Fantasy football preview for Week 4

Week 3 of the NFL and fantasy football season is just about in the books, and there was a lot to digest from Sunday’s action. We can apply a good bit of it to Week 4 and beyond and with so much happening every week, it is important to decipher what is important and what is noise.

Let’s take a look.

Najee Harris is getting the football… a lot

We knew Najee Harris was going to be heavily involved since the Steelers drafted him in the first round back in April. But my goodness, Week 3 was something else. Harris touched the ball 28 times Sunday, including a whopping 14 receptions, tied for the seventh-highest mark among all running backs in a single game in NFL history. Meanwhile, his 19 targets were the second-most by any running back ever. The Steelers were without Diontae Johnson in this game, while JuJu Smith-Schuster left with a rib injury, which led to the massive uptick in receiving work for Harris. But he is already locked into massive volume, as he played over 90% of the snaps again for Pittsburgh in this game, while running nearly 60 pass routes. If Johnson and JuJu are forced to miss more time, Harris would legitimately have Christian McCaffrey-type usage in the passing game, especially with Ben Roethlisberger not able to take shots down the field. Through the first three weeks of the season, just 10% of Roethlisberger’s pass attempts have traveled 20 yards or more down the field, while nearly 21% of his attempts have been behind the line of scrimmage, the fourth-highest rate in the league. Even if the efficiency isn’t great behind Pittsburgh’s awful offensive line, Harris’ volume should help mask that. 

Alvin Kamara is too

Through three weeks, we have yet to see Alvin Kamara have that huge outing in the passing game. However, the Saints have been giving him a ton of carries, more than we have ever seen. Kamara carried the ball 24 times against the Patriots Sunday, the highest mark of his career. And dating back to the end of last season (including the playoffs), Kamara now has at least 20 carries in four of his last seven games. So far, the Saints have had two dominant games where they were running the clock out. In those games, Kamara has recorded 20 and 24 carries. And while he didn’t have six or seven catches in this game, he did score a receiving touchdown from the slot, giving him two receiving scores on the season. So far this season, the volume is different for Kamara but still very good. He remains a clear top-seven fantasy running back.

Odell Beckham is back

After missing the first two games of the season, Odell Beckham made his 2021 debut Sunday against the Bears, hauling in five balls for 77 yards. He was targeted a team-high nine times, resulting in a market share just north of 31%. And in terms of playing time, Beckham was logging nearly every snap of this game until the fourth quarter, as the Browns were in full control of this contest. I thought Beckham looked very good in this game, immediately showing that he’s still one of the best receivers in football when healthy, especially off quick slants, which he ran quite a bit in this game. With Jarvis Landry sidelined, Beckham will continue to be the unquestioned top target for Baker Mayfield and his upcoming matchups against Minnesota, Los Angeles and Arizona are pretty favorable. It is unlikely he returns to the days of being a top-five fantasy receiver, but Beckham can be an easy top-20 player at the position. 

The Ravens backfield is a mess

For a little while, it looked like Ty’Son Williams was going to be a trustworthy running back in fantasy football. During the first two weeks of the season, Williams averaged a respectable 13.5 touches per game and, like most running backs in this Baltimore offense, he was efficient. However, some mistakes in pass protection and ball security issues may have led to his playing time dropping down the stretch of those first two games, and that continued in Week 3. Williams appeared to be a smash play against the Lions, but he only logged 50% of the snaps and finished third on the team in carries with five, behind Lamar Jackson and Latavius Murray, who each had seven. As he gets more acclimated with the offense, it is entirely possible that Murray has established himself as the early-down back, with Williams mixing in on passing downs. If that is suddenly the case, Williams, a popular waiver wire add prior to Week 1, is suddenly a player you cannot even think about starting going forward, while I’m not sure you want to insert Murray into your lineup either.