Andy Dalton (QB, NO) - Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Pickups for Week 9

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+ Team Leagues

ROSTERED IN: 14% of Leagues

ANALYSIS:  Early last week New Orleans Saints' coach Dennis Allen confirmed that Andy Dalton would be starting the team's Week 8 matchup against the Raiders and all games after that – barring a catastrophic run of outings by the veteran. That's good to know as Jameis Winston is back healthy but the team is "going to continue with Andy," per Allen.

That was pretty much the only thing giving me pause when it came to writing this post, his future availability/starting role with the Saints. With that out of the way, though, there is nothing to hate about picking up some Dalton shares from your league's WW given his production while thrown into the QB1 role at NOLA.

After three weeks of clear-cut QB2 play not even reaching 14 FP in any of the W4-to-W6 games, Dalton has now put up a couple of 17+ FP outings including an explosion for 29.5 FP at Arizona a couple of weeks ago. He's now coming off another high-end QB2 finish with 17.2 FP to the tune of 22 completions on 30 pass attempts for 229 yards and two touchdowns – without a single pick thrown.

The Saints, mind you, have been without Michael Thomas and Jarvis Landry from Week 3 and Week 4 respectively. The outfield player with the most targets rostered by the Saints entering Week 9 is rookie Chris Olave (93) followed by RB Alvin Kamara, TE Juwan Johnson, and WR Marquez Callaway. You get an idea of how good Dalton must have been to keep up with the rest of the league while carrying such a thin group of skill-position players.

Dalton is probably more of a QB2 than a QB1 these days but comes with upside and should be given a proper look by GMs in deeper leagues (not necessarily 2QB or Superflex formats) in need of a streamer to navigate the bye weeks or looking to improve on a flopping quarterback midway through the year.

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