Waiver Wire Targets Week 4

Waiver Wire Targets

We are now in the thick of the fantasy football season. The injuries are now starting to pile up as well. This gives us some options to explore at running back and wide receiver to add to our rosters. Snap shares, targets, and usage patterns have now begun to develop. After three weeks, what may have been a blip in Week 1 can now be identified as a trend. Whether you’re 0-3, 3-0, or anything in between, now is not the time to get complacent. Make sure you are hitting the waiver wire. Make sure you are still putting in bids on the players listed below (or others). You want to keep trying to improve your roster every week, whether that’s through waiver wire acquisitions or by making trades (Fantasydata has you covered there as well).

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QB Waiver Wire Targets

After suggesting four quarterbacks to pick up last week, I don’t want to spend much time on the quarterback position. I do want to note that Derek Carr is still available in 48% of Sleeper leagues and 50% of ESPN leagues. Pick him up! Kirk Cousins, the QB5 in PPG entering Monday Night Football, is also available in 37% of Sleeper leagues and 67% of ESPN leagues.

RB Waiver Wire Targets

Chuba Hubbard

Carolina Panthers (41% Sleeper Rostership / 11.4% ESPN Rostership)

Sometimes there’s a slam dunk, no doubt about it; number one, spend all the FAAB you have (maybe even trade for some more FAAB and spend that too), player you have to win on your waivers. This is that time. Chuba Hubbard is that player. Once Christian McCaffrey went down with his hamstring injury Hubbard stepped into the primary running back role for the Panthers. We know that McCaffrey is expected to miss at least a few weeks and possibly longer.

#Panthers star RB Christian McCaffrey is expected to miss a few weeks, sources say, as the team continues to run tests on his hamstring injury suffered last night. IR is not the plan as of now. Rookie Chuba Hubbard is the next man up.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) September 24, 2021

Hubbard had 11 rushing attempts (52 yards), and his five targets were tied for second-most for the Panthers Thursday night. Overall, Hubbard had 16 opportunities compared to the six for Royce Freeman. Most importantly (in PPR leagues), Hubbard was clearly the passing-down back as he out-targeted Freeman five to one. While it’s possible that the Panthers could split the usage more evenly in the future, I find that highly unlikely for multiple reasons. One is that the Panthers just went through this situation last year, and Mike Davis dominated the snap share.

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The Panthers also spent a fourth-round draft pick on Hubbard in April’s NFL draft, while Freeman was signed as a free agent after being cut by the Broncos during the pre-season. Lastly, there’s the fact that Hubbard is ideally suited for a three-down role, as his college career (courtesy of Sports-Reference) shows. Excluding a COVID shortened 2020 season, Hubbard exceeded 20 receptions in his other two college seasons while carrying a full workload of rushing attempts.

No other player can provide the same fantasy production as Christian McCaffrey. Still, Mike Davis averaged 15.4 points per game, filling in for McCaffrey last year, and Hubbard is infinitely more talented than Davis.

Royce Freeman

Carolina Panthers (0% Sleeper Rostership / 0.1% ESPN Rostership)

Look, not every one of you reading this is going to get Hubbard off waivers this week. But you can, and should, still pick up a Carolina running back. Royce Freeman displayed a three-down skillset way back in his college days at Oregon, even though he’s been a complete bust at the NFL level, he’s just a play away from getting one more chance. Add Freeman him this week, while everyone is rightly focused on adding Hubbard, rather than scrambling later to add him should Hubbard fumble away this starting opportunity or goes down to injury as well. Opportunity is king at the running back position. If Freeman ends up with opportunity, he will be fantasy viable, maybe not at the same level as Hubbard, but he would at least provide some flex appeal.

Cordarrelle Patterson

Atlanta Falcons (66% Sleeper Rostership / 59.9% ESPN Rostership)

As a pure running back, Cordarrelle Patterson doesn’t provide much fantasy production, though it should be noted his yards per attempt (4.0) is better than current starting running back Mike Davis’s (3.8). He has seven rushing attempts each of the first three games of the season for a total of 85 rushing yards. But it’s not Patterson’s rushing usage that makes him a viable PPR running back, it’s his receiving work. Patterson has put together two straight weeks with at least seven targets and five receptions. This past Sunday, his 82 receiving yards led the Falcons, and his seven targets were second-most. The week prior, against the Bucs, he hauled in five receptions, including a touchdown on his way to scoring 23.9 fantasy points, and is now averaging 16.3 PPG after this Sunday’s 16.2 points performance. If early-season injuries have left you in need of a weekly flex option, you could do worse than Patterson.

Peyton Barber

Las Vegas Raiders (7% Sleeper Rostership / 11.3% ESPN Rostership)

Keep an eye on the practice reports for Josh Jacobs this week. If he’s unable to go again this week, that means Peyton Barber will get another start for the Raiders. Anyone who rosters Kenyan Drake had to hope that without Jacobs able to go, Drake would see a huge increase in rushing work, but that has not been the case. In two games without Jacobs, Barber has 36 rushing attempts compared to 15 for Drake. Barber is not sexy and isn’t a player I really want to start, but it’s hard to ignore a running back that just had 23 rushing attempts and 111 rushing yards on the week.

If you play in dynasty leagues, go pick up J.J. Taylor. James White suffered a dislocated hip on Sunday and will miss multiple weeks. Damien Harris is unlikely to pick up the passing game role that White owned in the Patriots offense, and that role is likely to fall to Taylor.

WR Waiver Wire Targets

Cole Beasley

Buffalo Bills (67% Sleeper Rostership / 68.3% ESPN Rostership)

If you thought that the addition of Emmanuel Sanders and the presumed ascension of Gabe Davis would be an issue for Cole Beasley in 2021, you would be incorrect thus far. The Bills have run plenty of three wide receiver sets, and the odd man out has Davis, with Beasley averaging 17 more snaps per game than Davis. Beasley set career highs in targets, receptions, and receiving yards his first season in Buffalo, and he’s on pace to best those totals again through three games in 2021. Beasley led the Bills in targets Sunday with 13, the second time in three games, he’s seen 13 targets. He caught 11 of those targets for 98 yards and has now had at least 60 receiving yards in two of three games played this year. In short, Beasley is still an internal part of the Bills offense. The next couple of weeks line up nicely for wide receiver production as Beasley faces the Texans and then the Chiefs. Though I’d be uncomfortable with Beasley as anything more than a WR3/Flex play, he’s an excellent option for those slots.

Tim Patrick

Denver Broncos (36% Sleeper Rostership / 14% ESPN Rostership)

Tim Patrick has nine targets, eight receptions, and 135 receiving yards in two games without Jerry Jeudy playing. Courtland Sutton has seen 17 targets, 14 receptions, and 196 receiving yards in those same two games. Though Sutton may be the wide receiver you most desire right now, he’s not available in 65% to 86% of your leagues, but Tim Patrick is. After a fairly quiet Week 2, Patrick snagged all five of his targets for 98 receiving yards this week. Jeudy is expected to miss at least four more weeks, leaving Patrick the undisputed second receiver on the Broncos. There’s every reason to believe that Patrick could see an increase in his production in the next few weeks as well. The Broncos have yet to be in a position where they’ve needed to pass a lot, playing the Jets and Jaguars the past two weeks, but business picks up over the next three weeks, which should lead to the need for more passing yards to keep pace. They face the Ravens, Steelers, and the Raiders over the next three games. The Broncos also lost wide receiver, K.J. Hamler for the season on Sunday, further concentrating the target share in Denver, which is great news for Patrick.

Bryan Edwards

Las Vegas Raiders (37% Sleeper Rostership / 13.8% ESPN Rostership)

Bryan Edwards leads the NFL with 163 receiving yards (on seven catches) in the fourth quarter and OT of games this season.

Second in the NFL?

Henry Ruggs III with 130 yards (on five catches). #Raiders

— Jimmy Durkin (@Jimmy_Durkin) September 27, 2021

The above Tweet might be my favorite stat of all time. Bryan Edwards is a clutch NFL wide receiver. When the game matters the most, Derek Carr knows he can rely on Edwards to make a big play. Edwards sees a consistent 74% of snaps for the Raiders, and though he only has 13 targets on the season, he is turning in huge plays averaging 21 yards per reception on the year. If Edwards sees a slight uptick in target volume, he could start putting up some low-end WR2 weeks.

Jakobi Meyers

New England Patriots (65% Sleeper Rostership / 59.9% ESPN Rostership)

On a day when the Patriots were down for most of the game, heavily so, Mac Jones was forced to attempt 51 passes. The biggest beneficiary of those targets was Jakobi Meyers, who was targeted 14 times, with nine receptions and 94 receiving yards. You shouldn’t expect 14 targets a week or a 27.5% target share every week for Meyers, but so far, Meyer’s seems to be Mac Jones’s favorite target. He’s been on the field for over 90% of the offensive snaps every week, and through the first two weeks, Meyers was targeted on a team-leading 15 targets (22.7%) of pass attempts. The ceiling isn’t especially high, but Meyer’s does provide a decent floor exceeding 10.4 fantasy points in two of three games this year.

Michael Pittman

Indianapolis Colts (84% Sleeper Rostership / 72.7% ESPN Rostership)

Michael Pittman is by far the most targeted wide receiver on the Colts roster, out targeting Zach Pascal 28-18 through the first three weeks. After a relatively quiet Week 1, Pittman has been targeted 12 times in back-to-back weeks. This week he was only able to secure six of those targets for 68 receiving yards, you still can’t ignore the volume. The Colts struggled as an offense with Carson Wentz playing on multiple injured ankles (all of them, all his ankles are injured), and as long as Pittman continues to see this volume, we should expect better scoring weeks going forward. Pittman is the big-bodied (6’4″, 223 lbs) receiving option that Wentz loves to utilize, similar to Alshon Jeffery during Wentz’s time with the Eagles. He’s only available in a small percentage of leagues, and you need to make sure one of the leagues he is available in isn’t yours.

Kadarius Toney / Collin Johnson

New York Giants (11% Sleeper Rostership / 2.9% ESPN Rostership) / (0% Sleeper Rostership / .01% ESPN Rostership)

The Giants had a rough Sunday. They lost to the previously winless Atlanta Falcons to fall to 0-3 and lost starting wide receivers Sterling Shepard and Darius Slayton to hamstring injuries. This should conceivably free up targets for either Kadarius Toney or Collin Johnson. After playing the first two weeks of the year, Toney saw a 66% snap share on Sunday, even if he could only turn that additional playing time into three targets. Collin Johnson played on 49% of snaps, after not playing at all the first two weeks, and turned his time on the field into 51 yards, five receptions, on seven targets. Neither player should be rostered in leagues with short benches, but if you play in deep leagues (or dynasty leagues in Johnson’s case), you should add them to your roster in case Shepard and/or Slayton’s hamstring injuries linger and turn into long-term concerns.

TE Waiver Wire Targets

Dawson Knox

Buffalo Bills (12% Sleeper Rostership / 4.4% ESPN Rostership)

When it comes to tight end scoring, if you can get a touchdown out of one, you’ll likely end up with at least a low-end TE1 on the week, in Week 2 that proved true when Dawson Knox turned in the TE12 week while securing two receptions for 17 yards and the touchdown. After scoring another touchdown and scoring 14.9 fantasy points on the week, Knox will turn in another top 12 scoring week (pending Monday Night Football results) and should move up from the overall TE12 (PPG) he was entering this week. Though Knox won’t likely see a high target share, at least not as long as Stefon Diggs, Emmanuel Sanders, and Cole Beasley are healthy, he sees highly valuable targets. Know is averaging four targets per game, but he has secured all three of his targets within the 20-yard line and converted two of those into touchdowns so far this season. Knox entered this week’s action as the TE12 (PPG) on the season and will likely move up in the ranks even further after another touchdown scoring week.

Tyler Conklin

Minnesota Vikings (8% Sleeper Rostership / 2.6% ESPN Rostership)

After Sunday’s eight-target game Tyler Conklin has been targeted at least four times in every game this season. The fourth-year veteran is on his way to smashing his career-high of 19 receptions set last year with 13 through just three games this year. This week against the Seahawks, he caught seven passes for 70 yards and added a touchdown in what will surely be a top 12 scoring week. It helped Conklin’s cause that Dalvin Cook was forced to miss this week, but Conklin at least showed the Vikings he could handle and thrive with additional targets. The Vikings concentrate their targets between Justin Jefferson, Adam Thielen, and Dalvin Cook. Still, Conklin could certainly carve out a role in an offense that is averaging 39.66 pass attempts and 297 passing yards per week.

Waiver Wire Targets Week 4