NFL Week 9 FTN Staff Bets
FTN Staff
We finally got our first preseason action last week in the Hall of Fame Game between the Cleveland Browns and New York Jets. Things will start heating up in fantasy football now with a full slate of preseason action on the horizon this weekend.
More and more highlights and beat writer reports are popping up all over the internet, which is leading to some shifts in ADP as we get closer and closer to the season. Now that the calendar has flipped to August, this article will be dropping weekly and looking at the ADP movers over the last week. As always, the ADP found in this article comes from Underdog, a best ball site.
Gus Edwards, RB, Baltimore Ravens
The J.K. Dobbins training camp saga continues, which has pushed Gus Edwards’ ADP up nearly seven spots in the last week. Like Dobbins, Edwards was coming into last season after a season-ending injury in 2021. The veteran running back missed the first six weeks of the season (and eight games total) but still managed to compile 87 carries for 433 yards and three rushing touchdowns.
Even when Dobbins returns to the team from his PUP list stint (read as a contract dispute), Edwards still has an appealing upside as RB57 in fantasy football. The fifth-year running back has averaged at least 5.0 yards per carry in every season of his career while playing a complementary role in Baltimore’s backfield. While Edwards doesn’t provide much value in the pass-catching department, he has flashed an ability to find the end zone in the red zone with 20 career touchdowns on 113 rushing attempts inside the 20.
Given the way the NFL collective bargaining agreement is constructed, it seems highly unlikely that Dobbins will go into the season as a holdout. However, Edwards can still have a very productive role in Todd Monken’s new offense in Baltimore at an extremely cheap price.
Treylon Burks, WR, Tennessee Titans
Treylon Burks had an underwhelming rookie season with the Tennessee Titans, catching 33 of 54 targets for 444 yards and one touchdown in 11 games. Burks struggled with conditioning early in the summer, suffered a toe injury during the season and came back just in time to watch Malik Willis hand the ball off or scramble for entire games at a time.
However, many fantasy managers were optimistic about Burks’ role growing heading into his second season. The Titans didn’t address the wide receiver position in the draft, leading to a starting group of Burks, Nick Westbrook-Ikhine and Kyle Philips. Then the Titans won the DeAndre Hopkins sweepstakes, which has caused Burks’ ADP to continually drop. His fall has been steady, including another 4.8 spot decline over the last week.
However, there is a chance that fantasy drafters are still overrating Burks’ decline while competing with Hopkins for targets. Yes, Hopkins will likely earn the bulk of the target share. But Burks will now be the beneficiary of Hopkins’ drawing coverage as the team’s WR1. The move for Hopkins also ensures that Ryan Tannehill will remain under center while the Titans compete to find their way back into the playoffs. Even in a “down” season for Tannehill, he completed 65.2% of his passes for the Titans last season.
Tennessee will likely remain a run-first offense this season, but there will still be plenty of passing attempts for Burks to provide fantasy value down the field. The sophomore wide receiver has been making big plays all camp, and given the competition for targets and Hopkins, he will still likely see a 20% or more target share. Burks becomes more and more of a value as the weeks go on and could easily outperform his WR43 ADP this season.
Justyn Ross, WR, Kansas City Chiefs
One of the biggest ADP movers over the last week on Underdog fantasy has been Kansas City second-year receiver Justyn Ross. Ross was a major producer early in his Clemson career, catching 112 passes for 1,865 yards and 17 touchdowns in his first two years before a series of injuries forced him to miss most of his collegiate games during the 2020-2022 college seasons. Medical issues caused Ross to go undrafted in the 2022 draft class, allowing him to sign with Kansas City as an unrestricted free agent. Just one year later, Ross is turning heads and consistently making plays with the Chiefs offense ahead of the 2023 season.
These highlights, along with his high-level production in college, are likely fueling Ross’s climb up the ADP ranks. Drafting Ross means gambling on a player with a significant injury history in an ambiguous passing offense. The Clemson product missed time in college due to a congenital fusion of two vertebrae in his neck that caused numbness in his arms during a practice hit. Allegedly, only four NFL teams cleared him during his medical checks ahead of the 2022 draft.
As it stands, Ross is a fine gamble to take in fantasy drafts to get a potential piece of the Chiefs passing attack for a WR79 price. But if highlights keep pushing his ADP up higher and higher throughout the summer, it will be harder to press the draft button on him over healthier options in the passing attack like Rashee Rice and Marquez Valdes-Scantling.
Luke Musgrave, TE, Green Bay Packers
Historically, rookie tight ends are a bad bet in fantasy leagues. However, that line of thinking has led to Luke Musgrave being completely overlooked in fantasy drafts. Musgrave is currently being drafted as TE31 in drafts and is routinely available in the 17th and 18th rounds of Underdog even though he has been functioning as the team’s TE1 and on the field during all first-team reps this summer.
At first glance, Musgrave’s statistics in college are nothing special. In five years at Oregon State, Musgrave caught just 47 targets for 633 yards and two touchdowns. The tight end missed all but two games in his final season due to a knee injury. However, Musgrave still found himself selected in the second round of the 2023 NFL draft thanks to measuring at 6-foot-6 and 253 pounds while running a 4.61 40-yard dash.
The other thing in Musgrave’s favor is the general uncertainty surrounding Green Bay’s passing attack. We haven’t seen Jordan Love operate as the starter for a long period of time and truly have no idea who will emerge as the top target. Musgrave should function as an excellent red-zone weapon in his first season and has the speed to attack down the seam or flex out to the slot early in his career. He could very easily finish top-2 in targets in his first year.
These are all risks worth taking in the last round of fantasy drafts, especially if you faded tight end early in the draft.
