Fantasy football buy or sell: Tevin Coleman is a top 5 fantasy back rest of season

Tevin Coleman is the lead back in San Francisco. That shouldn’t come as a surprise as Kyle Shanahan has been all but telling us this is true since Coleman returned from injury back in Week 5. And if you had your doubts, those where silenced Sunday as we saw just exactly what Coleman can do in Shanahan’s offense when he’s given the bulk of the backfield snaps.

Against the Panthers, Coleman went off for 105 yards on 11 carries, scoring three times on the ground and adding another touchdown through the air. Hats off to anyone who was able to benefit from this absurd four touchdown performance in their fantasy leagues. You deserve every win Coleman got you for riding with him against a once stout Carolina defense.

It feels like each week this NFL season has had more than a few crazy storylines and stats to come out of it. It wasn’t just Coleman who put up big numbers last week. Let’s determine together if these Week 8 reactions are worth buying or selling.

A hard sell from most of you, which I can understand. When listing the top fantasy running backs, it takes a while to get to a point where you feel comfortable rating Coleman above other big name running backs. It’s hard to say Coleman will be better than one of Christian McCaffrey, Dalvin Cook, Aaron Jones, Saquon Barkley or Ezekiel Elliott from this point onward (not even including a banged up Alvin Kamara on this list).

But I’ll say it.

I’m buying 100% this—maybe not to the top 5 extreme that I wrote it but hell, I’ve made my bed and now I’m going to get cozy under the covers.

First, Matt Breida is once again banged up meaning the backfield has one less mouth to feed. Coleman is already the starting back and Shanahan’s clear favorite, so I would expect his workload to only increase if Breida misses significant time. But that’s not the main reason I’m buying this. The main reason I’m buying this though is because of history.

Let’s take a look at the the last time Shanahan had a multi-dimensional back running around in his offense: Devonta Freeman in 2015-16 with the Falcons. In those two year which Shanahan was Atlanta’s offensive coordinator, Freeman finished RB1 and RB6 in fantasy. Does this mean Coleman is a lock for top 5 status all year long? No. Everyone knows you take history with a grain of salt. Just ask those same 2016 Atlanta Falcons since historically, no one’s ever comeback from a 28-3 score, yet they can assure you that history did not repeat itself. What history does tell us is that lead running backs have success in Shanahan’s system and we’ve seen every indication that Coleman will be just that in the Bay moving forward. I’m fully in on this.

Verdict: BUY WITH ALL MY HEART

Kenyan Drake has reliable fantasy value with the Cardinals

I’m surprised more people aren’t buying this. Y’all were perfectly happy to rush to add Chade Edmonds and crown him the king of the Cardinals backfield, why not do the same for Drake, who arguably is more talented than Edmonds. Obviously most of this comes down to the health of David Johnson, but even then, given his ailments, I doubt even with a healthy Johnson Kliff Kingsbury won’t take a more committee approach to save his star running back.

It’s easy to dismiss Drake given that he’s been toiling away in Miami his whole career, but prior to this current tank job, Drake was averaging 4.7 yards per carry and flashed plenty of potential in the passing game. I wont say he’s suddenly going to become a must-owned running back who has RB1 upside, but I think if you were excited about Chase Edmonds, you should be excited about Drake now.

Verdict: Just like the Cardinals, I’m buying

There are only a handful of tight ends worth rostering over Darren Fells

Here are the top 10 tight ends in fantasy right now in non-PPR leagues:

1. Austin Hooper
2. Travis Kelce
3. Darren Waller
4. Mark Andrews
5. Evan Engram
6. Darren Fells
7. George Kittle
8. Will Dissly
9. Zach Ertz
10. Hunter Henry

I quantified my “handful” as “at most 6” meaning you’re dropping one of Ertz or Henry to add Fells (who last time I checked is still owned in like 20% of leagues). Does that feel right? I would happily drop Ertz for Fells right now, but Henry is a bit tougher, especially with the Chargers offense in full flux now and us having no clue what it’ll look like in the coming weeks.

Fells HAS. TO. BE. ROSTERED. if you are needy at tight ends, but I don’t know if I’m buying that he’s going to be a better option rest of season than Henry.

Verdict: Selling, but just barely

David Montgomery has finally arrived

As a Montgomery owner myself, watching him bust off for 135 yards and touchdown filled my heart with all kinds of joy. But then I came crashing back down to Earth because I remembered that he’s a part of the Chicago Bears offense and just how much faith do you have in the Bears offense to do the right thing moving forward?

Ultimately though, I have to think Matt Nagy will see what happens when you give Montgomery 20+ touches in a game and turn the offense over to him, in an effort to prevent Mitchell Trubisky from Trubisky-ing all over himself each week. It’ll be a tough matchup for the rookie back this week against the Eagles, but after that its smooth sailing as the Bears face the third easiest run schedule rest of the way.

Verdict: Finally letting myself buy-in

A.J. Green will have a meaningful fantasy performance this season

As someone who again has held onto Green all year so far, I appreciate all your optimism. But I’m too dead inside to hope for the best. I know the truth. Green isn’t going to get traded in the next couple of hours and the Bengals aren’t going to be good enough to allow him to do much of anything this year. The Bengals do have a favorable schedule for wide receivers moving forward, but I’ve given up hope that Green will return from injury the same dominate receiver we know him to be and will have to deal with playing on a bad team that can’t give their quarterback time to throw the ball downfield.

Verdict: Selling to make space for the darkness to consume me