Be Afraid: Danny Dimes is back! ☠️

Happy Halloween form Upper Hand! There’s nothing scarier than having to start any Giants player in your lineup this week.

What’s in store:

• The Bills do not care about your James Cook stocks. In a vulgar display of not giving a 🤬, Buffalo has signed Leonard Fournette.

• Daniel Jones is back, and just in time. I don’t think I could take another week of 40+ Saquon Barkley touches, as good a talent as he is.

• It’s never a bad time to improve your roster. Check out Tyler’s top waiver wire recommendations heading into Week 9.

• What does Mitch Trubisky potentially starting mean for the Steelers WRs? The short answer: more of the same.

• Bills sign veteran free agent RB Leonard Fournette ahead of Week 9 heavyweight tilt vs Cincinnati

  • It’s a party of old guys that shouldn’t be running routes ahead of James Cook in the Bills backfield, and everyone is invited. Just days after ceding backfield touches in the receiving game to Latavius Murray, James Cook’s outlook just got a whole lot bleaker. Fournette isn’t the talent he was at the beginning of his career, but the last time we saw him on the field he was doing what fantasy managers are afraid he could do again this year in Buffalo – taking high-value touches in the passing game. Here’s a surprising stat: Fournette racked up 83 targets last year and 84 targets the year before with the Buccaneers. Granted, those numbers were a product of having a statue at QB (Tom Brady), but with an already limited number of targets to go around to Bills RBs, adding yet another mouth to feed will seriously cap James Cook’s upside. At this point, the Bills backfield looks like it’s set to devolve into a total committee Houston Texans style, and Cook will have trouble qualifying as even a low-fantasy RB2 if Fournette sees any kind of meaningful work.

• Giants QB Daniel Jones cleared for contact Sunday, expected to start in Week 9

  • The Giants’ only shot at relevance on offense in Week 9 was the return of Daniel Jones, and New York wwas quick to announce this week that their franchise guy would be back under center against the Raiders. Does this make any of the Giants offensive weapons besides Saquon Barkely startable? No, it doesn’t. But at the very least, we should be able to see the Giants get back to - you know - targeting wide receivers beyond the line of scrimmage. Maybe the Giants were out to prove a point last week that we were all taking throwing beyond the line of scrimmage for granted - if that was the mission, the mission accomplished. Nobody is going to be able to swoop in and save this Giants offense from collapsing under its own weight at this point, and Tyrod Taylor is still in the hospital as of Monday. Daniel Jones has a palatable matchup in Las Vegas this week, but he shouldn’t be trusted as a fantasy starter except in the deepest of 2QB leagues. His two passing touchdowns on the season are two fewer than Will Levis, who is for all intents and purposes a better fantasy start this week against Pittsburgh.

• Steelers QB Kenny Pickett expected to be game-time decision on Thursday vs Titans; Will Levis to start for Tennessee

  • Speaking of Pittsburgh, it looks like the Steelers will leave the decision for who will get to be ranked as a low-end fantasy QB2 to be made shortly before game time on TNF. Whether it’s a banged up Pickett or a healthy Trubisky, the returns from either quarterback in terms of fantasy production are likely to be very similar against a middle-of-the-pack Titans defense. The same can be said for what we’re projecting for the Steelers WRs, as both Pickett and Trubisky have historically favored Diontae Johnson in the target distribution department over George Pickens (more on that later in the newsletter 👀). Given that neither Steelers signal caller is likely to finish inside the Top-15, it’s probably best to leave them on your bench this week unless the circumstances on your team are truly drastic.

• Darrell Henderson (RB - Los Angeles Rams) - It was Henderson's backfield for the second straight week, coming off a 19-touch game in Week 7 with a 15-touch one (85 total yards), even despite what was a blowout from the start of the second quarter onward. Until Kyren Williams returns (at the earliest of Week 12), Henderson appears the lead back in LA and should offer RB2-FLEX value on a weekly basis. He should be owned in all leagues.

• Taysom Hill (TE - New Orleans Saints) - We've entered a very weird period for Taysom Hill, going beyond his typical 'gadget' role of the occasional change-of-pace play to a consistent role in the Saints' offense. In Week 6, he had 8 targets (7 catches) for 49 yards. In Week 7, he had 5 targets (4 catches) for 50 yards and added another 5 for 18 and a TD on the ground. In Week 8, he had 11 touches for 121 yards and 2 TDs. He's become more than a typical 'gadget' player and has become an extremely high-upside fantasy option that's still getting a solid weekly workload in one way or another.

• Trey McBride (TE - Arizona Cardinals) - Last week, Zach Ertz suffered a quad injury that saw him land on the IR List. McBride went 3 for 29 (off 6 targets) in the game Ertz left and drew FOURTEEN targets (10 catches, 95 yards, 1 TD, 25.5 points) in his first game this year without Ertz. He won't get that level of volume every week, but Ertz's consistency and utilization have shown that McBride will likely be heavily involved going forward in the Cardinals' offense. That's a rarity at the TE position and something that needs to be added to your bench.

• Emari Demercado (RB - Arizona Cardinals) - Demercardo once again dominated the Cardinals' backfield in work, consuming 17 of 18 RB touches in Week 7 and now 21 of 27 RB touches in Week 8. He's the clear workhorse in Arizona until James Conner returns (earliest potential return of Week 11). Until Conner returns, one should anticipate Demercado to be a high-volume, low-efficiency option, thus making him a matchup-based RB2/FLEX option.

• Devin Singletary (RB - Houston Texans) - The Texans' backfield is now a committee. Dameon Pierce has now gone consecutive games under the 50% snap share mark with Devin Singletary being the beneficiary (54% in Week 6, 41% in Week 8). Singletary and Pierce have had the same number of touches in each of the Texans' last two games with the former being the more productive in each of those games. With a more pass-friendly game script the likely result going forward for Houston, it looks like Singletary will continue to have a sizable role on a week-to-week basis, if not take over the majority of the backfield work from Pierce.

Week 8 featured a tilting of the scales back in WR Diontae Johnson’s favor in the Pittsburgh wide receiver room, with the fifth-year veteran racking up a team-high 14 targets on a rainy day against the Jaguars. That’s 8 more targets than any other Pittsburgh pass catcher on the day, with Connor Heyward earning the next-most targets in the game with six. Johnson was far and away the clear favorite target of both Kenny Pickett and Mitch Trubisky, the former of which picked up an injury midway through the game, and if history tells us anything, it’s that this trend of Johnson dominating the target share could continue despite the appeal of Pickens in the passing game.

Johnson demonstrated this past Sunday that when he’s fully healthy, he’s one of the top target-earning receivers in the league. There was plenty of evidence of that last season, as well, when Johnson totaled 147 targets in 2022 but failed to score a touchdown after averaging 7.5 per season the two years before that. That was with the same two QBs under center last year as this year for varying stretches of time, of course, but his split compared to George Pickens’ with Mitch Trubisky under center is eye-opening.

In five games where Trubisky started the majority of the team’s snaps for the game (Weeks 1-3 & Weeks 14-15), Johnson paced George Pickens in both target share and air yards share by a large margin. Johnson’s 32.1% target share in those five games was light years ahead of George Pickens’ 12.8% in that same span of time, and his 18.4 expected fantasy points per game ranked 9th among all WRs in that span, as well.

It also might not be coincidence or a bad idea to note that Diontae Johnson had his five highest scoring outputs in those five games with Trubisky under center in 2022, scoring no less than 12.5 points in each contest. The Steelers have a few tough matchups on tap over the next few weeks, but Johnson should be able to remain dependable even with his upside limited.