Fantasy Football Outlook: Emari Demercado, Roschon Johnson, D’Onta Foreman, Chuba Hubbard

If it’s been a rough start to the season for you, by all means, feel free to shake your fist at the heavens and curse the fantasy gods for smiting you. But fight on, friends. None of us have been mathematically eliminated from the fantasy playoffs yet. Miracles do happen.

Fight on.

Here are my tiers and rankings for the week. Below we dive into a few notable players.

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Fantasy Football Outlook

I was all set to add Emari Demercado to my Serie A fantasy soccer team. Then I realized he was actually an NFL running back. But seriously … there’s been debate among the fantasy intelligentsia about which Cardinals RB will have more value while James Conner is on IR — Demercado or Keaontay Ingram. Demercado had 10-45-1 rushing and 1-12-0 receiving against the Bengals last week. He’s an undrafted rookie free agent who backed up Kendre Miller at TCU last year. Demercado has good size (5-9, 215) and speed (4.49) and posted some impressive yardage-after-contact metrics in college. Ingram is returning from a neck injury. The Arizona depth chart lists him No. 2 behind Conner, and some fantasy analysts believe that’s why he’ll be a more valuable fantasy asset than Demercado. That may indeed be true. The reason I have Demercado ranked slightly higher this week is that it’s possible Ingram’s snaps are managed in his first game back from injury. Most likely we’ll see something close to a 50/50 workload split. Given the limitations of the Arizona offense, I wouldn’t be eager to start either guy vs. the Rams.

The Bears’ RB situation is interesting. Khalil Herbert is expected to miss multiple weeks with an ankle injury. Roschon Johnson has been Chicago’s No. 2, but he sustained a concussion last week, leaving his Week 6 status uncertain. (The Bears played on Thursday night in Week 5, giving Roschon a little extra recovery time.) Free-agent acquisition D’Onta Foreman has been a healthy scratch in each of Chicago’s last four games but will almost surely be active this week. Foreman doesn’t catch passes, so he needs a lot of fantasy carries to provide fantasy value. If Roschon can’t go, Foreman might get heavy volume against the Vikings. The forecast is calling for wind and rain Sunday in Chicago — mudder weather that could suit Foreman well. I’m projecting Roschon to play and ranking him as a midrange RB3, with Foreman as a high-end RB4. But if Roschon is out, I’ll rank Foreman as a high-end RB3.

Miles Sanders has been dealing with a groin injury and didn’t practice for much of last week. He still played against the Lions but was outsnapped by Chuba Hubbard 34-33. Now, Sanders is dealing with a shoulder issue as well, leaving his status for Sunday’s game against the Dolphins up in the air. I’m currently ranking Sanders and Hubbard as midrange RB3s. If Sanders is out, Hubbard will ascend into low-end RB2 range in a favorable matchup against a Miami defense that ranks 24th in DVOA against the run.

-Pat Fitzmaurice