Fantasy Football Outlook: Emari Demercado, Roschon Johnson, D’Onta Foreman (Week 9)

Here are my fantasy football rankings and tiers for Week 9. 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.

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Fitz’s Fantasy Football Week 9 Tiers & Rankings

Emari Demercado had 20 carries for the Cardinals last week, but the Cardinals have been unpredictable with the deployment of their backs while James Conner has been out. In Week 6, it was a full-blown committee. In Week 7, it was the Demercado show (80% snap share). In Week 8, it was Demercado leading the way with 42 snaps, but Keaontay Ingram played 28 snaps. Clayton Tune is going to make his first NFL start for the Cardinals, who just traded Josh Dobbs to the Vikings and don’t want to bring back Kyler Murray until Week 10. Presumably, that will limit the potency of the Arizona offense, and Demercado’s matchup is tough. The Cardinals have a road game against the Browns, who have allowed the 11th fewest fantasy points to running backs and are No. 2 in DVOA against the run. I’m fading Demercado despite his hefty workload the last two weeks.

People seem eager to climb aboard the Roschon Johnson bandwagon. Uh, maybe I’ll just take a cab instead. Roschon came back from a concussion and out-snapped D’Onta Foreman 24-21 last week. But the Bears were also getting trucked by the Chargers, and Foreman typically doesn’t play much when he’s on the wrong side of a blowout because he’s a total non-factor in the passing game. Foreman still out-carried Roschon 9-5, and this will probably continue to be a split backfield, possibly with Foreman being the 1A to Roschon’s 1B if it’s a run-friendly game script. Also, the matchup is tough this week, with Chicago facing a New Orleans defense that has given up the fourth-fewest fantasy points to running backs. And with Tyson Bagent at QB, the Bears probably aren’t going to score many touchdowns. I’m ranking Foreman RB31, Roschon RB37.