7-on-7: Is anyone still interested in Beanie Wells? Anyone? No?
Full disclosure: I'm actually not all that interested in Beanie, and he's my headliner. So you know it's been kind of a slow day.
But for those of you who can't wait to chase yet another Cardinals running back, there's some good news today from the Arizona Republic:
Running back Beanie Wells is running well and is on target to return to practice next week. Wells was placed on the injured/designated to return list after suffering a torn ligament near his toe against the Eagles in week three.
He is eligible to practice next week and return to game action on Nov. 25 against the Rams.
Do whatever you need to do with this information. I'm not going to officially endorse Beanie, but if you've been rolling out guys like Vick Ballard and Danny Woodhead lately, then ... well, you probably have to take a long look at him. He's an injury-prone back coming off a nasty injury, so there's no reason to get too excited.
Also, the Cards' line has been awful (details here) and Wells' end-of-season schedule is terrifying for fantasy purposes. After facing the Rams in Week 12, the Cardinals travel to face the Jets and Seahawks, then they're home against Detroit and Chicago, and then they head to San Francisco in Week 17.
Yikes. Let's veer away from the Arizona backfield mess, toward less-scary subjects, via bullets...
• Danny Amendola is expected to return from his clavicle nastiness in time for his team's Week 10 match-up with the Niners, so he should be owned in pretty much every PPR league. He's still available in 41 percent of the Yahoo! universe, however. Go get him, gamers.
• No Coby Fleener this week (or next) should mean more targets for Dwayne Allen, Indy's other rookie TE. Together, the Colts' tight end tandem have combined for 59 targets this season, the same number as Tony Gonzalez. Allen deserves your attention, particularly if you're in need of bye-week coverage in a week without Gronk, Hernandez, Keller and Vernon.
• It's not fantasy content in the strictest sense, but I encourage you to browse Matt Bowen's Inside the Playbook archive, for loads of insight, using All-22 stills. You can learn some football from that dude. Maybe start with Bowen's Julio-vs.-Nnamdi piece, which walks you through a failure of technique against a wideout with elite abilities.
• It's a good news/bad news day for Lions investors, as Mikel LeShoure reportedly returned to practice (at least in some capacity), while Calvin Johnson (knee) was absent. Megatron's injury is a legit worry, as he called it out as a contributing factor in his quiet Week 8 performance. Let's hope he can do some work on Friday. LeShoure did something to himself in the second half on Sunday — he tapped out of the game, then spent time with trainers — but the team hasn't discussed the nature of his malfunction. Also, Joique Bell is apparently Detroit's closer, so you can't expect a full workload from Mikel, ever.
• It sounds like we're headed for another game-time decision with Jordy Nelson (hamstring), so his owners will need to have Plan B on the roster, set to deploy. Ideally, that Plan B would be Randall Cobb or James Jones, but neither is sitting out there in your league's free agent pool.
• Basically everyone associated with the Baltimore offense agrees on this one thing: The Ravens need to run the ball more in the second half, and they will run it more. Ray Rice benefits, clearly. He's been terrific on a per-carry basis (4.9 YPC), yet he's on pace to take only 242 hand-offs this year. That would be a decline of almost 50 from last season's total. Not wise. Bernard Pierce will apparently see a few more touches as well, if Baltimore actually follows the revised script.
-
