Week 7 Sunday Drive

The Line of Demercado bends toward justice

Welcome back for another spin through the galaxy. Let’s dive right in!

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NOTE: utilization data is from Nathan Jahnke of PFF. All qualitative data is from the FantasyPoints Data Suite unless otherwise sourced with exception of the following: Rush Yards over Expected (RYOE) and Percentage of Rushes over Expectation (ROE%) are sourced from NFL Next Gen Stats. PFF Grades and Yards per Route Run are from PFF. BAE Rating and Relative Success Rate (RSR) are from Noah Hills. Juke Rate is from PlayerProfiler.

SEE: “Metrics Legend” at the bottom for an explanation of each stat and its acronym

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1. INJURIES AND FALL OUT

Saints

Thursday Night Football was the first game all year with New Orleans’ three heavily-invested in running backs all available. However, word came out that was only partially true as Kendre Miller was dealing with a “shoulder issue” and Jamaal Williams was on a pitch count.

As a result, Alvin Kamara completely dominated touches and racked up 14 targets. However, it wasn’t all rosy. Kamara has not showed off much efficiency on the ground (or frankly through the air) this year, and had a tough goal-line series where he was stuffed on three straight plays. Most goal-line stuffs are a combination of O-Line play and RB play, but Kamara has never been a renowned short yardage option while Jamaal Williams is coming off a 17-TD season. Whether it’s Kamara’s fault or not you have to wonder if the big fella gets more looks in close as the season goes along.

Kamara also had some rough plays in pass protection, missing key assignments. A couple of them get broken down in this excellent QB School package. We talked pre-season about Kamara’s pass protection grades being near-league worst the past two seasons: it’s not a strength of his.

Don’t get me wrong: Kamara is going to see a high target share in this offense moving forward and will be an every-week start. But if people look at this game and think even with a full three-man backfield Kamara is back to 2017-2020 Kamara… I’m not counting on it to necessarily be the case all year long. This would be a time I’d look to place him on the block and see what I could fetch.

Is a late 1st gettable in dynasty? Maybe a 2025 or 2026 1st? What if you add a throw-in? Could you perhaps move him to nab a Josh Downs, Tank Dell, or Rashee Rice?

Don’t just sell to sell though: he’s going to be a very useful asset.

All this being said, I would check in on Kendre Miller. It’s funny I’ve kept the light on for him this long after mostly disparaging him pre-draft but I’ve always felt his profile had a lot of upside to it and I’ve loved what I’ve seen on the field. Regardless of what happens this year Kamara is not a long-term road block and they are short on draft capital and picks. Hard to think Miller doesn’t at least see a speculative value bump one day. Target him at Early-3rd type value as part of a package for any expiring veteran you’re looking to send away.

Rams

We got our answer (for now) on the new-look Rams backfield and for this week it was Darrell Henderson. I watched this game closely and for the most part it seemed Henderson started the game and mostly rotated drives evenly with Royce Freeman from there. They each played snaps in every game situation. For that reason, I would view these two as closer to equal than perhaps the end-line numbers look after Henderson found the end-zone.

That being said, Henderson is the “new arrival” so if any player was being slow-played here you’d expect it to be him. For now, both are Flex plays with a slight lean to Henderson. It may never happen for Zach Evans which is unfortunate but … that’s what often happens with Round 6 picks. Can’t win ‘em all.

Lions

David Montgomery was out and that’s why the Lions lost by 32.

Just Kidding.

Jahmyr Gibbs was playing nearly every snap from the word go in this game and running a very creative route tree. I texted a friend at halftime that it was too bad the Lions would be resting their starters halfway through the third quarter because it seemed Gibbs was going to have a smash game from the way he was being used.

While the Lions never got back in the game they kept all their key starters in to the bitter end in an act of admirable sacrifice for the Fantasy Community. Gibbs and St. Brown both feasted in garbage time, with the former racking up 46 (!!!) routes run and 10 targets to go along with an efficient rushing day and a score.

I’m not sure how much to take away from this game since it was no competitive so suddenly. But I wanted to emphasize that:

A) Gibbs was playing in all situations all game long, which was a legitimate change from his Week 3 spot start

B) the game plan was suited to his strengths, with Gibbs receiving draws, tosses and sweeps to get him moving outside. I thought he looked the best he had all season as a runner, with a couple patient inside runs on the first drive of the 3rd quarter, and some blazing speed on his TD on an outside toss.

C) Gibbs was running an extremely complex route tree for a back, catching a pass on a screen, a wheel and several choice routes, while receiving primary reads lined up as a receiver sprinkled throughout the game. He’s a very natural receiver and that was on display even prior to the true garbage time check-down swing passes he piled up in the 4th quarter.

I’m not sure his role when Montgomery comes back will be meaningfully different than it’s been so far this year except to say what I’ve been trying to emphasize for a while: he’s going to have games where the script is in his favour and he’s going to have massive upside when that happens. The Lions showed here they know what they have in the player in terms of how to use him, even if he won’t be used this *much* moving forward.

Packers

Aaron Jones came back again but was on a snap-count per the broadcast and wound up capped at 25 reps. Expect that to scale up and for him to eventually be a high-end weekly RB2.

Bears

Roschon Johnson was again surprisingly inactive which means D’Onta Foreman again split with Darrynton Evans. However, this week he found the end zone THREE TIMES!

I said this last week about Foreman:

Because he offers virtually nothing in the receiving game, he can either make you feel very dumb for fading him or very dumb for playing him in any week he’s a streaming option since his skillset is so limited and dependent on game script and TD luck.

Well we sure hit both ends of that spectrum in his two-week run as a starter. It’s been confirmed now that Roschon Johnson is back in action this week and I still expect him to take the lead half of a committee with Foreman. Johnson is the more versatile player in a game the Bears project to play from behind in vs. the Chargers. With Tyson Bagent posting an ADOT of two in his first start, look for Johnson to rack up the targets in the second half.