Fantasy Football Outlook: DeAndre Hopkins, Tutu Atwell, Adam Thielen, Jahan Dotson

Let’s plunge into Week 4. As always, feel free to use these tiered rankings as a tiebreaker for your difficult lineup decisions. Beneath the tiers, I’ll offer a few brief thoughts on some of the borderline start/sit guys and some other interesting cases. Here are my full fantasy football rankings and tiers for Week 4. Below we’ll dive into a few notable players.

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Fitz’s Fantasy Football Week 4 Outlook

Unfortunately, there is no decoder to help us figure out when to bail out on a proven stud who isn’t producing. DeAndre Hopkins has been a star for most of his career. He’s 31, but game tape doesn’t suggest that Hopkins is teetering over the age cliff. His stat lines from his first three games: 7-65-0, 4-40-0, 3-48-0. Not great, Bob. The Titans’ quarterbacking and offensive line play have been the problems. Hopkins is commanding a zesty 30.9% target share. Usage is not the issue. Although the QB and OL problems aren’t going away for Tennessee, I don’t think they’ll completely torpedo Hopkins’ production. Stick with the star receiver despite the frustrating recent production.

I thought the 5-9, 165-pound Tutu Atwell would be a gadget player/kick returner for the entirety of his career. But three games into his third NFL season, Atwell is among the league leaders in routes run, he’s drawn at least eight targets in every game, and he’s WR12 in half-point PPF fantasy scoring. Atwell has become a weekly must-start — at least until Cooper Kupp returns from his hamstring injury.

Revenge-game narratives can get a little stale, but I’m admittedly intrigued by Adam Thielen’s return to his native Minnesota. Thielen played college football at Minnesota State and spent nine seasons with the Vikings, but the Vikes elected not to re-sign him in free agency. Now with the Panthers, Thielen has cranked out 18-199-2 on 23 targets over his last two games. This week, he’ll face a Vikings defense that has allowed the third-most receiving yards and third-most fantasy points to opposing WRs. Thielen is a compelling fantasy play this week, though I actually would have felt better about him with Andy Dalton at quarterback for the Panthers rather than rookie Bryce Young. With Young sidelined by a concussion last week, Thielen had 11-145-1 with Dalton at QB.

Jahan Dotson’s talent is legit, but his early-season production has been disheartening. He has 10-83-0 on 16 targets, and he hasn’t had more than 40 receiving yards in a game. It’s not as if Dotson is being ignored in the Washington offense — his 16 targets are tied with Terry McLaurin for the team lead. But Dotson’s efficiency numbers are gross. After averaging 14.9 yards per catch and 8.6 yards per target as a rookie, Dotson is averaging 8.3 yards per catch and 5.2 yards per target in Year 2. Commanders QB Sam Howell only seems to be seeking out Dotson on his shorter routes. Dotson’s average depth of target last year was 13.5 yards. So far this year: 7.4 yards. I don’t think Dotson breaks out of his slump this week vs. a tough Eagles pass defense. Keep him on your bench this week and reinsert him against the Bears next week.

-Pat Fitzmaurice