Fantasy Football: How does Steelers-Titans postponement effect your roster?

The Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans won’t play in Week 4, so what are fantasy football managers who have the key players left to do?

After talk of in-week postponement to Monday or Tuesday night the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans won’t play in Week 4 as the Titans deal with a COVID-19 outbreak. A pivot to Week 7 (Tennessee’s original bye week), with the Steelers-Baltimore Ravens Week 7 game bumped to Week 8 (Pittsburgh and Baltimore’s original bye) seems like the best pivot for the league.

Fantasy football managers should have been already pivoted off their Steelers and Titans with few exceptions this week, if only because of reduced flexibility if they would have played Monday or Tuesday night. Now, it’s official that all Titans and Steelers have to be benched in fantasy for Week 4.

Week 4 Fantasy Football Fallout: Titans and Steelers postponed

The fantasy headliners for both the Titans and Steelers are the lead running backs. Derrick Henry is a weekly matchup-proof lineup lock, and James Conner is back in that territory with back-to-back 100-yard games in Week 2 and Week 3.

The quarterbacks, Ben Roethlisberger and Ryan Tannehill, were only fringe fantasy starts this week anyway in fairly tough matchups. So those who have them outside of two-quarterback leagues had surely already pivoted, either to a second quarterback on a roster or to a streamer off the waiver wire (Ryan Fitzpatrick, Joe Burrow).

Among the wide receivers on both teams, only the Steelers’ JuJu Smith-Schuster would have been a lock for fantasy lineups this week with teammate Diontae Johnson in concussion protocol. James Washington (Steelers), Corey Davis (Titans), Adam Humphries (Titans) and Chase Claypool (Steelers) were purely dart throws.

Shifting to the tight ends, the Steelers’ Eric Ebron has been on on a upward trend and was starter/streamer material against a Titans’ defense that’s in the bottom-10 of the league in fantasy points allowed to tight ends through three weeks. Titans tight end Jonnu Smith has delivered on the preseason hype thus far, as the top-scoring tight end in standard fantasy scoring though Week 3 (TE2 in full PPR). So two starting fantasy tight ends are out of the mix for Week 4.

On the positive side, those who have Henry, Conner, Roethlisberger, Tannehill, Smith etc. on a fantasy roster will have their bye weeks done already in Week 4. Bye weeks will start as originally scheduled league-wide in Week 5, and the Titans and Steelers will now (as currently slated and scheduled) be playing right through those weeks.