The talent is there, but the question surrounding Jay Ajayi is whether his knees will hold up
Mo Brewington provides dynasty league risers and fallers following Week 7.
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Week 7 is in the books. Most of you are at the halfway point of your 2016 fantasy football seasons. As your league’s playoff picture begins to come into focus, you realize one of two things. Either it’s time to make a deal that puts your team over the top, or it’s time to start selling off players who are not in your dynasty plans moving forward.
Perhaps you need to boost your scoring output. Or maybe, you’d like to start stacking up draft picks for next season’s rebuild.
In either event, we’re going to talk about a handful of players you might find of interest. Let’s have a look at Week 7’s Dynasty Risers & Fallers and see what’s in store for the future.
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Michael Thomas (WR – NO): RISER
Newsflash, there may be a new number one receiver in the “Big Easy” by season’s end. Michael Thomas is gaining confidence and instilling it in his quarterback at the same time.
Drew Brees is learning to depend on Thomas, who’s catching 73% of his targets this season. In fact, the rookie wideout has garnered nine or more targets in half of his games to date.
Thomas has four more receptions than Brandin Cooks this season, although he has played one more game than Cooks has this year. With Thomas currently listed as WR18 in PPR, while Cooks sits at WR14, the Saints are one of five teams with a pair of wideouts inside the top 24. That WR18 ranking also makes Thomas the highest scoring rookie wide receiver heading into Week 8.
The Saints’ remaining 10 opponents include four you might consider to have imposing pass defenses. Yet with Brees at the helm, owners can still have confidence in the New Orleans passing attack. For dynasty purposes, you should be actively pursuing Michael Thomas, despite any uncertainty you may feel about the future of his 37-year-old QB.
Brees appears as effective as ever. Thomas looks to be on the verge of elite status. If he and Brees can share the field for another season, or two after this one, you will reap some serious rewards.
Jay Ajayi (RB – MIA): RISER
This week, Arian Foster decided to step away from the game, betrayed by a body, which couldn’t keep up with his Hall of Fame talent. Even if Foster had chosen to play out the 2016 campaign, it wasn’t likely he would have taken much away from Jay Ajayi after the performance Miami’s second-year back has put forth over the last fortnight. Ajayi has rushed for 418 yards on a staggering 54 carries over his last two games.
The Dolphins’ timeshare appeared to be moving in his direction after the team’s week five loss to Tennessee. Now, after knocking off the Steelers and Bills in consecutive weeks on the strength of Ajayi’s running ability, there’s no question he is Miami’s bell cow.
It’s obvious the ‘Phins have found a successful formula and will ride it out for as long as it wins games. This is great news for Ajayi owners. There is a big, bright orange “Buyer Beware” sticker attached to Ajayi’s recent success, however.
Many are familiar with the chronic “bone-on-bone” knee condition, which kept Ajayi from being among the top RBs selected in the 2015 NFL Draft, despite being rated as one of the most NFL ready runners in his class. It wasn’t an active injury. Ajayi played 38 games from 2012 through 2014 for Boise State, an average of nearly 13 per year.
To this day, he remains the only player in FBS history to rush for 1,800 yards while gaining over 500 yards through the air in a single season. Yet, NFL teams were so fearful of the knee issue that they selected 13 running backs ahead of Ajayi, who didn’t come off the board until Round 5.
Dynasty owners have to be cognizant of chronic, reoccurring injuries, but they can’t be so scared of them that they miss out on great players. Owners should pursue Ajayi at a reasonable price point and ride him for all he’s worth. If a trend emerges where Ajayi starts to regularly miss practice time, you should be on alert.
If he begins to miss games, that might be your cue to divest. Even this is a risky strategy, seeing as most of us have very spotty medical backgrounds, but we do the best with the information we have. Watch him closely and hope for more breakout performances in the meantime.
Jordy Nelson (WR – GB): FALLER
In the last three weeks, Nelson’s targets have declined from 13, to seven and then to four against Chicago last Thursday night. While all the hoopla surrounds Ty Montgomery and Davante Adams, who could have each made this list as “RISERS” this week, the only thing Nelson has received is the short end of the stick. Overall, he’s still hanging just outside of WR2 range in PPR, and could very well have a string of big games in the coming weeks.
Considering his age, plus the amount of growing baby boys developing in the Packers’ offense
who will need to be fed more as time goes on, and finally his injury history, now may a good time to start thinking about moving Nelson for younger prospects. If you’re holding Nelson and your team is out of contention, he is exactly the type of player you should be looking to dump on a contender hungry for depth as they make their playoff push.
Zach Ertz (TE – PHI): FALLER
Despite being hyped up every preseason, Ertz is developing a knack for slow starts over the last two years. His 11 receptions for 131 yards is an abysmal total, even if injury has forced him to miss three of the Eagles’ seven games in 2016. More troubling is the fact Ertz has been targeted just 16 times in the four games he has played and only three times in each of the past two weeks.
Ertz has two catches in those last two contest. The only encouraging fact is that he has gained 22 and 14 yards respectively, on those two catches.
The thought heading into 2016 was that the Eagles’ new head coach, Doug Pederson, would run a tight end friendly attack. In total, the Birds’ trio of tight ends has compiled 25 receptions on 41 targets for 290 yards and one score. Those numbers would be great if they belonged to one player, but they don’t.
It’s difficult to imagine the team abandoning their best tight end for much longer. The lack of a connection between Ertz and rookie QB Carson Wentz could be due to the fact that Wentz spent the entire summer working with the second team, while Ertz ran with the ones, who were lead by former Eagle Sam Bradford at the time. Throw the three preseason games missed by Wentz on top of the three regular season games missed by Ertz and you can draw a conclusion that these two players simply haven’t had enough time to get on the same page.
Many remember the way Ertz caught fire at the end of 2015, catching 35 balls for 450 yards over the final four games. The talent is there. Dynasty owners looking for a buy low flyer at tight end, (i.e. all of us) who could pay big dividends over the second half of the season should be looking to acquire Ertz on the cheap before he has that breakout performance and his price skyrockets. Once he and Wentz do establish a connection, it may be off to the record books, as both players will likely be in Eagle green for many years to come.
Chris Hogan (WR – NE): FALLER
A few weeks ago, Hogan was listed as a RISER in this column due to the potential of he and Tom Brady hitting it off on the right foot. It appeared they had done just that in Brady’s return to action, in week four. That week, Hogan posted a 4/114 stat line. It looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. In the two weeks since, Hogan has been targeted just three times, catching all three of those passes for 64 yards, but failing to find the end zone, or earn any further work.
Last week, Hogan committed the cardinal sin for any ball carrier, which is magnified times 10 when playing for Bill Belichick. He fumbled the football, leading to a Pittsburgh recovery and rare Patriot turnover. Brady didn’t look the receiver’s way for the rest of the game, as Hogan got his first taste of exile in a Pats’ uniform.
Hogan remains second on the team in yards per reception with a strong 20 YPC average that trails only Rob Gronkowski’s 22.1 YPC. Next week, the Patriots will face Hogan’s old team, the Bills, in Buffalo. You can bet the wideout is busting his tail as we speak to get back in Brady’s good graces.
Whether it’s a fact or not, it seems like teams go out of their way to give players a chance to show up their old teams. With one loss to Rex Ryan’s Bills already in the books this season, there’s a good chance the Pats look to not only win but to set the Bills’ organization back to the stone age, while simultaneously shorting out the scoreboard.
Hogan remains a worthy roster stash who is learning the Patriot way, the hard way. Dynasty owners with an under-performing player on their roster might look to add Hogan this week and see if he can begin to carve out a niche in the offense.
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