The Week 4 NFL Dashboard
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Dolphins at Bengals
This game currently has a 44.5-point Vegas total. The Bengals are 7.5-point home favorites, implied to score 26 points. The Dolphins are implied to score 18.5 points as the road underdogs.
Miami Dolphins
Writer: Joe Holka
QB – Ryan Tannehill
We expected Tannehill and crew to smash in Week 3 against a Browns defense that allowed the fourth-highest Opponent Plus/Minus to quarterbacks in 2015, but it was looking a bit grim for our cash games in the first half. Ultimately, he came through with three touchdowns. However, he completed just 64.1 percent of his passes. His season average (64.6 percent) is ranked 14th in the NFL. The Dolphins play at the sixth-highest pace in the league and face a Bengals team that plays at the fifth-highest pace. Cincinnati allowed four touchdowns and 312 yards to Trevor Siemian at home and has given up the fourth-most FanDuel points to quarterbacks so far this season.
Per our Trends tool, Tannehill been much less productive on the road throughout his career. Despite recent struggles, the Bengals gave up the second-fewest passing touchdowns in the league last year, at just 1.13 per game. Tannehill likely isn’t a cash-game option this week as a low-implied road underdog, but he could be a low-owned tournament play on the Thursday slate with decent upside given his rushing ability.
RB – Kenyan Drake
Drake scored a touchdown through a gaping hole in Week 2 and was named the ‘starter’ in Week 3. The good news is that Drake led the backfield with 11 touches. The bad news is that the Miami backfield without Arian Foster looked like this last week:
Drake has some PPR appeal but no back holds over a five percent target share in this offense. Due to significant volume uncertainty, a matchup against a Bengals team that just held C.J. Anderson to 37 yards, and playing on a short week, it is tough to promote Drake as even a low-end GPP flier.
RB – Jay Ajayi
Ajayi may indeed be a decent all-purpose back, but the more important thing is that the coaching staff doesn’t seem to agree. Ironically, it was Ajayi who scored the game-winning touchdown in Week 3.
The Dolphins have been spreading the love, which is nails on a chalkboard for a position that is so heavily dependent on volume for fantasy success. Their rushing market share graph shows why this is a backfield with a ton of risk:
WR – Jarvis Landry
Landry has drawn 9.92 targets per game since becoming a starter in his rookie season and currently sits third in the NFL with 35 targets. He leads the Dolphins with a 32.38 percent target share, impressive +9.11 Plus/Minus, and an average of 21.67 DK points per game (fifth-most at the position). DeVante Parker has 19 targets in two weeks since his return, but historically that has only helped Landry: In the last two years, he has averaged 11.9 targets in games in which Parker played, compared to just 6.1 in games he hasn’t. Landry may not have huge touchdown upside against a Bengals defense that has allowed a touchdown on just 2.98 percent of their plays over the past 12 months. However, he will remain a safe volume play this week on FanDuel, where he boasts a 95 percent Bargain Rating and top-10 rating in our Cash Model.
WR – DeVante Parker
Parker went from 13 targets in his Week 2 return to just six against the Browns in Week 3. He did catch a touchdown but showed his volatility, as he completely disappeared in a game that remained competitive. He finished third in WR snaps behind both Landry and Stills for the second straight week. Although he has played in only two games, he still represents 27.44 percent of the Dolphins’ total targets on the season. Per our Matchups tool, Parker will line up against Dre Kirkpatrick, who was just shredded for a 9-117-2 line by Emmanuel Sanders last week.
WR – Kenny Stills
Stills has a 16.19 percent target share through two weeks after catching five passes for 76 yards on eight targets in Week 3. He is seeing the highest market share of air yards on the team at 30.65 percent and is still getting more snaps than Parker. With Landry underneath soaking up the short-to-intermediate targets, Stills will continue to have opportunities in three-wide sets. Of players with 15 or more targets, Stills has the second-highest average depth of target (aDOT) in the league at 20.3. He possesses upside in large-field GPPs and is especially interesting at DraftKings, where he is only $3,500.
TE – Dion Sims
Filling in for the injured Jordan Cameron, Sims is minimum-priced on DraftKings and did get a target in the red zone last week. As for Week 4, he’ll be going against a defense that allowed the sixth-fewest fantasy points last year to TEs.
Cincinnati Bengals
Writer: John Proctor
QB — Andy Dalton
Dalton has thrown for the fifth-most passing yards this season — 938 yards through three weeks. Unfortunately, he has thrown only two touchdown passes this season. He has scored less than 20 FanDuel points in all three of his starts. However, Dalton has still graded out as Pro Football Focus’ 10th-best quarterback in 2016. He isn’t the most exciting player, but he still rates as the ninth-highest quarterback in Adam Levitan’s FanDuel Player Model and is due for some touchdown regression.
RB — Giovani Bernard
After an electric Week 2 for Gio, the Bengals’ running back musical chairs continued as he took a backseat to Jeremy Hill in Week 3. While he saw 11 targets in Week 2, he saw only nine in Weeks 1 and 3 combined. The most interesting part about Gio’s lack of usage in the passing game is that the Bengals lost by 12 points. The game script was in his favor and he still didn’t get the opportunities.
This uncertainty in his usage makes Bernard more of tournament play with high weekly volatility. This may be especially true this week as the Bengals are heavy favorites and project to be winning for most of this game. Although Gio is more of a PPR guy, he is a better value on FD, where he is $5,400 and owns a 97 percent Bargain Rating. Because of that low price and high ceiling, he’s currently the second-highest rated FD back in the Bales Player Model for the Thursday-Sunday slate.
RB — Jeremy Hill
Hill exploded in Week 3, averaging 5.7 yards per carry on 17 attempts and scoring two touchdowns. To be fair, however, he did this against the 30th-ranked rushing defense, per Football Outsiders’ DVOA (Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average). This week, Hill is lucky to face off against the 20th-ranked rushing defense and should command the majority of the carries for the Bengals.
On the season, Hill has handled 54 percent of the Bengals’ carries while playing about half of the snaps. According to the FantasyLabs Trends tool, running backs have a +0.51 Plus/Minus as a home favorite.
If the Bengals can hold the lead as Vegas projects them to, Hill should see a workload more similar to Week 3 than the first two weeks. He’s currently the highest-rated RB in the Bales Model for DraftKings.
WR — A.J. Green
A.J. Green ranks fifth in targets and sixth in receiving yards so far in 2016. However, 61 percent of his receiving yards on the season came from his 180-yard game in Week 1. Green has seen 19 targets over the last two weeks but has failed to reach 100 yards in both games.
Luckily, this week Green will face off against a Dolphins secondary that just allowed 144 receiving yards to Terrelle Pryor. All of Miami’s cornerbacks currently have grades below 70.0, per PFF. According to the FantasyLabs Matchups tool, Green should spend the majority of his day matched up with Byron Maxwell. Maxwell is currently PFF’s 69th-ranked cornerback and has earned the nickname “Toast” from former NFL safety Tank Williams. Look for Green to have a big bounce-back game this week; he currently boasts the third-highest projected ceiling on both DK and FD.
WR — Brandon LaFell
Even after a big Week 2 from Tyler Boyd, LaFell saw the second-most wide receiver snaps on the Bengals in Week 3, trailing Green by only four. While he saw the snaps, however, he did not see the targets: He managed to catch two of only three targets for 34 yards. For now, it looks like Green is the only wide receiver with true fantasy relevance in this offense.
WR — Tyler Boyd
After seeing 60 snaps in Week 2, Boyd played on only 24 snaps in Week 3. Unfortunately, Boyd is still well behind LaFell in this offense. While he did out-target LaFell four to three, getting such a low snap count is a concern moving forward. Until he can find a way to carve out a more consistent role in this offense, his production is going to be very volatile.
TE — C.J. Uzomah
Tyler Kroft started for the Bengals in Week 3 but managed to draw zero targets from Dalton. Uzomah, on the other hand, received four targets despite seeing a lower snap count. Still, these Bengals TEs will be GPP dart throws at best until Tyler Eifert returns.
TE — Tyler Eifert
Fortunately, Eifert is very close to a return and has hinted at a possible game-time decision for Week 4. While that seems unlikely, it is definitely something to keep an eye on. Dalton has thrown only two touchdowns this season and it’s likely he’s missing his big TE target; he threw 13 touchdowns to Eifert in 2015.
News Updates
After this piece is published, FantasyLabs is likely to provide news updates on a number of players herein mentioned. Be sure to stay ahead of your competition with our industry-leading DFS-focused news blurbs:
