Davante Adams is on a Historic 4-Game Skid! 💀

It was a whole lot of defense at the trade deadline, and not a whole lot of offense.

What’s in store:

• Not a whole lot of trade deadline action this year. That is unless you consider DPJ and Josh Dobbs big-time acquisitions.

• The Cardinals still haven’t named a starter for Week 9. More gamesmanship from the king of keeping his QB decisions quiet.

• The Bengals lay an egg in Cleveland. If you started any of their players this week, you’re probably heading into MNF down a lot of points.

• The Raiders are doing Davanta Adams dirty. A tough 3-game stretch turned into a tough 4-game stretch Monday night.

• Browns trade WR Donovan Peoples-Jones to the Lions in exchange for a 2025 6th-round pick

  • Peoples-Jones was a total afterthought in the Browns offense through eight games in 2023, having lost ground on new addition Elijah Moore and dealing with turbulence at quarterback. He’ll get a new start in another relatively crowded, albeit much more fantasy conducive WR room in Detroit. Given Jameson Williams’ struggles to establish a consistent role for himself in the Lions offense, there’s a chance that DPJ could be considered as a worthwhile add somewhere down the line - but that day is not today. Peoples-Jones should remain on the waiver wire until further notice with limited upward movement available as of today in the Lions’ passing attack.

• Vikings rookie QB Jaren Hall expected to start in Week 9 vs Falcons

  • It looks like the rookie out of BYU will have his chance to make a case as the Vikings potential starter for the rest of the season in Week 9 even with Minnesota’s deadline addition of former Cardinals QB Josh Dobbs. Hall played just a handful of snaps in relief of Kirk Cousins last week while nursing a lead against the Packers, leaving little subject material to assess the fifth-round signal caller. If Hall would struggle this week - or even play just an average game - the odds seem to be in favor of Josh Dobbs taking over as Minnesota’s starter in Week 10, with the Vikings’ acquisition of him suggesting that they’re still viewing a playoff berth as a possibility this season. It’s worth noting that the last 5th-round rookie out of BYU to start a game this season was Puka Nacua, and we all know how his season has gone so far. Hall has a tough matchup against the Falcons this week, though, so he’s not really advisable as a starter in any scenario this week.

• No decision made yet on Cardinals Week 9 starting QB, says HC Jonathan Gannon

  • The Cardinals now face life without Josh Dobbs (😂) and will have to choose between rookie QB Clayton Tune and Kyler Murray in their Week 9 tilt against the Browns. Seeing as Cleveland constitutes a matchup that you don’t necessarily want to throw your franchise QB into coming off ACL recovery, the odds are that Arizona will sentence their late-round rookie QB instead to 60 minutes of being chased by Myles Garrett. The Cardinals offense has operated surprisingly well with Dobbs at the helm, but a steep production drop could be in the cards for their weapons until Kyler Murray is restored under center. Barring Tune defying all odds against arguably the best defense in the league, he’ll likely be best left on the waiver wire beside his fellow draft classmate Jaren Hall in Week 9.

• BUY WR Keenan Allen, LAC

  • Allen could have had a bigger game against the Bears on Sunday night, but the Chargers ran away with it like they were supposed to and didn’t need to push the ball downfield. The good news for you if you’re looking to buy Keenan Allen: his production has cooled all the way down from the beginning of the season, but his target share hasn’t – at all. When you split up Allen’s eight games played this season into the first four and the last four, he has the same target share in both of those time spans: 29% target share in weeks 1-4, and another 29% in weeks 5-8. That’s with Austin Ekeler having been back these past three weeks, and with Mike Williams playing in the first three games of the season.

  • Using those same splits when we talk about production, we find that Allen was averaging 25.8 PPR points per game through Weeks 1-4 - which placed him as the WR2 in that time – but in Weeks 5-8, he’s down to just 15.3 points per game, which places him as the WR31 in that span. We’ve said this many times before, but I’ll say it again – Keenan Allen is Justin Herbert’s favorite target, and this production dip we’re seeing will correct itself soon enough. Austin Ekeler just had a big game, too - he had almost 100 yards receiving and a touchdown against the Bears, so you can take advantage of anyone that opens up the game log, sees two straight quiet games for Keenan Allen, and starts to panic when they see that Allen’s quiet game came with a side order of a big game from Ekeler.

  • He might not be cheap to go after, but I think if you could move a guy like Jordan Addison for him in some sort of package deal, you’d be in pretty good shape. 

• SELL WR Devonta Smith, PHI

  • This isn’t an indictment on him as a receiver - it’s just that A.J. Brown is dominating. No other No. 2 receiver would be able to compete with the production Brown has had, but guess what: Devonta Smith just gifted you a sell window with 99 yards and a touchdown. The Eagles had a great matchup against the Commanders in Week 9 and both A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith were able to come through - but that’s not going to be the case every week.

  • Since Week 3, A.J. Brown has a 32% target share to Devonta Smith’s 20%, a 48% air yards share to Smith’s 26% air yards share, and he’s averaging 27 points per game to Devonta Smith’s 10%. For comparison’s sake, last year A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith were earning 28% and 27% target shares, respectively. Smith has finished outside the weekly top-15 in 6 of his eight games in 2023, and there’s going to be more of where that came from.

  • Look ahead to his schedule in the next four weeks, too – the Eagles have Dallas in Week 9, a bye in Week 10, and then back to back matchups against Kansas City and Buffalo. Dallas and Kansas City are both top-5 in fewest fantasy points allowed to receivers this season, and moving a player before their bye is never a bad thing. The odds of Smith having another game like he had against the Commanders over the next few weeks is pretty low, so take advantage of this selling opportunity before you’re stuck again with Smith putting up single digits on a weekly basis.

An utterly disgraceful and unacceptable downward trend in Davante Adams’ fantasy production continued Monday Night with perhaps the worst QB performance of the year by Jimmy Garoppolo. Garoppolo returned to the starting lineup to smash the dreams of Adams and his fantasy managers against the Lions, delivering just two catchable targets out of a meagre six total on the night en route to Adams’ 2nd-worst single game fantasy output as a Raider. That disappointing performance put an exclamation mark on a disastrous, history-making stretch of games for the former Packers superstar:

Through Weeks 5-8, Davante Adams has caught just 14 passes in four games –the fewest receptions over a four-game stretch he’s had since all the way back in 2016. Since averaging over eight catches per game over the first four games of the season, Adams has hit rock bottom over the last four, culminating in the one-catch debacle we were all forced to bear witness to under the Monday night lights on Halloween. Scary stuff.

This isn’t just a Davante Adams problem, either. Fellow teammate Jakobi Meyers, who had been staying afloat in fantasy even with the revolving door at QB, saw just one target overall against the Lions. The situation in Las Vegas doesn’t have the looks of one that will improve any time soon, and with the Raiders as the only team remaining yet to score more than 21 points in a game, Davante Adams and co. could see this dry spell continue further into the season.