C.J. Stroud is Cooking Through 4 Weeks! 👨‍🍳

That was officially a BS holding call on Sauce last night. The NFL deserved to see what Zach Wilson could do with one drive to decide the game.

What’s in store:

• Mike Evans, Tee Higgins suffer injuries. There’s a chance both could miss some significant time.

• Is Calvin Ridley a WR1 moving forward? After earning just two targets today, he’s officially three games into a cold streak.

• Nico Collins has arrived! C.J. Stroud’s incredible play has helped fuel the Texans wideout’s breakout start to the year.

• Alvin Kamara is a machine in the receiving game. Quantity trumped quality, though, in his return to NFL action.

• Buccaneers WR Mike Evans exits game vs Saints with hamstring injury, doesn’t return

  • Evans has been one of pleasant surprises in the young 2023 season, so seeing him go down hurts his fantasy managers just that much more. It’s officially a hamstring injury for Evans, which hangs a cloud over his availability for the immediate future given the nature of hamstrings to hang around for a few weeks at a time. The good news for Evans is that the Buccaneers have their bye in Week 5, so there’s a chance that Evans could return with no games missed if he can recover quickly. However, it’ll be important to monitor his status a week from now to have the best idea of his availability when the Bucs take the field again in Week 6.

• Bengals WR Tee Higgins goes down with rib injury in loss vs Titans

  • Things were ugly enough on field already for the Bengals offense on Sunday, but the loss of Tee Higgins added injury to insult. As of the writing of this newsletter, it’s unclear the extent of Higgins’ injury, but it was enough to hold him out for the rest of the game in a matchup where the Bengals desperately could have used him. There’s a chance that Higgins could miss some time moving forward in two solid matchups against the Cardinals and the Seahawks, and the Bengals have their bye in Week 7. For now, his status could go either way for Week 5.

• Steelers QB Kenny Pickett goes down with knee injury in loss vs Texans

  • This was one of the more concerning injuries of the day, with Kenny Pickett going down with a knee injury that required a good amount of help to get him to the sideline. The immediate fear is obviously that this could be a long-term injury, especially considering that he was ruled out almost immediately. However, we’ll know more about the injury in the coming hours and days. Pickett had been struggling against the Texans and was off to a quiet start to the season; in the meantime, Mitch Trubisky should be able to fill in without sending too many ripples through the Steelers offense.

• Calvin Ridley had 2 targets in this game - luckily one of them was a TD but it was on a broken play - he did almost have a few TDs over the last couple of weeks that would’ve resulted in bigger fantasy days, but it’s been very disappointing. Three straight weeks now of him underperforming… now, he was shadowed by AJ Terrell, and Trevor Lawrence chose to stay away from that matchup. But only 6% target share for Ridley and 40% target share for Kirk is going to be a problem regardless.

  • Looking at Fantasy Life utilization, In Weeks 2 and 3, Kirk had a combined 24% target share and Ridley was at 18%… Week 1 had us thinking that Ridley was back to his WR1 days… but he has to be downgraded. I don’t think we go as far as saying he has to be on benches moving forward, I’m still going to rank him as a Top-24 WR next week - but it is a tough matchup against the Bills even if they’re without Tre’Davious White. Christian Kirk on the other hand, has his 3rd straight Top-24 finish. I think there will be plenty of boom weeks for Ridley, but if you’re getting 2 targets in a shadow situation, I can’t call you a WR1.

• How about Nico Collins? 7 catches for 168 yards and 2 TDs on 9 targets. 30% target share, 3 out of 4 big games for Nico Collins now - he’s got a tough matchup next week against Atlanta, but you gotta upgrade Nico to a fantasy WR2.

  • I wouldn’t get too down on Tank Dell’s bad game, but what I didn’t understand is how people were starting Tank over Nico this week - we talked about it a lot, so hopefully you didn’t make that mistake. CJ Stroud though, man… great start to his rookie yea. The Texans are 2-2, and he’s now 2nd all-time in passing yards by a player in their first four NFL games. He also has no interceptions - only the 2nd QB to do not have any in their first four starts, Gardner Minshew is the other one… hat tip to Adam Schefter’s tweet for these stats.

• Puka Nacua is that dude. 9 catches on 10 targets for 163 yards and the game winning TD in overtime… what this guy is doing over the first four weeks of his career is absolutely remarkable. If you took Cooper Kupp’s 2021 record breaking season and compared it to Puka’s start this season, he’s out-pacing Kupp in receiving yards.

  • Cooper Kupp apparently is going to be activated for his 21-day practice window coming off the PUP this week, so the Rams have 21 days to activate him; he could be active for Week 5 or not, but we’ll find out this week. Regardless, it looks like Puka is a damn good player, so there’s no way he just goes away. If you sell Puka right now, don’t sell him with the premise that he takes this huge hit… I just don’t think that happens personally. He’ll take a hit, but he’s going to be a WR2 at the very least, in my opinion.

• Josh Palmer ended up leading the Chargers with 8 targets, and he led them in production as well - extremely low production for the Chargers overall, very disappointing, but Quentin Johnston did run only 4 less routes than Palmer and 5 less routes than Keenan Allen. I think QJ might end up being dropped in some leagues, but I’d look to hold him; pick him up if he gets dropped, and low-key, see if you can add him to deals if you make some trades as an add-on. We should see a lot more output out of this Chargers passing offense in future games, so we could see QJ do some more and have more production at some point - just have to be patient.

• Marquise Brown is low-key killing it this year on what was a slept on offense by everyone. There is production and there are fantasy relevant players in Arizona. Brown’s got two Top-20 finishes in Weeks 2 and 3, he’s the WR15 so far, and he’s got a good chance of having another Top-20 finish this week.

  • Zach Ertz has been getting it done with 10 targets himself, and it looks like he’s back as the guy there. Michael Wilson, someone I’ve been on since the Senior Bowl as well, looked great today too - 7 for 76 and 2 TDs. I think he should be picked up on waivers, but don’t spend up too much, Hollywood and Ertz still seem to be the primary targets.

After being suspended for the first three games of the 2023 season, Saints RB Alvin Kamara made his return to the field Sunday against the Buccaneers. His overall production was relatively quiet, but his route to that production was one of the more surprising developments in what was a busy afternoon in fantasy football. Rumors swirled ahead of the game that Kamara was bracing for a full workload in his first game back, and the Saints rewarded him with that for the most part.

Kamara was the clear leader in the Saints backfield in opportunity and production with a 75% snap share and 70% route participation, but it was his work in the passing game that buoyed his performance in PPR formats. His 13 receptions were by far the most by a running back this season, but what was even more peculiar was the fact that he only had 33 yards to show for them.

Much can be attributed to QB Derek Carr playing with a bum shoulder (his AC joint injury clearly affected his passing), leading Kamara to be a favorite target of his on checkdowns and short-distance passing. The efficiency should go up for Kamara in the future with a more digestible workload in the receiving game, but it looks like Kamara has the Saints backfield on lockdown once again moving forward.