Week 5 Pickups: What to do with the Arizona Cardinals backfield?
Andy Behrens and Scott Pianowski are more than worried about Kenyan Drake's fantasy future. Should you go pick up Chase Edmonds? Tune in 5 times a week for all your fantasy needs on the Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast wherever you listen to podcasts.
Video Transcript
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: I also think it's important to bring up Chase Edmonds. As poorly as Kenyan Drake-- Edmonds is still under 50% rostered, correct?
ANDY BEHRENS: Oh yeah. He's--
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: OK.
ANDY BEHRENS: He was the next name on the list. He's about--
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: OK.
ANDY BEHRENS: He's about one third rostered in Yahoo leagues. And I wanted to get your thoughts not only on Edmonds but on the train wreck of a game that Kenyan Drake just gave us in a blow-up spot. Literally no featured back had disappointed against Carolina so far, and Kenyan Drake puts up an absolute dud.
I don't even know if he ran a pass route. Was not involved. Wasn't targeted. Wasn't involved as a receiver at all. And Chase Edmonds finds the end zone again but on limited touches.
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: A lot of moving parts here. I think week four is an interesting inflection point where it's no longer the excuse of, oh, it's no preseason, it's early. Week four, you should have the rust knocked off. And when you have a matchup like Carolina, you really need to take advantage of it.
And I try not to tell our readers and listeners to stash everybody because that's kind of cheap advice. Oh yeah, stash him, stash him. Dynasty, stash him. But if there's one guy I've been really begging people not to cut and make sure he's on your roster, it's Chase Edmonds.
We saw that upside last year in the three-touchdown game against the Giants. And we know this offense can be a really effective running offense. The tricky thing is that, of course, they also have a quarterback who runs the ball a lot. And he's not always that interested in dumping the ball off, although Edmonds was involved in the passing game on Sunday.
That's kind of the double-edged sword with some of these mobile quarterbacks, like Baltimore. Oh, it's great. Lamar Jackson is such a dynamic athlete. Look at the running lanes the running backs are gonna have. But the problem is a lot of times, that rushing production goes to the quarterback. And maybe he'd rather run the ball than dump off a pass when a play goes off script.
So you have to deal with that. And Murray really didn't play well Sunday either. Almost nobody in that Arizona offense is feeling that great about themselves. But Edmonds, I feel like he's made the case that maybe this could be a 60-40 backfield, a 50-50 backfield maybe.
Remember, Arizona has lost a couple of games too. What motivates coaches to change things when they lose, right? My solution to Drake is just whisper to him. Come up to him at practice and just whisper, hey, Adam Gase has just traded you to the Cardinals and see if maybe that can get Drake going.
But Chase Edmonds, man, I know he's been mostly a stash and hope, but I think he might become a stash and use liberally during the bye week season. Remember, week five-- we had some teams not playing in week four unintentionally. But week five, no Packers, no Lions, and who's to say that there may not be more health issues that force games off the field.
So Chase Edmonds has become somebody that I almost played this week in week four. And I think in week five, I'm probably gonna have to play him in some deeper leagues. And I'm actually excited to do so.
ANDY BEHRENS: We've already seen what it looks like when Edmonds gets a full rushing workload. It's great. It's great. We haven't seen him over a full season do it, but we've seen isolated games where it's absolutely spectacular. So I'm with you on Edmonds.
I think he needs to be rostered in a whole bunch more leagues. I don't know what the right number is. Two thirds? It's certainly not one third, especially the way that Kenyan Drake is trending.
Man, I don't have Drake on a whole bunch of rosters or anything like that, so it's not really a problem that is dragging me down. I only dragged down my DFS lineups in week four. That was an absolute, absolute flaming disaster. But it's not a huge problem I have.
But he's such dead weight right now because you can't take this to the trade market, right? I mean, maybe there's somebody who's just decimated by injuries who would give you a little something for him. But Kenyan Drake hardly tradable at this point.
SCOTT PIANOWSKI: Yeah, you need market confidence to rebound. And the worst thing you can have in a fantasy roster is somebody who's not quite good enough to play, but you can't really trade them. But they're too good to cut. They just get in your way.