Stock Report: Week 6

Stock Up

Chase Edmonds, RB 

Edmonds has been trending up for a couple weeks now. He is coming off his best game yet with 29 yards rushing to go with a touchdown. He also caught five of his six targets to add 56 yards receiving. This has as much to do with Kenyan Drake being bad as it does with Edmonds making the most of his touches. Edmonds still isn’t getting the level of touches we would like to see but he is averaging 5.8 yards per rush compared to Drake’s 3.4 over the past three weeks. The stat that really jumps out is in the passing game. Forget the yards, take a look at the targets. In the past three weeks Edmonds has 14 targets compared to Drake's TWO. This came in games that the Cardinals won and lost, so the game script hasn’t mattered. Edmonds could potentially take over in a potent offense at any time. Make him a speculative adf if he’s out there.

DK Metcalf, WR

Metcalf is a case of a player who was firmly in the WR2 conversation coming into the year, and has catapulted himself into the top 5 overall receiver conversation for 2021 drafts. It would be hard to find a better situation for fantasy. He plays in a tremendous passing offense, with one of the best Quarterbacks in the game. That’s not to mention that his teams defense can hardly stop anybody and calls for a pass heavy game script regularly. While he only has 22 receptions, he is making the most of every single one evidenced by his 496 receiving yards. He trails only Deandre Hopkins and Stefon Diggs in that category. For those of you doing the math at home, that’s right he’s averaging 22.5 yards per reception. He easily ranks first there. It’s great to see your fantasy player racking up the yards, but Metcalf has the touchdowns to go along with it. He currently has 5 of them. Only Adam Thielan and Mike Evans have more. Unfortunately he will be on his bye this week, but he should continue his blistering 1,587 yard, 16 touchdown pace when he returns in week 7 against the Cardinals. It could be a good time to check in with that Metcalf owner and see if you can pry him loose. 

Jimmy Graham, TE

Let’s just be honest, Tight End is a wasteland for fantasy purposes. There’s only a few that you can rely on for weekly production. Graham’s stock was about as low as it gets coming into the season. While he hasn’t exactly been racking up targets and yards, he has been racking up one very important statistic: red zone targets. Graham currently has 9 of them. This ties him for 2nd in the league in that category amongst all positions. That’s right, not just Tight Ends but all players. If you’ve seen any Bears games this season, it is clear that Matt Nagy is doing whatever he can to scheme Graham open in the Red Zone, and Foles is going to him often. As a result, he currently has 4 touchdowns to his credit already. Obviously his best days are well behind him, but any Tight End that is catching touchdowns consistently deserves to be rostered at this point.

Stock Down

Matt Ryan, QB 

I was as high on Matty Ice as anybody coming into the year, and drafted him in more leagues than I’d like to admit. This is more than just missing Julio Jones. He’s coming off his third straight clunker. In that time he has only one touchdown compared to two interceptions. He hasn’t broken 300 yards passing since week one. When you take a look at his game log, his two best games came against the Cowboys and the Seahawks who Quarterbacks are tearing up on a weekly basis. He currently has a 63.2% completion percentage which would be his lowest since 2011. This can’t exactly be attributed to his receivers dropping balls either. His on-target percentage, which measures catchable balls on passes thrown, is sitting at 62.7% This ranks him 20th at the position behind the likes of Dwayne Haskins and Mitchell Trubisky who were both benched due to poor play. It’s not time to panic as he’s got a few soft matchups coming up, but make sure you have a backup plan in case this continues. 

Joshua Kelley, RB

Just as we thought Kelley's stock was on the rise, it came crashing down on Monday night in New Orleans. It looked like he was primed to take over as the go to Running Back for the Chargers, but Kelley owner’s had to be displeased with Monday’s game. Clearly Anthony Lynn trusts Justin Jackson more, and he in fact did look much better. Jackson handled 15 carries compared to 11 for Kelley. Kelley averaged only 2.6 yards per rush, while Jackson had a much more impressive 4.7 yard per rush average. Even more disturbing, Jackson got six targets in the passing game, converting five of those into catches for an additional 23 yards. Kelley only saw one target the entire night. Keep in mind, the Chargers were leading this game pretty much the entire time. If they had been trialing it may have looked even worse for Kelley. If you have the bench space you can hold onto him in the hopes that maybe something changes in week seven after the bye, but I wouldn’t feel bad at all if you cut bait in favor of some of the more enticing Running Backs on Waivers.

Mike Evans

By all accounts, Evans is turning in a great fantasy season as he sits in the top 10 at his position. If you decided to spend a draft pick on him then you’ve got to be happy with what you’re getting. Taking a deeper dive into the numbers paints a much more disturbing picture. It’s clear that the touchdowns are the one thing buoying his value at the moment. He currently has 22 receptions for 271 yards. These numbers place him in a tie for 37th, and 36th at the position. Brady refuses to go down the field to him. His average yard per target is 7.7, ranking him 82nd overall amongst pass catchers. On top of that he’s also doing absolutely nothing after catching the ball. His yards after catch average is a paltry 3.1, which puts in 119th in the NFL. Keep in mind this is all without Chris Godwin lining up out there. It’s great that he’s cashing in on touchdowns, but without those this is a player that wouldn’t even be sniffing the top 30 at his position. Now is the time to sell high. If you can get a WR1 in return, or high end RB2 I would be all over that. Also if you’ve watched him, he’s been hobbling all over the place. He could be trading places with Godwin as the injured Bucs Receiver at any time.

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