Sell DeAndre Hopkins After his Big Week 5? 🤔

We hope this newsletter finds you this morning unaccompanied by any more crippling injury news to star players.

What’s in store:

• Huge names and big injuries: the last thing you want to hear on your Wednesday. We don’t control who gets hurt and when, but we can help guide you through the fallout.

• Time to move off of DeAndre Hopkins? See why Zach is doing his best to sell the veteran receiver high where he can.

• Buy this running back after his second quiet week in three games. Even on a pass first offense, this ball carrier should be in your lineup every week.

• Same faces, new distribution in Philly’s WR room. See what;s got Devonta Smith trending down through five weeks this year.

• Vikings WR Justin Jefferson placed on injured reserve, won’t rush back from injury if he doesn’t have to

  • Things went from zero to twenty, and then all the way up to a hundred overnight Monday into Tuesday, with fantasy managers waking up to news that the best player in their lineups would be out for at least four weeks with a hamstring injury. Evidently, things are bad enough that the team felt it necessary to move him to IR without hesitation. That would suggest that Jefferson could miss a few games beyond the four weeks he’s slated to miss – no team would move arguably their best player to IR in such a short time frame unless there was a clear and definite chance for him to miss an extended period of time. In his absence, it’s the expectation that K.J. Osborn and rookie Jordan Addison could see expanded roles in the Vikings offense. However, don’t be surprised if Minnesota would start to lean a bit heavier on the ground game to make up for what they lost with Jefferson being sidelined for the foreseeable future.

• Cardinals RB James Conner expected to miss multiple weeks with knee injury suffered in Week 5

  • After a down week against the division rival 49ers in Week 4, Conner played less than just 25% of the team’s snaps in week 5 before going down with a knee injury. That left fantasy managers with a hole in their lineup for last week’s matchup, and this news leaves them without a solid RB2 in the short term. Conner was the workhorse in a Cardinals offense that had largely been exceeding expectations five weeks into the season, and his departure will certainly free up some valuable work in the Arizona backfield. Despite Keaontay Ingram’s presence, the expectation is for undrafted rookie Emari Demercado to handle a significant amount of the displaced touches for the Cardinals, making him an intriguing waiver wire add with the potential to be more than just a one-week rental at the position.

• Dolphins rookie RB Devon Achane could potentially land on injured reserve with knee injury

  • Not even the NFL’s most explosive running back in 2023 could outrun the slew of injuries that befell many a fantasy star early this week. Achane missed some time late in the Dolphin's’ Week 5 matchup with the Giants, but no concern was raised until Monday when he received an injury designation. As of the writing of this newsletter, there is no definitive timetable outlining how much time he could miss (if any) or when we could expect him to return from any absence. However, Achane’s injury comes coincidentally with the presumed return of RB Jeff Wilson Jr. to Miami’s backfield, which could allow the Dolphins to sustain two fantasy relevant running backs as planned moving forward, even without Achane. The running back to have on your roster remains as Raheem Mostert, obviously – but in a familiar offense with the capability to score a lot of points, Wilson could have an inside track to some instant, high-quality opportunity. He’s a waiver wire add.

• SELL WR DeAndre Hopkins, TEN

  He’s a screaming sell after having by far his best game in a Titans uniform. What was the number one issue we had with Hopkins going to Tennessee coming into the season? It wasn’t his talent or his ability to demand targets - he did that in Houston, he did it in Arizona, and surprise surprise, he’s doing it again with the Titans. The problem is that the Titans are one of the least, if not the least, fantasy conducive passing offenses in the league.

• I mean, it’s not rocket science to see that he’s suffering because of his situation: the guy has a 30% target share on the season, 43% air yards share, and 29% targets per route run, but just one top-35 performance to show for it - this past week against the exploitable Colts secondary.

• Data gathered by Dwain McFarland over at fantasy life tells us that a 25% target share and 31% air yards share is indicative of WR1 production, and Hopkins is blowing those out of the water - so what gives? The truth is, a 30% target share in Tennessee is a lot different from a 30% target share in Minnesota, like Justin Jefferson has, or a 30% target share on the Chargers, like Keenan Allen has. Before last week, he had catch totals of 4, 3, and 4 in his past three games.

• And these next three weeks? Tough matchup against Baltimore in Week 6, a bye in week 7, and another tough matchup against Atlanta in Week 8. Capitalize on his value and go chase a better receiver in a better situation, even if you have to package him up with a side piece to do it.

• BUY RB Kyren Williams

  The awesome thing about this guy is that even when he has a bad week, the utilization is still really good to the point that you don’t feel that bad about the low production. I mean, how successful did we expect Kyren Williams to be in a game against a tough Eagles front and in a game where they were playing from behind? If Williams would have scored a touchdown, there wouldn’t be an opening to buy him this week going into a solid stretch of games that features two back-to-back matchups against teams inside the top-12 for most points allowed to the position (Arizona this week is allowing the 4th-most to RBs, by the way - the Rams play them this week).

• He’s still got a stranglehold on the work in the backfield, and he took a season-high 92% of the team’s RB carries against the Eagles while also putting up a 76% route participation - so nothing’s changed from a utilization standpoint. But two quiet games out of three since Week 3 could be enough to give his current manager cold feet, and you can take advantage of that if they’re open to selling.

• SELL TE Dalton Schultz, HOU

  Boy, did Schultz do you a solid or what by coming through two weeks in a row? He’s been the PPR tight end 4 and 5 in Weeks 4 and 5 oddly enough, and he’s also scored in both games.

• The difference between the two finishes? He saw just three targets in Week 4, but 10 targets in Week 5. That’s great, and if you look at his game log on fantasy life’s utilization report, 40% targets per route run and 33% target share in Week 5 look really good, too. But those stats are pulled out of context, and when we consider how he got to that production and utilization, suddenly things don’t look as good.

• He wasn’t seeing a route participation nearly high enough to be in the conversation as a weekly option at tight end through Weeks 1-4 – just 68%. His target share, too, was way too low at just 11% - not good. Now, he did see a 71% route participation in Week 5 - but that was with Tank Dell out of the lineup for most of the game (and Dell had a 17% target share in the games he was healthy for and played all the way through).

• Dell should only be out at max a week with his concussion, at which point he’ll jump back into the lineup and probably tank your Schultz stock. I’m selling high on a player that had no value two weeks ago, but thanks to back to back performances with a score, can be moved as a legit asset with value today.

The Eagles have one of the best 1-2 punches at wide receiver in the NFL with A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith, and they’ve made it a point of emphasis to get them the ball early and often this season. While both receivers have had their games through the first five weeks of 2023, A.J. Brown has taken stronger command of the target share this season than what we saw last year in Philly.

Through five weeks in 2022, the gap in target share between Brown and Smith sat at just 2.6%, with Brown registering a 25.2% target share vs. Smith’s 22.6%. By the end of the 2022 season, that margin shrank to just 0.6% (Brown finished with a 25.4% target share to Smith’s 24.8%). That allowed Smith to finish as the WR14 in points per game, while Brown finished as the WR8.

Things have shaken out quite differently in 2023, though: through five weeks this season, the margin in target share between Smith and Brown is sitting at a cool 10.8% – more than four times as large a gap as the one that existed between the two receivers last year. Just like last year, A.J. Brown is the current WR8 in fantasy points per game… while Devonta Smith sits much lower in the hierarchy, checking in as just the WR34 on the season.