10 RB sleepers to target for fantasy football Week 10
By Alex Wolfe
Use these recommendations for a little last-minute pep in your fantasy football lineup or an investment for the future.
In this series, I’ll try to help find some fantasy football running back diamonds in the rough to help you for this week and beyond. Some will be better suited as bye week fill-ins, others will be wait-and-see bench stashes, and hopefully, some will be stars in the making.
I’m shooting for under 50 percent ownership in ESPN and Yahoo! leagues to make this column, but there will occasionally be exceptions. Here are the previous weeks’ picks:
Week 6: 10. Alex Collins, 9. Jalen Richard, 8. Elijah McGuire, 7. Semaje Perine, 6. Wayne Gallman, 5. Thomas Rawls, 4. Shane Vereen, 3. Alfred Morris and Darren McFadden, 2. Marlon Mack, 1. Matt Breida
Week 7: 10. Rex Burkhead, 9. Charles Sims, 8. D’Onta Foreman, 7. Jamaal Charles, 6. Devontae Booker, 5. CJ Prosise, 4. Chris Ivory, 3. Dion Lewis, 2. Marlon Mack, 1. Wendell Smallwood
Week 8: 10. Malcolm Brown, 9. Danny Woodhead, 8. Tarik Cohen, 7. James White, 6. Rob Kelley, 5. Latavius Murray, 4. Theo Riddick, 3. Matt Forte, 2. Jalen Richard, 1. Dion Lewis
Week 9: 10. TJ Yeldon, 9. CJ Prosise, 8. Damien Williams, 7. DeAndre Washington, 6. D’Onta Foreman, 5. Andre Ellington, 4. Matt Breida, 3. Orleans Darkwa, 2. Kenyan Drake, 1. Marlon Mack
With 32 teams and (at most) two fantasy options at running back on any given team, my goal here is to not give you the same player two weeks in a row unless there’s a significant breakthrough in their status. Now that we’re past the two hardest bye weeks of the year, I should be able to better adhere to my under 50 percent ownership rule this week. That said, there will probably still be some exceptions:
Lance Dunbar
RB, Rams
Dunbar is a sleeper in the truest sense — there is seemingly not a single fantasy player that is savvy enough to have him rostered. But I believe that he could be a sneaky-good add with potential flex value for the rest of the season behind star running back Todd Gurley.
Consider this: two weeks ago I recommended picking up Rams running back Malcolm Brown, who was the backup to Gurley at the time and had just notched 11 carries for 48 yards before the Rams’ bye. Last week, Brown had 15 carries for 57 yards behind Gurley, but then unfortunately suffered an MCL injury that will sideline him for at least a few weeks.
So, here’s what we know — the Rams are blowing teams out of the water lately. Once they get up big (usually on the back of a monster performance by Gurley), they look to get the ball into their backup’s hands to preserve Gurley for a later date. With Brown now hurt, Dunbar will presumably become his primary backup, if he’s healthy and ready to return this week.
Dunbar has never been a stud out of the backfield — the most rushing yards he’s ever put up in a season (30 carries for 150 yards) pales in comparison to what Todd Gurley can do for a single game. But he’s a talented pass-catcher out of the backfield, and the Rams may use him in both a third-down role and a garbage time rushing role to spell Gurley. If you have a free bench spot to check him out, do it.