What to do with Miles Sanders in Week 3 fantasy football

There were reasons to be optimistic about Miles Sanders coming into this season. I don’t think anyone would deny that much. Finally freed from the role of backing-up Saquon Barkley at Penn State, Sanders amassed 1,413 scrimmage yards in his final season at the collegiate level, scoring nine touchdowns and averaging 5.8 yards per carry in the process. Then, the Eagles — a team with an abundance of depth at the running back position — decided they would draft Sanders 53rd overall in this year’s NFL Draft. You’d only use such capital on a player you envisioned running the rushing attack through, right? ...Right?!

Well, as we’ve learned time and time again when it comes to Doug Pederson, the committee approach will seemingly never be out of favor in Philadelphia. Pederson has now coached 50 regular season games as the boss of the Eagles and an RB has received 15-plus carries in just 17 of those contests. Even when it happens with a little bit of regularity, it remains random. Philadelphia actually had seven instances of a running back getting in excess of 15 rushing attempts in 2018; however, those seven performances were spread across four different players. Sanders does currently lead the Eagles in snap rate (45.5 percent) and carries (21) through two weeks of action, but nothing that’s he’s done so far would appear to warrant Pederson bucking his very established trend.

Fantasy Impact: Sanders is averaging 0.40 PPR fantasy points per touch in his brief NFL career. To put that figure in perspective, of the 32 running backs with more than 20 rushing attempts in 2019, only Gus Edwards has been less efficient. Detroit might be allowing a massive 4.94 adjusted line yards per carry; but it simply doesn’t seem like Sanders will have enough volume to be viable in Week 3, let alone if he starts losing goal line touches to Jordan Howard.

Recommendation: Sit