Week 14 Hitchhiker's Guide

Surveying a big week for contingent RBs

Hey folks,

A couple housekeeping content updates on what to expect for the late-season:

1. The Dynasty Rankings are fully updated as of yesterday. A post just went out with the link for paid subscribers yesterday.

2. This will be the last Hitchhiker’s Guide of the season. As I did last year, I will write up tiered rankings of all RBs for each of the playoff weeks.

3. I’ll have team-by-team analysis articles up next week for Playoff Best Ball.

4. Once the regular season ends I will have a piece on the FFPC Playoff Challenge.

5. Once the regular season ends I will also have a major dynasty rankings update to reflect the beginning of #StartupSZN

6. Lastly, I will have a reflections / lessons learned post a couple weeks after the season.

7. As usual, I will take a break from content for about 4-6 weeks in the early off-season. I understand of course that some monthly subscribers will cancel during that time and many with the intent of re-subscribing come the NFL draft. This is of course totally reasonable, although I will remind you that subscribing annually is cheaper than subscribing monthly from the draft through the regular season.

8. In late February and March my hope is to provide some evergreen strategy content for dynasty, some NFL commentary, or anything else that inspires to get behind the keyboard.

9. In April we will be back in full swing pre-draft content as always.

WEEK 14 STORYLINES

Carolina Panthers

Jonathon Brooks played just five snaps in his Week 12 debut. But that number tripled in Week 13. While on the surface, 15 snaps is hardly dissimilar to the “Miles Sanders role” he’s taking over, the way he was used and how he looked portends more usage in the future. He was featured on the 2nd drive of the game and given 9 touches to Chuba Hubbard’s 12 (on 55 snaps). He also had all 3 backfield targets.

Some of that is random sequencing but there was clear intent to get him the ball when on the field. He looked fine in the run game but had his best moment on an 18 yard reception where he evaded multiple tacklers.

Also a positive development for the rookie was that Hubbard lost a crucial fumble in overtime that ultimately cost them the win. Hubbard has been too good this year to lose his job entirely over a fumble. But part of my read on this situation has been that the team would like to get Brooks — their round 2 pick whom they traded up for — more involved but have a hard time justifying demoting Hubbard when he’s been the best player on their team this year. It wouldn’t surprise me if the snaps narrow toward 60:40 this week or shortly after.