Fantasy Football Pickups for Week 15
Yahoo Fantasy analysts Matt Harmon and Andy Behrens discuss a pair of running backs that can be added ahead of Week 15.
Video Transcript
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MATT HARMON: All right, Andy, when it is crunch time, fantasy football playoffs are beginning. And you have a game that was quite literally 3 to 0. You know you've got yourselves some very exciting, very sexy pickups for the people to make coming out of this game. We got two running backs to talk about. You get it started here, buddy.
ANDY BEHRENS: Yeah. I think for me the priority this week, and I actually have this guy on a lot of rosters already, but he's curiously available in almost 80% of Yahoo leagues. Ty Chandler kind of had this fire drill before on the Vikings backfield because he already had a pretty significant role. Ty Chandler had stepped into that Cam Akers role for Minnesota, which is about 30% of the snaps, 33% of the snaps.
He's seeing decent workloads. Depends on game flow a little bit, but he's a really exciting player. When he gets a couple steps, he's got 4.3 speed and you can see it on the field. So he's had some really nice moments.
We've seen already that when you put a good match-up in front of him, he can exploit it. He had a big game against Denver. He's got a great match-up coming up with Cincinnati. And I kind of buried the lead here, Alexander Mattison limps away from week 14 with an ankle injury. We don't yet know his status for week 15. But if he's limited, if he misses this game, it's going to be the Ty Chandler show. And he settles in to 20, 25 touches in that one. There's no way in that match-up he doesn't gain 100 plus yards with a good shot at finding the end zone.
MATT HARMON: Yeah, I like that call. I think Ty Chandler could end up being a starting level player for fantasy managers if Alexander Mattison has to miss time. He wasn't the only running back injury though from that, again, barnburner 3 to 0 game. Josh Jacobs also left the contest with a knee injury. They play on Thursday night. Seems like a stretch that he would be out there for the Raiders.
Zamir White is somebody that you should know for this waiver run here. Look, we don't have a long catalog of Zamir White as an NFL player. You're going to have to do a lot of like in theory work with Zamir White here. But I'm certainly-- there's a part of me we talked about this on the podcast, Andy, and part of me that thinks like Zamir White just like a Josh McDaniels guy.
And look, they have done a lot of work in a very short amount of time to erase the fact that Josh McDaniels was ever the head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. I definitely think there's a part of me that thinks about that that's in the back of my mind. But at the same time, Antonio Pierce has made his desires well known that he wants this to be a physical run first team. I don't know that Zamir White counts as the heartbeat of the team like he called Josh Jacobs.
But it's been clear, he wants to saddle up the running back for a lot of work here. Zamir White is a 215 pounds player that would probably be the guy to handle that work over somebody like space back Ameer Abdullah. So it's not a hateful match-up in week 15 with the LA Chargers on Thursday night. It might take a pretty big leap of faith to start Zamir White if you pick him up. But Andy, I certainly think he's someone that needs to be rostered going forward.
ANDY BEHRENS: Yeah, I agree with you on that front. It's obviously a friendly match-up. There's a pretty wide range of outcomes, at least in my opinion, with White, right? Like this could be a job share or it could just be the Zamir White show where they just plug him into the workload that they'd intended for Josh Jacobs. And that would obviously get pretty exciting, because Jacobs was being fed.
We have seen Zamir White really go off in the preseason. They haven't given him a lot of run in the regular season. But the glimpses that we've had have been pretty positive.
MATT HARMON: All right, those are a couple running backs you can pick up to potentially help you make your fantasy football championship run. Good luck out there. Let's go get some wins in week 15.