, Downs is an easy drop.
RUNNING BACKS
Rhamondre Stevenson, Patriots (77% rostered)
Rhamondre didn’t get benched after his fumbling problem last week. Still, Antonio Gibson (9 snaps) and TreVeyon Henderson (15 snaps) are doing enough to squeeze out Stevenson, who played on 65% or more of snaps in the first two weeks, but who is quickly falling into a three-way timeshare. He had 25 touches in the first two weeks and 17 in the last two weeks. I would try to trade Rhamondre as a throw-in rather than drop him, but he likely won’t start for you in three weeks.
Tyrone Tracy, Giants (69% rostered)
All offseason, I touted Tracy’s best skill set as “being slightly better than Devin Singletary,” and now it appears that Cam Skattebo has Wally Pipped Tracy, receiving a dominating 27 touches, which is more than Tracy had in any two games combined this year. When Tracy returns, he likely returns as a straight backup to Skattebo, who has provided juice to this running game that Tracy did not.
Joe Mixon, Houston (64% rostered)
If your name is Joe and you were on the Bengals’ Super Bowl team, you won’t be playing again this season. The Texans reannounced earlier this week that they have no timetable for his return.
Braelon Allen, Jets (53% rostered)
I pre-emptively put him on this list before Monday Night Football, because the first three weeks of results have been pretty unspectacular. He had four carries for 26 yards and a brutal fumble inside the five before a kickoff return injury quickly ended his night. Given how fast the Jets ruled him out, it’s likely that we don’t see him again for a while.
TIGHT ENDS
Congratulations to tight ends around the league, you did just enough to stay rostered this week.
David Njoku (85% rostered) is on Fraud Watch as he is splitting time with Harold Fannin, but he is out there so much that I hesitate to kick him to the waiver wire yet.
