Chuba Hubbard (RB, CAR) - Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Pickups for Week 8

BALLER MOVE: Add in 12+Team PPR Leagues

ROSTERED IN: 36% of Leagues

ANALYSIS: In case you have missed the breaking news: the Carolina Panthers traded their no. 1 rusher (and fourth-best fantasy RB in PPR leagues) Christian McCaffrey to the San Francisco 49ers for a handful of draft picks before Week 7 games. The aftermath is, obviously, a Panthers backfield featuring a committee in which both Chuba Hubbard and D'Onta Foreman will get split chances weekly.

This past Sunday, facing Tampa Bay, it was Foreman who got the larger workload carrying the ball 15 times in comparison to Hubbard's 9 carries. Foreman edged Hubbard in yardage too (118 to 63 yards on the ground) although it was Hubbard who ended up scoring the only rushing touchdown of the Panthers on the day.

The fact that Hubbard scored a touchdown instead of Foreman, and that he averaged nearly the same amount of yards per carry (7.0 to Foreman's 7.9) might end up flipping the roles in the Panthers' backfield going forward turning Hubbard in the RB1 (in terms of volume/touches) and moving Foreman down to the RB2 position in the depth chart.

Foreman was able to catch his two targets for 27 yards, which was nice to see considering he's never been too much of a pass-play factor earlier in his career. Hubbard went 2-of-3 on the receiving end although he could only rack up 10 yards.

Hubbard finished last year with 612 rushing yards (five touchdowns) on 172 carries while also putting up 174 yards (and one touchdown) catching 25-of-37 targets in Carolina.

Looking at their careers, Hubbard should eventually take over the no. 1 RB role no matter what if only because of his three-down skill set. Foreman is definitely not better at catching passes (or at least he has yet to prove he'd be capable of doing it) so Hubbard, even though he will get fewer carries than Foreman at least for the first few games, should end up getting more looks.

Foreman is the player to target now but you'd do better grabbing some Hubbard shares by looking more at the mid/long-term evolution of this backfield committee. Hubbard left Sunday's game early but it's been reported that he didn't really suffer any injury but was rather left out as a precautionary measure. Hubbard is also a better option for those managing in PPR formats.

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