Now that we’ve passed the season’s halfway point, it’s much more difficult to come up with names for this list than it was in the early part of the season. The diamonds can only stay camouflaged in the rough for so long. There are still opportunities for players who have yet to contribute significantly to fantasy teams to make impacts down the stretch, but with a sizable body of 2017 NFL evidence to draw from, we have a better idea who it might be safe to let go.

The result is that the names on this list grow fewer by the week and the endorsements of most players grow a bit more tepid, but for Week 9, there are still a handful of players who might be on the chopping block for a Week 9 waiver add that deserve a quick argument.

In this week's installment of the Do Not Cut list, I take a closer look at some of the most heavily dropped players in Week 9 and offer my thoughts as to why you might want to think twice about letting them go.

Do Not Cut - Running Backs

Latavius Murray (RB, MIN)

With the success that Jerick McKinnon has had over the last four weeks, a lot of Latavius Murray owners are likely looking to trim the fat over the bye week, reasoning that they have the wrong Minnesota running back anyway. There are a lot of things not to like about Murray’s situation. He’s a plodder who has managed just under 3.4 yards per carry to McKinnon’s 4.4 since Dalvin Cook went down. There are also things to like about Murray’s situation, however.

Despite being demonstrably less efficient than McKinnon, Minnesota seems committed to using both backs almost equally throughout the course of each game. Last year, despite the fact that Jerick McKinnon was the clearly superior athlete, Matt Asiata wouldn’t go away. In a four-game sample of a Dalvin Cook-less Vikings backfield, Latavius Murray has touched the ball 17 times per game. That’s almost workhorse volume, and it’s come despite a pretty significant perceived talent difference between Murray and McKinnon.

The Vikings want to run the ball 30+ times every game, and have done so in each of their last four, including a Week 7 contest against Baltimore in which Murray himself rushed 18 times for 113 yards and a score. Murray is the second most heavily dropped player in Yahoo leagues over the weekend, but I wouldn’t let go of a running back seeing that kind of volume.

Duke Johnson Jr. (RB, CLE)

One of the biggest surprises for me while checking the most dropped players in Yahoo leagues was to see Duke Johnson Jr. near the top of the list this week. Obviously he’s coming off of a disappointing game in which he was forced out with an injury and, like Latavius Murray, heads into a Week 9 bye, but in spite of playing for one of the worst offenses in the NFL, Duke has been the overall RB14 in PPR formats and the overall RB18 in standard.

Johnson has already cleared the concussion protocol and has a favorable schedule coming out of the bye, as only one of the seven teams left on the slate is in the top half of the league in preventing fantasy points to opposing running backs and he has three straight matchups between Weeks 13 and 15 against defenses that are among the top eight easiest matchups for the position. I know difficult decisions need to be made during the bye week squeeze, but not cutting Duke Johnson should be an easy one.

Jalen Richard (RB, OAK)

Chances are, if you added DeAndre Washington as a probable one-week rental during Marshawn Lynch’s suspension, you were intrigued enough that he isn’t a cut candidate for your team during the Week 9 waiver rush. It might not be so obvious, however, if you were one of the teams that instead wound up with Jalen Richard. I want you to consider, however, the possibility that the Raiders saw, like the rest of us, that their backfield is more functional without Lynch.

Marshawn hasn’t even managed to clear seven fantasy points per game in PPR formats during the first seven games of his Oakland tenure. Meanwhile, despite the fact that DeAndre Washington seems to be the better play among the remaining Oakland running backs, the Raiders seem committed to giving Richard an almost even workload. The Raiders get a Miami defense in Week 9 that was absolutely gashed by Alex Collins in Thursday Night Football in Week 8.

If it’s my team, I’m giving Jalen Richard one more opportunity in Week 9, at least as a bench stash, before potentially cutting him ahead of Oakland’s Week 10 bye if he disappoints. I wouldn’t assume that Oakland will go right back to making Richard their clear third backfield option, I wouldn’t assume that Marshawn Lynch goes right back to the workload he had pre-suspension, and I wouldn’t assume that there’s a huge difference in value between Richard and Washington going forward.

Do Not Cut - Wide Receiver

Pierre Garcon (WR, SF)

Having cratered to an 0-8 start, the San Francisco 49ers have pivoted from a potentially more productive stopgap at quarterback in Brian Hoyer in order to see whether they have a legitimate asset in CJ Beathard, and to this point the results have not been pretty. Making matters worse, Pierre Garcon faces some brutal matchups—presumably drawing Patrick Peterson when San Francisco faces the Cardinals in Week 9, then Janoris Jenkins and the Giants in Week 10, then a bye, and then the Seahawks’ Legion of Boom come to down for a Week 12 divisional showdown.

This was all a fair enough case to drop Pierre Garcon with little to no remorse, even in spite of his mammoth target share. Then, on the eve of the trade deadline, San Francisco made a bold move by trading a 2018 second-round draft choice to the Patriots for everybody’s favorite backup QB, Jimmy Garoppolo. Until we see a game with this new-look 49ers offense, Garcon needs to be held. This could be the shakeup Garcon needed to deliver on the hype he generated this summer simply for being the number one pass-catcher on a Kyle Shanahan offense.

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