Thirty-Five Rushing Yards Was the Improvement
The Eagles ran 13 times for 35 yards on Sunday, and a Philadelphia reporter correctly noted that this was an improvement. Their quarterback is on IR, their backfield is a rumor, and Josh Jacobs is allowed to play football again. I am not making this up.
Thirty-Five Rushing Yards Was the Improvement
By GH | thegavfather.com
On Sunday the Philadelphia Eagles ran the football 13 times for 35 yards.
I want to be fair to the Eagles here, and so did Reuben Frank of NBC Sports Philadelphia, who wrote the single greatest sentence of the NFL season. After noting that 13 for 35 is terrible, he added: "It's also an improvement over last weekend."
It was. Over the last two games, in London and then at home, the Eagles have run 31 times for 57 yards. That is 1.84 yards a carry. According to NBC, they have now gone back-to-back games without a running back gaining 10 yards on a single run for the first time since 2005. (In 2005 people were still buying ringtones. With money.)
This is a franchise two seasons removed from a Super Bowl title. It is now 2-4, on a four-game losing streak, and on Sunday it threw 45 passes with a quarterback making the third start of his career, against the second-worst run defense in the league, because, and I am paraphrasing the coaching staff here, who else was going to carry it?
I am not making this up.
A field guide to the Philadelphia running back room
Anthropologists who study the NFL running back room have long observed that it is not a room. It is a waiting area. Here is who was waiting on Sunday:
- Saquon Barkley: hamstring. Missed his second straight game and, per NBC, has not practiced.
- Tank Bigsby: injured reserve.
- Will Shipley: injured reserve, foot.
- Carson Steele: hurt his shoulder in the first quarter, came back for a couple of special-teams plays, and was shut down for the second half.
- Dameon Pierce: 12 carries, 35 yards. The entire running game, give or take a quarterback scramble for zero.
- Jaydon Blue: added to the roster Saturday, then not used Sunday.
Our board, in a gesture I can only call optimistic, ranks Blue RB60 and Pierce RB113. The model prefers the man the Eagles signed and declined to play over the man they actually played. I respect this. It is the same instinct that makes me prefer the restaurant I haven't tried.
A personal disclosure: two weeks ago, in a league where I take this very seriously, I spent $51 of my waiver budget on Will Shipley as a short-term Barkley fill-in. Will Shipley is now on injured reserve with a foot. I did not draft the Eagles' backfield. I have become it.
The call: Barkley is still RB8 on our rest-of-season board, because when he plays he is Saquon Barkley, and he is the only Eagles back NBC says has averaged 4.0 yards a carry in any game this year. But the Eagles play Dallas on Monday night. If you start him, have a Sunday-to-Monday escape plan, which in practice means you are starting nobody until Saturday's injury report tells you something. Pierce and Blue are not fantasy players. They are the people standing near the fantasy players.
The quarterback, briefly and seriously
The reason there was a third-career-start quarterback in the first place is that Jalen Hurts is on injured reserve with blood clots. On Monday the team and his agent said the diagnosis is a deep vein thrombosis plus bilateral pulmonary emboli; he is stable, on blood thinners, and expected to make a full recovery. NFL Network and ESPN reported he is likely out for the season. Nobody should be making jokes about that part, so I won't.
Our board moved him to QB38. His preseason consensus ADP was QB2. That is not a hot take; it is the model reading the words "injured reserve," which, as longtime readers know, we have had to teach it to do.
What I will make jokes about is the replacement plan. Tanner McKee went 26 for 45 for 215 yards and a touchdown. The Eagles also signed Joe Milton off Dallas's practice squad, and by NFL rule he has to stay on Philadelphia's roster for three weeks, which is the league's way of saying "no take-backs." Our board projects McKee at 8.97 points a game and Milton at 8.95. The computer has examined both men carefully and concluded that they are, to within two-hundredths of a point, the same guy.
The call: In superflex, Hurts goes to your IR slot if you have one. Do not chase McKee. DeVonta Smith (back from his hamstring, 7 catches, 75 yards and a 19-yard touchdown on 14 targets) and Dallas Goedert (6 for 61 on 8 targets) are still startable, because somebody has to catch 45 passes and it is not going to be the running backs.
Meanwhile, in Green Bay, the list giveth back
On September 1 I wrote that Josh Jacobs was on a list your draft app did not understand. Our board put him at RB53 while consensus ADP had him at RB14. Two weeks ago I wrote that he was "a zero until the league says otherwise."
On Friday, the league said otherwise.
The NFL removed Jacobs from the Commissioner's Exempt List effective Monday. He is eligible to play this Sunday at Detroit, having missed all six games. The league's personal-conduct review is still ongoing, which means this is a "you may play" and not a "this is over." Matt LaFleur said Jacobs will practice all week and that his status for Sunday is "to be determined," and then delivered a sentence I would like engraved on every fantasy trophy in America: "He's been training, but he's missed the exposure to football."
(Exposure to football. Like a vaccine. Or a new cheese.)
The Packers went 4-2 without him and have the 32nd-ranked rushing offense in the league, so the job is sitting right there waiting for him like a parking spot with his name on it.
The call: Our board still has him RB51, which is the board catching up to a Friday announcement. It will move. If he's on your bench, keep him there for Detroit, because "to be determined" plus "missed the exposure" is not a sentence you start in a fantasy lineup. If somebody in your league got tired of looking at him and dropped him, this is the week to check the waiver wire.
The FADE hit: six games, zero touches, and we never needed to know anything about football to call it. I'm still proud of it.
The rest of the calls, graded by the man who made them
Joe Mixon (FA). Two weeks ago, in this space, I told you the defending champion Seahawks had signed Joe Mixon. Later that same day, the Seahawks gave Joe Mixon a physical. They then decided not to sign Joe Mixon. I told you he was "a stash, not a mortgage." It turns out he was not even a stash. He was a column. Seattle signed Robert Henry Jr. off Washington's practice squad instead, and two weeks ago Mike Macdonald named this Sunday against Kansas City as a realistic target for Zach Charbonnet's return. Watch Wednesday's practice report.
Ashton Jeanty (LV). Still RB6 on our board, against a preseason consensus of RB8. Here are his carries by week, in order: 23, 21, 19, 15, 10, 10. That is not a workload. That is a countdown. He's still producing through the air (26 catches, 251 yards, 2 touchdowns this season) and he scored on Sunday, but he's averaging 3.2 yards a carry and Mike Washington got 9 carries for 43 yards in the same game. Start him, because the catches are real. Just stop calling him a bell cow. He is a bell calf.
TreVeyon Henderson (NE). My original Offer, back on September 1. His last three games: 14 for 42, 4 for 22, and, playing through an ankle on Sunday, 7 for 31 on 16 snaps, while Rhamondre Stevenson played 41 and someone named Corey Kiner got 11 carries, all in the last 16 and a half minutes. The board has Henderson RB14 and Stevenson RB23. I still prefer the younger half. The younger half is currently sharing the remote with two other people.
Brian Thomas Jr. (JAX). Two weeks ago I told you to sit him and admitted that "early is starting to look a lot like wrong." Since then he has played two more games in London (the Jaguars' home field is now apparently England), caught zero passes, and on Sunday against Houston played 15 snaps, all in the first half. None in the second half. He had two targets and a drop. The board still has him WR18, because the board is loyal, and loyalty is a fine quality in a golden retriever and a terrible quality in a spreadsheet. Bench him. If your league allows trades, someone in it still remembers his rookie year.
One I got right that doesn't involve somebody not playing: Derrick Henry is RB3 on our rest-of-season board. The expert consensus had him RB6 for Week 6. He has been averaging about 18.7 points a game. Derrick Henry is 32 years old. He is not aging. He is accumulating.
What you do before Week 7
- Hurts: IR slot in superflex. Don't chase McKee or Milton; the computer can't tell them apart, and neither will your scoreboard.
- Barkley: Monday night game, still not practicing. Make a backup plan with a Sunday player before you set him.
- Shipley, Bigsby, Pierce: no.
- Smith and Goedert: start them. Forty-five passes have to go somewhere.
- Jacobs: stash him now, start him later. Check your waiver wire, just in case somebody gave up.
- Jeanty: start him, as an RB2 who catches passes, not an RB1 who runs.
- Henderson: flex only.
- Brian Thomas Jr.: bench him. Officially, this time, by both me and the second half.
- Lamar Jackson: missed his second straight game with an ankle; Baltimore hopes to have him back against Cincinnati. If you have Tyler Huntley, keep him until you see Lamar practice.
Full rankings at thegavfather.com/rankings.
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