The Cut List (Week 12) - Time to Let Go?

November 24, 2020

Chris O'Reilly's list of potential busts and overvalued players who fantasy football managers may want to consider cutting and dropping for Week 12 of the season.

As someone who faced Taysom Hill in both of my home leagues this week, I feel for anyone else who wound up in a similar position. I feel worse for the many people who voiced their concerns on this matter via Twitter (some admittedly in more reasonable tones than others) only to be derided or ignored by employees of the websites responsible for Hill's eligibility at both TE and QB.

One way for a fantasy site to handle the Hill situation would have been to acknowledge that it was a unique circumstance with the ability to drastically alter the landscape of leagues in any format, and then make the exception to whatever "rules" they have about removing positional eligibility during the season. Instead, I saw a lot of indignant doubling down and convenient silence on something widely perceived within the fantasy community to be clearly wrong.

To each their own, but I was honestly surprised at the relative lack of giving a damn I saw in some of these instances. Countless fantasy managers were placed in an unfair situation through no fault of their own, and people with the ability to fix that essentially told them to get over it.

Taking A Look Back

I don't run a platform on which you can play fantasy sports, so I have no control over things like this. But I do write about fantasy sports, and I do get my fair share of things wrong. Since I didn't see anyone swallow their pride on the Taysom Hill controversy prior to Week 11, I thought I'd try to balance the scales by admitting some of my biggest swings-and-misses from the 2020 season so far:

1. Baker Mayfield and Jimmy Garoppolo were two QBs you could get outside the top-12 who could combine for top-12 season-long value.
2. Darius Slayton would be a late-round steal.
3. The Falcons would be a top-five all-around fantasy offense.
4. The Chargers would be a bottom-tier fantasy offense and Keenan Allen would no longer be a WR1.
5. Stefon Diggs would not be better off with Josh Allen as his QB.
6. The Eagles would have better injury luck and Carson Wentz would be a top QB option.
7. It was safe to drop James White after Week 10 (jury is still out here, but he had one of his best games of the season in Week 11).

I've gotten plenty of things right, too, of course, but I'm not big on victory laps. If you read my work, you know where my good calls have landed. That's enough for me. When I'm wrong, however, it bothers me that others may have been negatively impacted by my advice--the same way it would bother me if a position-change glitch knocked you out of the playoff hunt and there was probably something I could've done about it if I wanted to. For that reason, I'm a little more open to acknowledging my missteps than I am to celebrating my successes. The reality is, for as long as I continue to write about fantasy sports, there will always be a little bit of both ends of the spectrum. For this week's Cut List, I'll try for a 100% success rate. Let's get to it.

Droppable Players

Mark Ingram II, Baltimore Ravens

42.6% rostered

This segment comes with a caveat, as I had begun writing this article well before Mark Ingram was placed on Baltimore's reserve/COVID list. Ingram joins J.K. Dobbins among Ravens running backs who are staring at an uphill battle in terms of being able to play on Thanksgiving Day against the Steelers. If Ingram is cleared for action and Dobbins is not, I'd consider holding onto the former (though I don't know how you could confidently start him against Pittsburgh). If Ingram is not cleared between now and Thursday, he's among the first players I'm looking to drop.

From a purely football-related perspective, Ingram is rapidly fading into anonymity as a fantasy option. After giving him an honest chance to reestablish a fantasy-relevant role upon his return from a two-week injury absence, it's clear that this is just no longer his backfield. He has just seven carries for as many yards in his last two games, and Dobbins is quickly making a name for himself as Baltimore's featured back. Even Gus Edwards has seen more touches in the last two weeks.

In the event he is available in the near future--be it this Thursday or next week--he may sneak onto the field for a few goal-line touches here and there, but that's about the extent to which you could expect anything from him in fantasy lineups at this juncture as long as the Ravens have their full complement of running backs.

New England Patriots Defense

61.7% rostered

The Patriots have been able to tread water as a fantasy defense thanks to the league's best turnover rate, but an unfavorable remaining schedule takes them off the board as a dependable starting unit. Their next game is against the Cardinals, the seventh-highest scoring offense in the league. They'll follow that up with three straight road games: at the Chargers and rookie-of-the-year shoe-in Justin Herbert, at the Rams to face a boring yet effective ground attack that came into Week 11 having reached at least 100 rushing yards in every game but one, and at the Dolphins to face 2020's most surprisingly not-useless offense. In Week 16, when most fantasy leagues are determining a champion, they'll face Josh Allen and the high-flying Bills.

This late in the season, you can't afford to have your weekly fantasy matchup come down to a few points here or there from your defense. If you don't have a truly elite unit, it's wise to seek out the best matchup available. The Patriots don't have anymore of those on their schedule until Week 17 when they close out their season with the Jets.

Jared Cook, New Orleans Saints

70% rostered

While a technicality allowed Taysom Hill to put up TE1 numbers as a quarterback, the Saints' actual tight end could not possibly be trending in a more downward direction. Jared Cook has just six targets in his last three games, which has amounted to a dreadful three catches for 36 yards. Cook's sudden drop-off in recent weeks directly coincides with the return of Michael Thomas, who has resumed his customary role as a target vacuum with 25 looks over this three-game span.

The truly alarming aspect of this development, though, is that Hill taking over at QB did not result in more involvement from Cook in the intermediate passing game. Quite the contrary, Hill worked to an adjusted-yards-gained-per-attempt average of 10.13--more than Drew Brees has had in any game this year. With Cook and Alvin Kamara combining for two targets on the day, there was no intermediate passing game. Whether this is a sign of things to come remains to be seen, but nothing about Cook's recent numbers--with or without Hill at QB--looks promising for the fantasy home stretch. Cook is worth revisiting if and when Brees returns, but if you're going to lose a pivotal game in the playoff race (or once you get there), it has to be because a normally trustworthy player lets you down. Not because you held on too long to a guy without a role.

Tough Call?

Marquise Brown, Baltimore Ravens

77.5% rostered

The concern around drafting Marquise Brown in 2020 was volume, which is what has made his second NFL season such a frustrating disappointment. Brown's boom games in 2019 were the result of huge plays and touchdowns, and a lack of consistent involvement caused him to disappear in games when he didn't have those. In 2020, he actually came out of the gate with a strong target share that suggested he should have been a reliable weekly starter. Unfortunately, it hasn't materialized.

In five games since going off for 77 yards and a touchdown on 10 targets in Week 6, Brown has just 10 catches on 23 targets for 112 yards and one touchdown. Week 11 saw him hit an all-time low with zero catches on three targets. The Ravens remain one of the league's lightest pass offenses from a volume standpoint, and--surprise!--Lamar Jackson isn't just chucking up 50-yard touchdowns every other pass attempt. If there's anything working in Brown's favor at the moment, it's that the Ravens have lost three of their last four games and could benefit from a revamped game-plan on offense. One would think that might include an emphasis on getting the ball to their most dangerous wide receiver more often, but time will tell. I would hold onto Brown for at least one more week and see if a potential shootout with the Steelers on Thanksgiving can turn his season around.

Hold For Now

Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins

38.1% rostered

Tua Tagovailoa was undefeated as the Dolphins' starter coming into Week 11, so naturally he was given the hook at literally the first sign of trouble on Sunday in Denver (*shrugs shoulders*). The perplexing move back to Ryan Fitzpatrick did not result in a comeback win, however, so we shouldn't be too worried about Tagovailoa maintaining his job.

While Tagovailoa has largely not been asked to do a ton since taking over, he does have one shootout win under his belt on the road at Arizona. If the mettle he showed in that contest was not a flash in the pan, he'll have multiple opportunities to prove it with games against the Chiefs, Patriots, Raiders, and Bills from Weeks 14-17. Before he gets there, he'll face two opponents against whom the Dolphins should be able to move the ball successfully by air, land, or sea in the Jets and Bengals. If you lost Drew Brees to injury or have been forced to endure the maddening inconsistency of guys like Carson Wentz, Matthew Stafford, or Matt Ryan, Tagovailoa is about as good of a substitute as you're going to find at this point.

Travis Fulgham, Philadelphia Eagles

80.4% rostered

Travis Fulgham's descent from fantasy star to bench player was to be at least somewhat expected as the Eagles have steadily replenished their stable of healthy skill-position players in recent weeks, but it would've been tough to envision him falling this hard at the beginning of the month. Fulgham has been targeted 12 times in the Eagles' last two games, but has come down with just two of those for a whopping 16 yards. All of Jalen Reagor, Greg Ward, Dallas Goedert, and Richard Rodgers have been more productive on similar workloads in the same time frame.

The good news is that despite this downtick in performance, Fulgham hasn't disappeared from Carson Wentz's progressions. Twelve targets in two games won't normally result in such ghastly fantasy numbers. Up next for Philly is the notoriously bad Seahawks pass defense. I'm not locking Fulgham in as a starter for Week 12, but there are worse emergency plays considering the matchup. At the very least, I'm keeping him around as a bench guy until the volume drops as far as the fantasy output.

Other Options To Consider Dropping

• Jameis Winston, New Orleans Saints
• Logan Thomas, Washington Football Team
• Hunter Renfrow, Las Vegas Raiders
• Kyle Rudolph, Minnesota Vikings
• Brian Hill, Atlanta Falcons
• Sony Michel, New England Patriots
• La'Mical Perine, New York Jets (IR, high ankle sprain)
• Josh Reynolds, Los Angeles Rams
• Marquez Valdes-Scantling, GreenBay Packers
• Mecole Hardman, Kansas City Chiefs
• DeeJay Dallas, Seattle Seahawks

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