Fantasy Football Week 4: 10 biggest questions revolve around Titans WR, trades, Christian McCaffrey

As we get ready for Week 4 of the NFL season, you could be facing some season-defining questions for your Fantasy Football team. If you are 0-3 and dealing with injuries, you might need to decide whether it’s time to make a panic trade just to try to get your season back on the right track. If you are 3-0 but have gotten lucky with some unexpected early-season breakouts, maybe it’s time to consolidate your early wins and find something more sustainable. 

Or maybe you’re somewhere in the middle and just need to know who you can trust to move in the right direction. Whatever your question is, the Fantasy Football Today team is here to help. You can also hit us up on Twitter with the #AskFFT hashtag to get your questions answered, or you can email FantasyFootball@CBSi.com with #AskFFT to get your questions answered on the podcast or on the FFT Newsletter. 

I took to Twitter Wednesday to ask my followers for their biggest questions ahead of Week 4, and here are my answers to 10 of the most interesting questions I received, from Julio Jones and A.J. Brown’s slow starts to Cooper Kupp’s Dynasty value. 

At the moment, I’m thinking more about how you can’t really trust Mike Vrabel when it comes to injuries. After Sunday’s game, he said Julio Jones sat out the fourth quarter for vague game-plan reasons; Tuesday, he said Jones was dealing with “tightness” and they were managing his workload; Wednesday, Jones missed practice with a hamstring injury.  Not sure why he couldn’t just be forthcoming about that, but now you have to be legitimately concerned about his status for Week 4, at the very least.

Beyond that, I’m not too concerned about Jones moving forward, assuming he can get healthy. I still have too much faith in Jones’ skills and Ryan Tannehill‘s abilities to write him off. But, obviously, this has been a much less than ideal start for Jones. I had him as a top-15 WR coming into the season, and while my optimism has been dimmed somewhat by this start, I think he’s still looked pretty good — 11.3 yards per target, 2.24 yards per target — and I view him as a definite buy-low candidate. See if you flip someone like Christian Kirk for him. 

It’s definitely too early to panic about Brown, though obviously, it’s not ideal that he is dealing with a hamstring injury after undergoing surgery on both of his knees this offseason. He was still getting a bunch of targets before his injury and his track record is too strong to be too concerned. I love what we’ve seen from Williams so far and I’m pretty much bought in on him being a top-15-ish WR moving forward, but that also may be an early overreaction — will this new role stick? Will defenses adjust how they cover the Chargers now that they’ve got this new offense on film? 

The injury is the wild card, of course. Brown is being labeled as “week to week” right now, which likely means Week 4 is off the table, and Week 5 is in doubt. You have to assume he’s likely to be back in time for Week 6, but it is worth wondering if 14 more games of Williams would be worth more than 12 of Brown. That’s close, and it may tip the scales in Williams’ favor if you believe what we’ve seen is mostly legitimate. I think I would stick with Brown, but if you’re 0-3, you probably don’t have room to be patient. 

Next up, I’ve got two questions about whether you can “trust” a couple of low-end starting running backs, and it’s worth stating that there probably aren’t more than maybe 16 running backs you can truly trust in any given week. Obviously, some of those running backs will flop while others ranked lower will have big games, but there aren’t more than 16 (-ish) who have the kind of role where things need to really go wrong for them to have a really bad game. 

The Bills have been the worst offense for running backs over the last three seasons in Fantasy and Moss wasn’t even active for Week 1 despite being healthy. He was largely a non-factor for much of Week 2 before scoring a couple of late touchdowns, so Week 3 was the first time he’s really been used in a significant role. Will that continue? Perhaps, but you probably can’t count on him to be a consistent part of the passing game like he was Sunday, so he’ll probably be pretty touchdown-dependent. It’s hard to count on him being dependable from that perspective given how much the Bills throw and how often Josh Allen tends to run near the goal line. Moss is outside of the top 36 for me this week and unless we think Devin Singletary is just going away, that’s where he’ll likely stay for me. 

This is like a better version of the Bills situation. Except it might not actually be that much better. I wrote about Melvin Gordon as a sell-high candidate in Wednesday’s Fantasy Football Today Newsletter, and the fact of the matter is Gordon and Javonte Williams are splitting carries too evenly to rank inside the top 24 most weeks. You’re hoping for a touchdown or big play for them if you do start them.  

This is a fascinating trade. George Kittle isn’t quite a buy low, but he’s been a bit disappointing this season, and I’m sure some are concerned about his chances of living up to his lofty draft status with the emergence of Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk still around. On the other side, you have one of the best draft values in Mike Williams and one of the biggest disappointments to date in Kyle Pitts. 

I still believe in Kittle — I just moved Ja’Marr Chase for him in one of my leagues, and I’m happy about it. Part of that is that the tight end position looks as bad as it always does, so Kittle figures to give you must-start wide receiver production from that spot in your lineup, which is incredible valuable. Pitts can still give you that kind of production, of course, but it’s a lot less likely. Like I said earlier, I’m mostly bought in on Williams, but you can’t just look at this trade as “Williams plus Pitts for Kittle” — you always have to think about who is coming out of your lineup when making a 2-for-1 trade. How much of an upgrade on that spot in your lineup is Williams? 

If you’re looking to make this trade, I assume your depth isn’t great, so it’s worth considering how likely you think it is that both Pitts and Williams will be difference makers moving forward. If Williams is a top-12 WR, it probably won’t matter, but if you’re upgrade from, say, WR30 to WR 20, the downgrade from Kittle probably isn’t worth it. 

I like Najee Harris a lot, and think he’s a top-10 RB moving forward based on playing time and usage alone. However, I do think you should consider this trade. Obviously, it would downgrade your running backs, so it would depend on which wide receiver you’re moving to the bench to start Lamb. If it’s someone like Robby Anderson or Darnell Mooney, you’re improving your team enough there to justify it. However, even if you’re in a situation where you are strong at wide receiver — and I would hope you are if you’re going to be starting Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Chase Edmonds — doing this trade might still make sense assuming you then move on to trying to find another upgrade at running back. So, if you swap Harris for Edwards-Helaire and Lamb and then can move another wide receiver plus Edmonds for someone like Jonathan Taylor, that could put you in a better spot. 

As much as it pains me to say it, I would be fine with dropping Fields in a one-QB league if you need the roster space. I don’t love trusting Bridgewater as your only quarterback, but I think there’s a pretty good shot Fields is going to end up one-and-done as the starter for the Bears, and who knows when he might get another chance.

To be clear, my expectations for Fields, in the long run, are still extremely high. He’s an elite athlete for the QB position and I believe in his skills as a passer. If I’m pessimistic about him in the short term, it’s mostly a reflection of my lack of faith in Matt Nagy to put Fields in the right situation to succeed. Nagy has a good reputation as an offensive coach, but I don’t know if he’s flexible enough. The best we’ve seen from his offense was in Mitchell Trubisky‘s second season, when Trubisky rushed for 299 yards over a seven-game span from Weeks 4 through 11 before suffering a shoulder injury, averaging 5.3 attempts per game. They never really went back to that part of Trubisky’s game. 

Based on what we saw from the Bears offense Sunday, I’m just not convinced Nagy is going to take full advantage of Fields — and the fact that he continues to insist Andy Dalton is the starter when healthy doesn’t make me feel better either. 

I think it might be as simple as this: If you need a starter in the short term, Patrick can probably be a more dependable WR3 for Fantasy. But Sanders has more upside. He’s in a better passing offense with an elite quarterback, and while he has more competition for targets than Patrick does, his targets are going to be more valuable. It took until Week 3 for Sanders to finally have a good Fantasy game, but the opportunities were there in the first two games — Josh Allen just missed him on three or four big plays. Sanders has 338 air yards through three games and it wouldn’t shock me if he ended up a top-24 WR by the end of the season, with a bunch of big games.

I’m fascinated to see what the Rams backfield looks like if Henderson plays this week — and it sounds like he will. It’s been a one-man show so far — Henderson when healthy, and then Sony Michel when Henderson left Week 2 and missed Week 3. In the preseason, Sean McVay talked about the need to limit Henderson’s touches given his injury history, and it took him a week and a half before getting hurt as the lead back this time around. Does that mean they’ll work Michel in more moving forward, or is it still going to be Henderson dominating work? 

So far, the lead back for the Rams has 69 touches through three games — counting Michel and Henderson as co-leads for Week 2 since Michel didn’t feature until Henderson left — so if that’s how they plan on using Henderson, he’s obviously going to be better than Edwards-Helaire. However, considering concerns about his abilities to hold up to working as the lead back, as well as whether they’ll use him that way, I think I would rather have Edwards-Helaire than Henderson. But Henderson’s upside is probably higher. 

There’s a very good chance that Kupp’s value in a Dynasty league will never be higher than it is right now, prior to Week 4. He’s 28, the age when most wide receivers typically peak. That doesn’t mean he’s going to immediately fall off in 2020 because he’s 29, but generally speaking, you should expect his production to fall off in the next couple of years. His current production has him on pace for nearly 2,100 yards and 28 touchdowns in 17 games, and I don’t think I’m telling any tales out of school when I say he’s unlikely to sustain that. Even if you think Kupp is locked in as top-12 WR rest of season, this is still the right time to sell him. If the return is a potentially elite wide receiver like Jerry Jeudy and a first-round pick, I would at least have to consider it, especially if I don’t feel confident in my chances to win in 2021.