The Cut List – Who To Drop for Week 10?

Welcome back Brandon Aiyuk! Allen Robinson showed signs of life with over 10 fantasy points this week! Justin Fields looked pretty good on Monday Night Football against the Steelers and it looks like Aiyuk is finally out of Shanahan's dog house. The cute thing about Shanahan's dog house with players is that the coach himself needs a dog house. What kind of coach gets blown out by the Cardinals without Kyler Murray, DeAndre Hopkins and J.J. Watt? Especially when you get George Kittle back. Without even touching on his 32-40 career record. Sham-a-han was at it again, but at least he was nice enough to leave Aiyuk in the game after he fumbled it. As if he's never made a mistake before, am I right? 27–3. Dude's living off that Super Bowl run as hard as Adam Gase lived off Peyton Manning's career year in Denver.

Anyways, Week 9 was absolutely all over the place. For fantasy managers, it can be difficult sometimes to read between the lines and differentiate between what is fact and what is fiction. In that sense, this past week of football didn't do us any favors. It was a brutal slate of games, which I'm sure was reflected in fantasy scores across everyone's leagues.

The big question this week will be what happens with Odell Beckham Jr.? He made the cut list last week and it was well-deserved, but if you happened to have held onto him, you need to continue holding now in order to see where he's going. Hopefully, fantasy managers hung onto Brandon Aiyuk who made the "hold on" section last week and it paid off. He's starting to turn a corner, and while he isn't back in that starter conversation, he's getting closer. Now, let's look at some players moving in the opposite way.

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Quarterbacks to Drop for Week 10?

Daniel Jones, New York Giants

46.4% rostered

From Weeks 1–4, Jones was the QB6 with just two turnovers and 188 rushing yards and two rushing scores. From Weeks 5–9, Jones has six turnovers with only 70 rushing yards with zero rushing scores. Those two stats are the difference between him being on your roster and him not being. It certainly hasn't helped Jones that Sterling Shepard and Kenny Golladay have both missed a bunch of games. The wide receiver group in New York is in shambles with injuries to just about everyone. In the last five weeks, he has not broken 20 points and has been held to under 10 points on three occasions. There was some hope Jones could have a mini Josh Allen-like breakout season with the Kenny Golladay addition and his ability to gain points on the ground, but that hasn't been the case. Jones just cannot be trusted right now. Starting him has become dangerous – not the Maverick kind of dangerous either. He's on bye in Week 10 and comes back to play the Buccaneers, so there's no reason fantasy managers should feel the need to hang onto him.

 

Running Backs to Drop for Week 10?

Kenneth Gainwell, Philadelphia Eagles

36.4% rostered

Fantasy managers are trying to wrap their heads around what exactly is happening in Philadelphia. To begin the season, the Eagles refused to run the ball at all with Miles Sanders. Kenneth Gainwell looked like he was playing his way into a prominent role. Then Sanders goes down and the expectation is the rookie will be unleashed a bit – that couldn't be further from the truth.

Philadelphia Eagles Running Backs in Week 9:

[Snap %]
1⃣ Boston Scott - 44%
2⃣ Jordan Howard - 40%
3⃣ Kenneth Gainwell - 19%

[Attempts | Rush Yards]
1⃣ Jordan Howard - 17 | 71 yds
2⃣ Boston Scott - 10 | 40 yds
3⃣ Kenneth Gainwell - 2 | 3 yds

— JL Garofalo (@FYFJohnLuke) November 8, 2021

The passing volume has decreased steadily over these past few weeks, which is where Gainwell earned most of his fantasy points. With Boston Scott and Jordan Howard both working ahead of him in the running game, there's very little way for Gainwell to earn any fantasy relevance. Sanders is eligible to return soon, but this backfield has the appearance of a full-on committee and Gainwell appears to be on the outside looking in.

 

Wide Receivers to Drop for Week 10?

Tyler Boyd, Cincinnati Bengals

76.3% rostered

Even the most die-hard Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins fans couldn't have foreseen this kind of season coming from Tyler Boyd. He has been rendered completely irrelevant. He has six games with four catches or fewer and six games with fewer than 40 yards. He's only gone over 75 yards receiving on one occasion and has just two receiving touchdowns – one of which came when Tee Higgins was injured.

CIN has had their top-3 WRs all available for 7 games this year. Target share in those:

* Ja'Marr Chase 25.0%
* Tee Higgins 24.2%
* Tyler Boyd 16.1%

— Adam Levitan (@adamlevitan) November 8, 2021

I was hopeful the increase in opponent difficulty would result in an increase in passing volume, which has been true, but unfortunately, it hasn't been enough to solve Boyd's problems. He had a solid game in Week 8 where he had five catches for 69 yards and a score, but he followed that up with a measly 11 yards on one catch in Week 9. Boyd has twice scored under two points this season, which is a scary-low floor and the upside just is not there. For Boyd to become fantasy-relevant, it would take an injury to Chase or Higgins. Otherwise, he's nothing more than an extremely low-floor, low-ceiling player.

Rondale Moore, Arizona Cardinals

31.0% rostered

It doesn't look like it's going to happen for Moore in his rookie season. There's no denying his talents when he gets the ball in his hands, but that doesn't happen frequently enough where fantasy managers can depend on him. He's seeing only 4.5 targets per game and the depth of these targets is infuriatingly low.

Rondale Moore's average depth of target is a mind-numbingly low 1.2 yards. That's dead last among all qualifying WRs -- Cole Beasley is second to last at 5.9 yards.

At that aDOT, he'll need incredible volume to be consistently productive.

— Adam Levitan (@adamlevitan) November 8, 2021

With DeAndre Hopkins, A.J. Green, Christian Kirk and Zach Ertz in town, there's just no realistic avenue for Moore to establish regular volume. I believe he has a bright future and fantasy managers should expect him to pop 1-2 more times this season because he's electric with the ball, but knowing when that week is going to hit will be impossible. There are likely other lottery tickets who have a more clear path towards regular volume than Moore does right now.

 

Tight Ends to Drop for Week 10?

Jared Cook, Los Angeles Chargers

69.5% rostered

Using Cook for the second straight week seems like a cop-out, but the tight end position sucks. I wanted to include Hunter Henry and the fact he hasn't had more than 34 yards once in the past four weeks. Or the fact that he hasn't caught more than two balls during that same time period. However, he also has five touchdowns in the past six games, so there goes that. Then I wanted to include Tyler Conklin, but he has back-to-back games of seven targets. Over the past three weeks he has 13 catches for 173 yards. That's not too shabby at all. And then I wanted to include Evan Engram, who has been held under 30 yards in four of his seven games. He has not recorded more than 55 yards in a game and has been held under three catches or fewer three times. Unfortunately, I couldn't do that either because he has back-to-back touchdowns, which is kind of a big deal. The moral of this story, the tight end position is so bad, you can justify rostering any single one of the top-15. Except for Jared Cook.

He has only scored twice on the season and has five games under 25 yards. Fantasy managers are able to find better streamers on the waiver wire week this week and don't need to hang onto Cook's low-upside profile.

 

On the Hot Seat

Kadarius Toney, New York Giants

56.2% rostered

I promise I'm not picking on the Giants today – although I imagine it would be a fairly easy thing to do. Toney burst onto the scene in Week 5 when he caught 10 of 13 targets for 189 yards. The problem is since that game, Toney has only nine targets over the last three contests. He caught eight of them for 71 yards with no scores. Daniel Jones has been struggling mightily and after their Week 10 bye, the Giants will likely get Saquon Barkley back onto the field. Kenny Golladay also appears to be getting healthier. His two-game stretch over Weeks 4–5 is enough for fantasy managers to hang onto Toney for, especially since he's been slightly banged up too lately, but he's squarely on the hot seat. Eventually, Toney needs to start producing again or those two weeks are going to quickly look like the outliers – it's slowly starting to happen right now.

If the Giants’ usage of wide receivers over the past few weeks is any indication, Kadarius Toney will be fourth in line behind Sterling Shepard, Kenny Golladay and Darius Slayton when New York returns from its Week 10 bye.

— Mike Clay (@MikeClayNFL) November 8, 2021

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