It ain’t the time of year for the faint of heart.
Sure, if your fantasy team is 10-2 (or even 9-3), you can relax a little — you’re almost certainly headed to the playoffs. But even then, there’s still the matter of securing a first-round bye — getting one week closer to a championship without having to worry about taking a loss that ends the season.
But lots of other fantasy managers are sitting at 7-5 or 6-6 (Or 5-7 — keep hope alive!) and simply cannot afford to take another loss. Fortunately, all 32 teams are in action this week (something to be truly thankful for), but that doesn’t mean there aren’t managers with potential holes on the roster — or dead weight dragging it down.
This late in the season, roster construction philosophy should change. It makes a lot more sense to roster “handcuff” backs than a wide receiver who you’d only be able to start without sobbing after four shots of Rumple Minze. If your starting quarterback is solid, there’s no need to carry a “meh” backup.
If players can’t help you now (or in the near future), there’s no point in rostering them. Grab your running back’s backup. Heck, if your playoff spot is sewn up, add a second defense with an outstanding postseason schedule. Fantasy managers desperate for a win should be trying to lock down spot starters at positions of weakness.
What they shouldn’t be doing is letting the following players (who, per my mystic reverse-jinx powers, have a real shot at a big Week 13) clog up their roster anymore.
(Rostered percentages courtesy of Yahoo!)
Droppable in shallow leagues
Players to dump in leagues with 10 teams or short benches
WR Quentin Johnston, LAC (54 percent rostered)
Johnston’s rookie year was poo, and he only has 22 catches this season. But six of those grabs have gone for scores, and Johnston took a three-week stretch of double-digit PPR points into Week 12. While speaking to Omar Navarro of the team’s website, Johnston credited his 2024 success in part to the confidence in him expressed by head coach Jim Harbaugh.
“That’s what every player wants to hear from a coach; that must mean he really believes that,” Johnston said. “Him and the rest of the coaching staff got all the confidence in the world in me, as I do in myself. Shoot, once I believe in myself and the coaches believe in me, anything anybody else got to say doesn’t really matter at that point.”
Harbaugh continued to express confidence in Johnston after a Week 12 goose egg in which Johnston looked like he was trying to catch the ball wearing oven mitts, but wise fantasy managers should be out on the second-year receiver. Johnston hasn’t caught more than two passes since Week 9, and there are other wideouts, like the Denver Broncos Devaughn Vele, who are widely available and can, you know, catch and stuff.
QB Brock Purdy, SF (92 percent rostered)
Over the first eight weeks of the season, Purdy was a respectable eighth among quarterbacks in fantasy points. But the most relevant Mr. Irrelevant in NFL history missed last week’s blowout loss to the Green Bay Packers with a shoulder injury. While addressing the media, Niners head coach Kyle Shanahan expressed some confidence that Purdy could be back out there Sunday against the Buffalo Bills.
“He threw lighter today to see if the rest helped, and the rest did help him,” Shanahan said Monday. “We will see again, going through the same things that we did last week. We are going to let him rest all the way up to Wednesday. We will see how it feels Wednesday, and then we will take the exact same course throughout the week, and hopefully, it responds better this week than last week with the rest.”
Purdy is genuinely questionable for Week 13 — when the reeling San Francisco 49ers face an uphill battle against arguably the league’s hottest team. The Bills have allowed the eighth-fewest fantasy points per game to quarterbacks in 2024. And even if Purdy does give it a go, he’ll be at less than 100 percent. Never mind his four starts this year with under 15 fantasy points.
If fantasy managers don’t have a better option on the roster, they might want to check the wire — because starting Purdy this week is asking for trouble.
Other drops
Players to drop for literally anyone
WR Diontae Johnson, BAL (56 Percent Rostered)
Johnson has already appeared in this column this year, but I had to include him again after seeing that he has a higher rostered percentage than Cedric Tillman of the Cleveland Browns and Romeo Doubs of the Packers.
I mean, seriously — what are we doing? In three games since joining the Baltimore Ravens, Johnson has one more catch than I do. He’s been targeted six times, which goes beyond some “he’s acclimating to a new offense” type of thing. He was added as injury insurance — nothing more.
The list of receivers who should be rostered ahead of Johnson is, well, all of them.
RB Jordan Mason, SF (43 Percent Rostered)
Mason was admittedly outstanding in place of an injured Christian McCaffrey early in the season — he averaged more than five yards a carry in five of the first six games of the season and was eighth in PPR points among running backs over that span.
But that was then, and this is now. McCaffrey is back to dominating the backfield workload for the reeling 49ers. Mason had all of four touches last week against the Packers. It’s simple, really — if you have McCaffrey on the team, then keeping Mason on the roster makes sense. If not? Live in the now, man.
WR Wan’Dale Robinson, NYG (47 Percent Rostered)
Want to know when an NFL team has a bad passing game? When you start missing Daniel Jones, things are bad. And after one start from Tommy DeVito, that’s where we are with the New York Giants.
Robinson wasn’t terrible last week against the Giants — he caught all five of his targets for 47 yards. But Robinson hasn’t had 12 PPR points in a game since Week 5. There’s just no ceiling to the Giants passing game with Danny DeVito (played by Louie De Palma in “Taxi”) chucking worm-burners all over the place. And the possibility of Drew Lock taking over sounds like as much fun as a colonoscopy.
Gary Davenport is a two-time Fantasy Sports Writers Association Football Writer of the Year. Yell at him on X at @IDPSharks.
(Photo of Greg Newsome II and Quentin Johnston: Ken Blaze/Imagn Images)
