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Each new week of NFL games gives us more information to make better, more informed decisions. That’s crucial when figuring out who to add and who to cut. It can be difficult to admit we were wrong on a particular player. For example, using a high draft pick on someone and cutting them so early in the season can be demoralizing. However, the only thing worse than making a mistake is not being able to admit we made one in the first place.
Don’t be afraid to make bold decisions, but be careful not to be too reactionary. Bad weeks are going to happen. Sometimes, opportunity doesn’t always translate into box-score success. The flip side of that is true, too. Sometimes, the box score can look amazing despite poor utilization. This article will help you determine who to send packing and how to value players whose value is falling.
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The Parameters
There are a few different categories here. Anyone listed under the “Insert Position to Cut for Insert Week” can be safely cut. Seems pretty self-explanatory, correct? No surprise there. We'll focus on players with rostered percentages higher than 40% to keep this a little more straightforward. Otherwise, we could name many players for every position every week.
The following two categories are “Uh-Oh…” and “On the Hot Seat.” If a player is listed under “Uh-Oh…” that doesn’t mean they’re a cut… yet. It just means their value is falling. That could be due to several reasons. Maybe it’s due to repeated inefficiency. Perhaps it’s due to a change in role and utilization. Whatever the reason, these players are not as valuable today as they were before last week’s games.
The other category is “On the Hot Seat.” This one is also pretty self-explanatory. These players do not need to be cut, although if you’re on the hot seat, there’s certainly an argument to be made that they could be cut if you’re in a tough roster predicament.
These players should be given one final shot to make your roster. Especially early in the season, we don’t want to overreact to a change in utilization or a bad week or two, but we also don’t want to ignore it. Players in this section are a bad week away from being on the cut list.
One of the final categories we'll sometimes touch on is "Hold On." These players may have had some bad weeks, but their utilization is good, indicating better days are ahead. Hold onto them. On occasion, we’ll also identify sell-high and sell-low players. A sell-high player is one whose production has spiked, but maybe their role creates questions about whether the production is sustainable.
These players have increased their value recently, so it makes sense to see if you can trade them at peak value. Players who are sell-lows are often players with a lot of name value. These players are best explained as “get some value for them while you still can before their value falls to nothing.”
Fantasy Football Quarterbacks to Cut for Week 8
Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs – 96.7% Rostered
Mahomes was on this list last week, and he made the list once again this week. He currently has eight interceptions and six touchdowns. He's on pace for under 15 touchdowns and over 22 interceptions over 17 games. He has one game with a quarterback rating over 90. He is being outscored on a point-per-game basis by Bo Nix, Drake Maye, Aaron Rodgers, Derek Carr, Russell Wilson, and Trevor Lawrence. He is currently QB23 with a 13.9 PPG average.
He has yet to score 17 points in a game this season. He's been held to under 15 points in four of his six games. Yes, he's the frontrunner for MVP, but when it comes to fantasy football, Mahomes is nothing more than a backend QB2. He has not thrown a touchdown pass since Week 4. He has yet to play one clean game without a turnover. It's been bad, and there's been nothing to indicate it will turn around this season.
Anthony Richardson, Indianapolis Colts - 77.5% Rostered
Due to his ability to score points with his legs, I'd prefer to keep Richardson if your roster allows it. However, if you need to cut him and there's no one else you feel comfortable cutting, we've reached the point of the season where tough decisions may need to be made. Richardson's inclusion here depends on who your other quarterback is or who you'd replace him with. Richardson still has a very high weekly ceiling, something he put on display in Week 1 when he scored over 28 points.
However, since then, Richardson hasn't scored double-digits in the three games he started and finished. He is completing just 48.5% of his passes. Richardson has three touchdown passes to six interceptions. His quarterback rating is 60.0. Just 43.3% of his passes have been deemed "on-target." The next closest is at 56.3%. The next closest is 62.4%, which means Richardson's on-target percentage is 19.1 percentage points lower than the third-least accurate quarterback.
The next time Richardson reaches 215 passing yards will be the first time he accomplishes that feat this season. Richardson has failed to complete more than 10 passes in three out of his four starts. When we talk about Richardson's upside due to his rushing ability, his inability to put forth any semblance of a decent passing stat line limits his upside. He's on pace for just over 3,000 yards and under 13 passing touchdowns over 17 games; this excludes his injury-shortened start.
Other Players to Cut:
- Aaron Rodgers, New York Jets - 58.8% Rostered
- Justin Fields, Pittsburgh Steelers - 52.4% Rostered
- Justin Herbert, Los Angeles Chargers - 39.4% Rostered
- Daniel Jones, New York Giants - 20.1% Rostered
Fantasy Football Running Backs to Cut for Week 8
Zack Moss, Cincinnati Bengals - 80.6% Rostered
The image below, courtesy of PlayerProfiler, depicts the difference between Moss and Chase Brown over the first six weeks of the season. As you can see from this informative photo from PlayerProfiler, Moss was the clear No. 1 running back for the Bengals over the season's first three weeks. He played significantly more snaps, received more touches, and scored more fantasy points. In fact, through the first three weeks, Moss was being used as one of the bigger workhorse backs in the NFL.
Everything started to change in Week 4. Brown finished right behind Moss in touches and outscored him, as well. From there, things have continued to shift in Brown's favor. Moss has quickly fallen from a top-20 option and should now be viewed as nothing more than a handcuff. Moss has almost no standalone value right now.
#Bengals Week 7 RB usage
- Chase Brown: 59% snaps, 15 carries, 8 routes, 2 targets (53 yds)
- Zack Moss: 49% snaps, 6 carries, 10 routes, 3 targets (40 yds)— Michael F. Florio (@MichaelFFlorio) October 20, 2024
If you want to hold onto Moss as a handcuff, that's fine, but there are likely better handcuffs on the waiver wire. Moss has not played very well this season. Due to that, it's hard to imagine his role increasing in the coming weeks. If nothing else, Moss could become even more irrelevant with the way things are trending.
Other Players to Cut:
- Jerome Ford, Cleveland Browns - 56.4% Rostered
- Tyjae Spears, Tennessee Titans - 52.3% Rostered
- Zamir White, Las Vegas Raiders - 49.9% Rostered
- Antonio Gibson, New England Patriots - 42.5% Rostered
- Ezekiel Elliott, Dallas Cowboys - 35.9% Rostered
Fantasy Football Wide Receivers to Cut for Week 8
Christian Watson, Green Bay Packers - 53.6% Rostered
Christian Watson is Gabe Davis. Let's just put that out there. At least Davis is playing a full allotment of snaps and running routes at a high rate on Trevor Lawrence's dropbacks. This past weekend, Watson ran a route on just 50% of Jordan Love's dropbacks. He ran just 18 total routes. The lack of routes is a big red flag, but so is the kind of routes he's routinely running.
3 seconds into running a route, who is on average the farthest downfield? Alec Pierce by a lot. pic.twitter.com/trsHpFfmjX
— Seth Walder (@SethWalder) October 21, 2024
Watson seems to be a sacrificial X-receiver who runs fast and holds safeties deep. That's a valuable skill for NFL teams to have on their roster, but it does very little for fantasy managers. Watson will no doubt pop off for a game one to two times the rest of the season, but predicting when that'll happen is borderline impossible. Unless there's an injury to the other three receivers, Watson's role provides little opportunity (snaps and routes), little volume (targets), and virtually no consistency.
Allen Lazard, New York Jets - 40.9% Rostered
Is it too brash to advocate cutting Lazard, averaging 12.3 half-PPR PPG? It may be, but the addition of Davante Adams completely changes everything. This past weekend, Lazard's snap dropped to just 70%. His route share fell to 62.5%. Lazard had seven or more targets in four of his first six games this season. From Weeks 4-6, Lazard had 22 targets, earning seven in all three games. That kind of volume moving forward seems increasingly unlikely, with Adams and Garrett Wilson operating as Aaron Rodgers' No. 1 and No. 2 targets.
Lazard's target share from Weeks 4-6 was 16.7%, which isn't very good either, but his red zone target was enough to sustain his fantasy value. In Adams' first game this past weekend, Lazard's target share dropped to 10.2%. Wilson and Adams will also handle most of the red zone targets moving forward. Lazard was a regression candidate before Adams' arrival, but now his fantasy value seems destined to plummet.
Other Players to Cut:
- Gabe Davis, Jacksonville Jaguars - 29.3% Rostered
- Mike Williams, New York Jets - 26.7% Rostered
Fantasy Football Tight Ends to Cut for Week 8
Tyler Conklin, New York Jets - 30.9% Rostered
Even before Adams' arrival, Conklin was the No. 3 or No. 4 target option for Rodgers. He was behind Wilson, Lazard, and, at times, Breece Hall. However, now, he shifts down to the No. 4 or No. 5 target option. Regarding the tight end position, we're all chasing touchdowns more than we'd like, but given Wilson's talent, Lazard's chemistry with Rodgers, and Adams having both, Conklin has little to no weekly upside. He is now so far down the target hierarchy that fantasy managers can safely cut ties with him.
Colby Parkinson, Los Angeles Rams - 28.0% Rostered
The appeal to Parkinson has been that there's virtually no target competition with Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua out. That hasn't led to any fantasy value, though. He has just one game with over seven half-PPR points. He's been held to under 35 receiving yards in four out of six games this season. Kupp should be back in Week 8, and Nacua isn't too far behind him. Parkinson hasn't displayed any weekly ceiling. Once Los Angeles' two superstar receivers are back on the field, his chances of continuing to receive a fantasy-relevant number of targets will decrease significantly.
Uh-Oh...
WR Xavier Worthy, Kansas City Chiefs - 87.9% Rostered
You cannot cut Worthy. Not with how desperate the Chiefs are for pass-catchers, but Worthy's 2024 outlook and dependability are quickly declining. Worthy has 25 or fewer receiving yards in four out of six games. He has yet to record more than three receptions in any game this season. He has scored four or fewer half-PPR points in half of his games this season.
We’ll see how he develops, we have a long way to go, but I would say that unfortunately the stats and film agree on this one.
Talking about it on @RecepPerception The Show that comes out tomorrow. https://t.co/sWTIJ7aOOV
— Matt Harmon (@MattHarmon_BYB) October 21, 2024
It's never a good sign when the film critics and the analytic crew agree on a negative assessment of a player's season, but that's where we currently stand on Worthy. Worthy does not seem to have impressed Reception Perception, and Worthy's advanced metrics leave a lot to be desired. He needs to stay on rosters but should be glued to fantasy benches right now.
WR Michael Pittman Jr. and Josh Downs, Indianapolis Colts - 92.2% Rostered and 60.5% Rostered
It's virtually impossible to start either of these players for as long as Anthony Richardson remains the Colts' starting quarterback. He is averaging just 24.2 pass attempts in his four starts that he finished. Just about 18% of his throws have been deemed "off-target." That amounts to four to five per game, which leaves Pittman and Downs with, at most, 19 good decent passes per game. That's not enough volume for either player to be fantasy-relevant.
Josh Downs in three games where Joe Flacco threw the ball 25 or more times this year: 19.2 PPR points per game, 28% target share per game
Josh Downs in two games with Anthony Richardson under center: 3.3 PPR points per game, 20.7% target share per game#FreeJoshDowns
— JJ Zachariason (@LateRoundQB) October 21, 2024
Richardson averages just 178 passing yards per game and 0.75 passing touchdowns per game. Both players' PPG averages are inflated due to the three games that Joe Flacco started. Downs should be ranked as a WR4 with Richardson at quarterback, while Pittman is nothing more than a WR5. This is a long shot from the WR2/3 value they provided fantasy managers while Flacco was the quarterback.
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