Josh Dobbs Has Done it Again! 😤

Did you know that Josh Dobbs has scored exactly 24.92 fantasy points in each of the past two weeks… on two different teams?

Now you do.

What’s in store:

• Daniel Jones suffers a likely torn ACL vs Raiders. One of the league’s most sacked passers ironically went down with a non-contact injury.

• We were right to be concerned about Josh Downs. Did the Colts rush him back from his late-week knee injury?

• The top takeaways from Week 9’s action. You’re living life on cloud 9 in Week 9 if you’ve had the Dak to Ceedee stack in your league. 😎

• Zay Flowers puts up a dud in a blowout. In other news, Odell Beckham Jr. led Ravens WRs in targets. 🤷🏻‍♂️

• Giants QB Daniel Jones suffers non-contact knee injury vs Raiders, fear is torn ACL

  • After being forced to suffer through last week’s abomination against the Jets with Tommy DeVito under center, Sunday’s game at the Raiders was supposed to be a better game for New York with Daniel Jones under center. That reality was short-lived, with Jones suffering an apparent knee injury on a routine dropback early in the game. The injuries have piled up for New York through the first half of the season, with both TE Darren Waller and QB Tyrod Taylor landing on IR on Saturday and Daniel Jones suffering a likely torn ACL yesterday. That leaves the Giants offense severely undermanned down the stretch in 2023, with Saquon Barkley likely serving as the lone fantasy-relevant piece on offense (unless you consider Wan’Dale Robinson, a receiver whose value will be tied to DeVito for the immediate future, relevant). DeVito should not be streamed or added on the waiver wire this week, especially with a tough matchup against the Cowboys on tap in Week 10.

• Colts rookie WR Josh Downs starts Sunday, exits early with knee injury vs. Panthers

  • There was concern about just how much work Downs would get in Week 9 after he was a late addition to the injury report early last week, and the fantasy gods delivered the answer in no uncertain terms: not a whole lot. Downs went down in this game early with what looked like an injury to the same knee that caused him to appear on the practice report, and his status as of the writing of this newsletter remains in the air. It’s a bad look for the Colts, as there will be speculation this week about whether or not Downs was truly ready for action just days after tweaking his knee – but with the damage done, fantasy managers will have to set their sights forward to the next few days as details emerge about the extent of Downs’ injury. Don’t be surprised if the Colts are extra cautious in bringing him back and give him an extra week to recover on top of any time he misses as a result.

• Vikings RB Cam Akers suffers torn achilles, expected to miss remainder of season

  • Just a brutal development for Akers, who was beginning to make some headway in the Vikings backfield alongside Alexander Mattison before going down in yesterday’s game. The backfield is now exclusively Mattison’s moving forward, and he’ll profile as a low-RB2 given the pass-first nature of the Vikings offensive attack. It’s worth noting that Mattison’s downward spiral in terms of his efficiency and workload was effectively stopped by Akers’ injury, who was closing in on Mattison for snaps and touches before tearing his achilles yesterday. Mattison also benefitted from a very efficient day receiving against the Falcons, reeling in two passes for 49 yards and a touchdown. That work won’t always be there, and with Justin Jefferson poised to return soon, Mattison’s upside could be effectively slashed in the coming weeks.

• What a crazy game this was. So much to talk about. Let’s start on a positive note on the Vikings side: Jaren Hall gets hurt after only 11 snaps, so guess who their backup was? That would be Josh Dobbs, who they just traded for at the trade deadline less than a week ago, and he comes in and is immediately sacked for a safety. That made sense, but the rest of his performance made no sense. He threw for 2 TDs, took 7 carries for 66 yards and a rushing TD. He’s gonna finish as a Top-5 fantasy QB this week…. And he got his team the win. He threw the game-winning TD, TJ Hockenson got his 12 targets (which he turned into 7 catches for 69 yards - looks like he’s gonna be just fine), and Jordan Addison went 5 for 52 on 7 targets… not bad all things considered. Promising stuff for the Vikings moving forward, who are 5-4 now, 4-1 on the road, and have Justin Jefferson potentially coming back next week.

• In terms of target share from Dobbs in this game - 37% target share for Hockenson, 20% target share for Addison - Jefferson coming back next week can shake all that up, but it looks like Hockenson has a good chance at continuing to be the 2nd target.

• Cam Akers may have had yet another Achilles injury - absolutely brutal. Two Achilles tears in a few years just sucks for any player. The fantasy takeaway here is that this is Alexander Mattison’s backfield the rest of the way - this was actually a split backfield until he got hurt right before the 4th quarter started. Mattison is a low-end RB2 the rest of the way - any other RB would probably make this role a high-end RB2 or RB1 play, but Mattison gets an upgrade moving forward.

• The Ravens backfield got a little interesting in this game. It started with Gus Edwards and Justice Hill rotating, and then Keaton Mitchell came in during the 2nd quarter and started to take some work as well… This was close to a 50/50 split in touches between Edwards and Hill to start, but it started to phase out away from Edwards outside of those goal line touches. He had 5 carries total, had a big 42 yard run, had 2 TDs; I’m not sure we can take out too much from this game in terms of the split because Hill was the guy in the 4th quarter, but even if you take away all his 4th quarter snaps, he still led the backfield in snaps.

• I think all of these guys should be rostered, including Keaton Mitchell - he took his 9 carries for 138 yards and a TD. The Seahawks were an extremely tough run defense coming into this game, allowing the least yards per carry to opposing RBs, and we had Keaton Mitchell average 15.3 yards per carry and Gus Edwards average 10.4. Mitchell is the big play guy - think of him like a Jaleel McLaughlin type - undersized but quick. So pick him up - and by the way, if it’s not apparent to you, Gus Edwards is still a glaring sell high - 5 carries, 2 TDs.

Ravens rookie WR Zay Flowers came out of the gate hot for the Ravens with three double-digit target games in his first five – but since then, his weekly target share has been on a steady decline, and things bottomed out in Baltimore’s 37-3 rout of the visiting Seahawks. While the production hasn’t been up to par over the past few weeks, the utilization was passable - but Flowers put up his career-worst statistical performance in a game that felt like it should have featured him a lot more.

After leading the Ravens in target share from Lamar Jackson through the first eight weeks of the season (28%), Flowers earned and caught just one target for eleven yards in Week 9. Granted, he looked good on his lone productive play of the day, putting fellow standout rookie CB Devon Witherspoon on skates with a lightning-quick change of direction; but style points don’t matter in fantasy football, and earning just one target after seeing a gradual decline in fantasy production each of the three weeks prior makes life difficult for Flowers managers moving forward.

The one fallback for this quiet game from him could be that the game script was hilariously positive, and we shouldn’t expect Odell Beckham to be a staple in the Ravens’ passing attack on a weekly basis. But Flowers was, in a way, living off of being Lamar’s favorite target through eight weeks of the season, a title that he will cede to Mark Andrews this week after the tight end earned a 26% target share vs Seattle.