Week 6 Stock Up, Stock Down: The young receivers are here

Week 6 wasn't a week of huge unknown shifts, but of incremental gains on the field. Thus, we don't have a lot of clear steps forward, but players who could get there in the near future. We also have a lot of mess for Stock Down. We'll fetch Marie Kondo.

Stock Up

Dameon Pierce, Philadelphia Eagles

We don’t know when Saquon Barkley will return from his hamstring injury. It could very well be Week 7 with an extra recovery day. But what we do know is that Will Shipley and Tank Bigsby are on injured reserve, and Pierce just played a game in which he took 61-of-64 offensive snaps. Even if Barkley comes back at full strength, there’s room for Pierce to be on fantasy rosters as the stash bench back.

But I don’t know that I’d believe Barkley is especially close to returning after not practicing at all last week, and even if he plays in Week 7, I bet they’ll take it at least a little easy on him. Pierce’s role could vary wildly depending on how Barkley’s week of practice goes. But no matter how it ends up, he probably deserves to be rostered in most leagues at this point. Yes, even with the Eagles offense being run by Tanner McKee.

Omar Cooper Jr., New York Jets

Leading the Jets with 103 yards and a touchdown in his first game off injured reserve, Cooper is now definitely something. He’s probably at the very least deserving of a 12-team roster spot. But beyond that, I’m not entirely sure what to expect from him. Adonai Mitchell could come back at any moment, and Mitchell looked good early in the season before his finger injury sidelined him.

It is notable that a) Garrett Wilson drew the Christian Gonzalez vice grip coverage in this one and b) 48 yards of it came on a deep ball touchdown that he basically had to stop to catch. It wasn’t like this was amazing, run-of-play Amon-Ra St. Brown type stuff. Not yet, anyway. I don’t want to say that it wasn’t promising, either. But the Jets are sort of in a weird spot where they have a lot of promising young players and also not all of them are going to eat with Geno Smith under center and Frank Reich calling plays. We might get one or two reasonable plays outside of Wilson a week. And I’m not entirely sure that Cooper will be one of them. But you sort of have to take the chance, especially with a game against the Dolphins up next.

Ja’Kobi Lane, Baltimore Ravens

The Ravens preseason star showed up with a 4/40 opener on five targets after being activated off injured reserve. Baltimore has struggled all year to find a reliable No. 2 wideout, even asking traditional sacrificial X receiver Rashod Bateman to “actually do something.” Mark Andrews looks absolutely washed.

Lane will eventually get Lamar Jackson back, and he could easily wind up as Baltimore’s No. 2 receiver in the target pecking order at some point this season. I don’t expect a robust market on Lane claims this week, but I think eventually he’ll be a good pickup and he’s got a real-deal big-ceiling target case with Zay Flowers seemingly always on the injury report this year.

Savion Williams, Green Bay Packers

I banged this drum in our blurbs a few times over the past two weeks, but now that he’s off the PUP list, Williams has a real chance to be fantasy-interesting down the stretch. The Packers are the team smashing fantasy football expectations this year with Jordan Love having to lean into throwing because the team can’t run. Matthew Golden and Christian Watson have destroyed their ADP in light of those facts, as well as the part where Jayden Reed went down and left the team without a third quality receiver.

Williams certainly could be that sort of receiver. He will get a second-year bump. He did manage 41 yards on six touches in his debut on Sunday Night Football — somehow he did not drop a ball, which seems impossible if you watched the game. If Watson, notoriously fragile, goes down, Williams would suddenly have a huge upside case. I don’t think that’s particularly likely, but anybody who could command a huge target share in this offense has to be on the fantasy radar. Williams isn’t there yet; he could get there, though.

Stock Down

All Giants running backs, New York Giants

I covered Cam Skattebo last week – hope you listened there, he had zero carries – the problem is that in his stead the Giants just became a morass of weirdness. Devin Singletary wound up as the lead back by snaps in a catch-up game script, Tyrone Tracy scored the touchdowns, but at halftime the four backs all had between nine and six carries.

It’s just a weird situation for fantasy purposes because you rarely see four different players with a chance at snaps, and you obviously can’t roster them all. If you were a pre-emptive Najee Harris pick-up team, you can’t feel good about his four carries for two yards. But nobody ran the ball well against the Saints. It’s hard to justify rostering three players, let alone four, on one bad backfield. Until this sorts itself out naturally or we get better quotes, it’s hard to really rely on any of these players. Hopefully we get some tidbit out of John Harbaugh on Monday. But if not, trying to reccommend a Giants back is just the blind leading the blind.

TreVeyon Henderson and Rhamondre Stevenson, New England Patriots

The leading rusher against the Jets wasn’t Stevenson nor Henderson, but third-stringer Corey Kiner, who grinded out a long field goal drive to put the Patriots up 10 in the fourth quarter.

Maybe this is just another Week 9 Terrell Jennings from last year. (For the uninitiated, Jennings ran 11 times for 35 yards and scored against the Falcons, then never had more than four touches again for the rest of the season.) But the thing is, neither Henderson nor Stevenson is playing very well right now. Stevenson has 26 rush yards over expected on the season, while Henderson has two. Henderson is also dealing with an ankle sprain and has a rough 58.9 PFF rating on the season. I don’t quite think enough of Kiner to give him a Stock Up here, but I do at least think he can provide the cushion for Henderson and Stevenson to fall a bit ahead of what should be a plum matchup with the Bears run defense.

MarShawn Lloyd, Green Bay Packers

Josh Jacobs was cynically reinstated by the NFL as a Friday afternoon news dump. He’ll be eligible to play in Week 7. Nobody is going to lose more value than Lloyd. Lloyd wasn’t running well anyway but given the 40/112/2 rushing line in five pseudo-starts, it’s hard to see him ever being more than a reasonable committee back.

And so, with Jacobs back, I find it hard to see the upside here that’s worth rostering Lloyd. The volume was barely there for him; the results were FLEX-at-best. He’s almost always hurt – he even left Sunday Night Football briefly with what appeared to be a shoulder injury. I think we can let this guy go in most reasonably sized leagues barring Jacobs suddenly getting re-suspended.

Kenyon Sadiq, New York Jets

With Mason Taylor back in the fold and Omar Cooper Jr. suddenly exploding on to the scene with seven targets, Sadiq could manage just three of Geno Smith’s 30 targets against the Patriots on Sunday. He also split the tight end snaps heavily with Jeremy Ruckert and Jelani Woods, managing just 22 of his own to their 14 and 13, respectively.

I like Sadiq a lot as a long-term piece, and I think at some point this year the Jets may figure out that he should be used as a big part of the puzzle. But for the moment, as we’re stuck in the bye weeks, I don’t think he’s a startable TE1 and I don’t see enough of a short-term path to targets to believe that he’s a worthwhile hold on most benches. If you need a roster spot, I think a cut is justified here.