Friday afternoons are my opportunity to connect with FantasyPros readers and the FantasyPros Discord community. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to join our Discord to get answers to your questions. I host weekly AMAs on Fridays, and other analysts also routinely answer questions. Below were three standout topics from Friday’s busy Week 15 AMA.
- Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Pickups
- Weekly Fantasy Football Expert Rankings
- Fantasy Football Start/Sit Advice
- Fantasy Football Trade Tools
Discord AMA: Week 15
Can Gamers Trust Rico Dowdle or Chuba Hubbard?
The Panthers are coming off their bye, and many FantasyPros Discord users had fantasy start sit questions about Rico Dowdle and Chuba Hubbard. Dowdle is the RB23 in half-PPR expert consensus rankings (ECR), and Hubbard is the RB29. The gap is narrow, but I’d have it even tighter, bumping D’Andre Swift and Tyrone Tracy Jr. above Dowdle, and sliding Devin Neal and Aaron Jones behind Hubbard. Essentially, I’d have them back-to-back as fringe RB2 options in 12-team leagues.
According to the Fantasy Points data suite, in Carolina’s exciting Week 13 victory against the Rams, Dowdle had 18 rush attempts for 58 yards compared to 17 carries for 83 yards for Hubbard, but Hubbard had a 54.2% route participation rate versus 20.8% for Dowdle. How will the Panthers divvy up backfield opportunities this week?
Early in the week, I was excited to see Hubbard’s $4,600 salary on DraftKings and mentioned it in the Sharp Football Slack chat, which sparked a discussion about how Dave Canales will use the running backs. Rich Hribar, also known as Lord Reebs in the Twitter streets, shared an interesting article that shed some light on how Dowdle and Hubbard could be used.
Canales discussed giving Dowdle “the lion’s share of some of those first and second downs, those early series and all that is a great way to just get him the ball.” He also highlighted Hubbard’s usage on third downs and mixing in for some series. It seems as though Dowdle will start and get more early-down work than Hubbard, but Hubbard has the valuable passing downs with the potential to carve out a larger early-down role if he’s the hot back. Dowdle’s rugged running could make him the favorite for goal-line opportunities, though. As a result, I slightly prefer Dowdle to Hubbard in anything but PPR formats, and Hubbard gets the nod in PPR leagues. They’re both in the low-end RB2/Flex mix in 12-team leagues.
Is Christian Watson Too Risky Against Pat Surtain?
Christian Watson doesn’t come without risk this week. First, he’ll likely see quite a bit of Pat Surtain in coverage. According to the Fantasy Points data suite, Watson has aligned 67.4% of the time in seven games this year. Per Pro Football Focus (PFF), Surtain has played 534 snaps as an outside corner and 55 in the slot. Fortunately, Watson has aligned in the slot 30.8% of the time and in-line 1.7% of the time. Thus, he could escape Surtain’s coverage for some snaps on Sunday.
Second, Watson’s route participation is 75.4% this year. Yet it jumped to 80.8% last week, despite Jayden Reed‘s return and an active Matthew Golden. Watson’s route participation isn’t ideal, but it’s not horrendous, either.
Even with apparent negatives, Watson is an enticing WR2 this week. He has a blistering 37% air yards share, 17.8% target share, 0.22 targets per route run (TPRR), 3.6 receptions per game, 64.6 receiving yards per game, 2.63 yards per route run (YPRR), five touchdown receptions and two end-zone targets. Watson is balling out.
Watson also has big-play potential this week based on Denver’s coverage tendencies. The Broncos have played man coverage at the fourth-highest rate (38.4%) and Cover 1 at the sixth-highest rate (25.2%) this season. Watson has 0.28 TPRR and 2.83 YPRR on 60 routes against man coverage and 0.28 TPRR and 2.76 YPRR on 58 routes against Cover 1 this season. Again, Watson’s floor is low, but his ceiling and excellence this year put him firmly in the WR2 mix.
Is RJ Harvey a Locked-In Starter?
Frankly, I was surprised by some of the start-or-sit questions involving RJ Harvey. The rookie running back is the RB17 in half-PPR ECR. I’m slightly more bullish on Harvey’s outlook.
Instead of running through my Week 15 analysis of Harvey again, I’ll direct readers to check out my bold predictions for this week, where I declared he’ll score at least 15 half-PPR points in Week 15.
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Josh Shepardson is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Josh, check out his archive and follow him @BChad50.