You have to love these late-season byes, don’t you? When we drafted Christian McCaffrey, we weren’t worried about Week 14. In fact, if you told us he would be healthy for all of the first 13 weeks of the season, we would be so happy that we wouldn’t have even heard what you said next. But here we are, in the last week of the fantasy football regular season (for many of us), without the services of our best player. To be fair, there are four regular-season games left after this weekend, and the first bye week occurred in Week 5. So, there is some symmetry in how the league schedule makers decided to spread out the 32 bye weeks. Let’s just hope that all of you CMC owners out there have already locked your spots in your fantasy post-season, and you’ll be fine without your stud back for one week. As for the other teams that have this week off, there seems to be a bit of serendipity in the timing of the break, as all three backfields were somewhat muddied in Week 13 for one reason or another.
In Carolina, we thought Rico Dowdle had staked his claim to the bell-cow role in that backfield weeks ago, but this past week, Chuba Hubbard not only split the backfield touches right down the middle, but he actually out-snapped his teammate 59% to 42%. Meanwhile, Treveyon Henderson owners were screaming at their televisions on Monday night as Rhamondre Stevenson reared his handsome head with 60% of the backfield snaps in New England after it seemed like the rookie had moved ahead of him in the Patriots pecking order. Finally, the Giants‘ mess of a season got even messier when Tyrone Tracy left the Monday night game with what turned out to be a bruised hip. Devon Singletary took over for Tracy after the injury and looked very good in the process, so who knows what the split will be when Big Blue returns to the field next week. Either way, these are all problems for next week. For this week, let’s see which backs appear in our Week 14 running back rankings.
Week 14 Running Back Rankings
1) James Cook vs. Cincinnati
Cook has been one of the best backs in the league all season long, ranking as the overall RB6 through 13 weeks. Over the Bills‘ last three games, he has gone over 100 total yards in every game and is averaging about 23 PPR points in fantasy over that span. This week, he should get all the work he can handle against a Bengals defense that is ranked dead last against the running back position in fantasy and ranked #31 overall against the run. He has shown us what he can do when the matchup is ripe, as he has scored over 20 fantasy points in 6 of his 12 starts this season. This is going to be #7.
For more help with your fantasy football rosters, check out our Week 14 Start/Sit!
2) Jaymyr Gibbs vs. Dallas
Last week was a down week for Gibbs on Thanksgiving Day as he was held under 15 fantasy points for just the 3rd time in 12 games this season. With Amon-Ra St. Brown possibly missing this game with an ankle injury, I expect Gibbs to be leaned on even more in the passing game. He’s a must-start in a great matchup that projects to have the highest point total of the week. Leave him in your lineups.
