An important aspect of fantasy football is getting ahead of the curve in player values. We've listed and highlighted some players who show a change in value and let you know what to do with them in Week 10's "Three Up, Three Down" article.
Three Up
James Conner: Let’s start this off with the no-brainer of the week. Conner had been crushing fantasy football projections, but his production was bolstered by what looked like an unsustainable touchdown rate. In Week 9, Chase Edmonds went down with an ankle injury, and Conner turned in the best outing of his career, racking up 173 yards and three scrimmage touchdowns. Eno Benjamin will assuredly carve out a relief role for himself, but Conner’s 77-percent snap count in Week 9 was the highest we’ve seen from a Cardinals’ running back all season. Conner is on a one-year prove-it deal worth $1.75M, so you’ve got to imagine that he’s frothing at the bit to get a chance to show that he can still handle a heavy workload. He’s just 26 years old, and if he can stay healthy during this stretch, he could end up with a nice offseason payday. As long as Edmonds is on the mend, Conner will be a borderline RB1 as the presumed workhorse back on a powerhouse offense. After his three-touchdown performance last week, Conner leads all skill players in scrimmage touchdowns and will have an opportunity to extend that lead until Edmonds returns.
Donovan Peoples-Jones: The cat was let out of the bag in Week 8 after Peoples-Jones had 101 yards and two touchdowns against the Cardinals. Well, in Week 9, he had another 86 yards and a touchdown, demonstrating what could be the start of a trend. While this could be an apparition after a relatively quiet rookie season, the departure of Odell Beckham Jr could have been due to increased trust from the Cleveland coaching staff in Peoples-Jones. He failed to make the stat sheet in Week 4 and missed Weeks 7-8 to injury, but Peoples-Jones has been a big-play machine over his last few active games. In his previous three outings, he’s seen 14 targets which he has turned into 11 receptions for 257 yards and three touchdowns. In those matchups, he’s seen 62.6-percent of the team’s offensive snaps, the second-highest rate on the team behind Jarvis Landry. We know that extrapolating a small sample size is dangerous, but the output comes out to 18.3 fantasy points per game in PPR leagues, which would be the seventh-most of any wide receiver in the league this year. Looking at his early-season schedule, it’s easy to write off his production, seeing as how he only saw four total targets in his first four games. If his current numbers indicate what to expect for the rest of the season, it’s obvious why Peoples-Jones is trending up.
No OBJ âž¡ï¸ No problem
— The Athletic NFL (@TheAthleticNFL) November 7, 2021
Donovan Peoples-Jones for a 60-yard touchdown from Baker Mayfield. The Browns passing game looks solid so far today.
🎥 @NFL pic.twitter.com/qDy2dNqFI4
Devonta Freeman: There is absolutely risk in rostering or starting any Baltimore Ravens running back, but Freeman seems to have done enough to win over the valuable touches on this squad. To fully digest this running back room, you need to read the tea leaves a bit. Through nine weeks, there have been 14 instances of a Ravens’ running back seeing over 50-percent of the team’s offensive snaps: TySon Williams in Week 1, Latavius Murray in Week 4, and Freeman in Week 9. Williams saw between 49- and 51-percent of the snaps in the first three weeks before his unexpected healthy scratch and subsequently-reduced role in the offense. Murray’s Week 4 outing came during Williams’ scratch week, and it just so happened to be Le’Veon Bell’s first game of the year. Leading up to Freeman’s big Week 9 outing, he had seen increased snaps in five consecutive weeks while Murray’s were decreasing. Williams has been reduced to the lowest man on the totem pole, and Freeman is the youngest of the remaining three. Over the last three weeks, Freeman has seen ten red zone touches. No other back has seen more than five. Over the last four weeks, Freeman has garnered 12 targets. The next closest has seen just five. So not only is Freeman carving out a more prominent role for himself, but he’s seeing the snaps and touches that are most valuable in fantasy football. After finishing as the RB9 last week, he’ll get a lot of attention. But there are trends here that shouldn’t be ignored regarding his usage, and he can earn the quality touches in an explosive offense.
Three Down
Rondale Moore: Moore is a phenomenal athlete and a ton of fun to watch, but last week’s outing should cause some concern. In a game with no DeAndre Hopkins or A.J. Green, the opportunity was there for Moore to step in as a big piece of this Cardinals’ passing attack. Unfortunately, he was held to just five receptions for 25 yards despite playing a season-high 88-percent of the team’s snaps. Looking at his entire year, he’s been relatively disappointing. In Week 2, he hauled in a 77-yard touchdown on a broken play where he was on an island by himself. Outside of that single play, there hasn’t been much to get excited about. His season has been extremely quiet outside of that game, where he finished with 114 yards and a touchdown. Over his other eight games, he’s averaging just 29.8 scoreless yards per outing. Some numbers can be spun in a positive light. He’s getting a lot of yards after the catch, and his yards per route run ranks in the top quarter of wide receivers. But unfortunately, he’s performing as a boom or bust WR4 right now and hasn’t boomed at all in his last seven games. Moore’s elite athleticism and ability to make plays with the ball in his hands make him a fine dynasty stash, but his expectations for the 2021 season should be dropped substantially compared to his offseason hype.
Former Trinity star Rondale Moore just caught a 77-yard touchdown for his first career NFL touchdown. pic.twitter.com/GTdaAD3Ak5
— Tyler Greever (@Tyler_Greever) September 19, 2021
Adrian Peterson: It’s dangerous to judge a player on a one-game sample size, especially a player who hasn’t touched a football in a professional setting in almost a year. However, Peterson got outplayed by his backfield mates in the Titans’ first Derrick Henry-less game of the season. Technically, Peterson led the team in carries and received the sole running back touchdown, which is encouraging to see. But he averaged a miserable 2.1 yards per carry, worst of any other back. DOnta Foreman missed some crucial blocking assignments, potentially hurting his ability to stay on the field. But he looked to be the best runner on Sunday night and had the most efficient statline. Jeremy McNichols led the bunch with a 45-percent target share and three targets. His knowledge of the Tennessee offense and ability in the passing game should keep his role intact. The reason Peterson falls into the “trending down” category is simply that the 36-year-old back is getting outplayed by Foreman, who’s a full 11 years younger. Foreman is a big-bodied bruiser and fits in well with this team’s modus operandi. With Mike Vrabel coming from the Bill Belichick coaching tree, he’s most comfortable rotating a committee of running backs. In Vrabel’s first year as a head coach, it took Henry 12 weeks of dominance to finally run away with the bellcow role, as Vrabel was committed to a timeshare with Dion Lewis. The lead back in this offense will probably be splitting touches, and it’s not even clear who that back will be, which is why Peterson’s trending down after being last week’s waiver wire darling. All of that being said, the backfield is still pretty ambiguous and our Matt Waldman is putting his chips on Peterson. Click here to read his article with a different idea of how this backfield could shake out in Tennessee.
Mike Williams: This felt like the year, didn’t it? After four years of touting Williams as a savvy pick in fantasy football, it felt like it was finally paying off. Through Weeks 1-5, Williams was overall WR2 behind just Cooper Kupp. He averaged a ludicrous 10.2 targets per game, which he was turning into 6.2 receptions, 94.2 yards, and 1.2 touchdowns. Then, a knee injury popped up, and Williams has seen exactly five targets and two receptions in his last three outings, failing to find the end zone. He’s averaging 5.5 fantasy points per game over that stretch, 88th among all wide receivers. Conversely, Keenan Allen has 9.7 targets per game over the last three games and is the WR14 in fantasy points per game. This offseason, Chargers’ new offensive coordinator, Joe Lombardi, said that Mike Williams would play the “X-receiver” role in Los Angeles, similar to what Michael Thomas played in New Orleans. Early in the season, that appeared to be the case. Williams displayed a diversified route tree and was seeing the lowest depth of target throughout his tenure as a pro. Recently though, Williams’ role has been relegated to what we saw early in his career. His routes are taking him further down the field, and he’s commanding fewer looks. The Williams who was seen over the last three weeks is the same guy we’ve seen over the previous four years: a big receiver used on deep routes to make contested catches. That role makes him highly volatile in fantasy football. Because of the dominance, he displayed early in the season, you can’t help but keep him in your starting lineup. But he should be viewed as more of a boom-or-bust WR2 than the high-end WR1 we believed he was early in the season.