We’re here.
For those lucky enough — I mean skilled enough — you’ve reached the fantasy football playoffs. You’re in the dance with a real opportunity to take home your league’s crown.
However, this is also the week when the real roster tinkering and overthinking begins. Now we’re playing for keeps and that can mean agonizing over a single player for days on days on days. Who can you actually trust in your lineups with this much at stake?
Two fantasy assets that will certainly be causing owners to lose sleep this week are Gus Edwards and Kimani Vidal, also known as the Chargers’ current RB committee with J.K. Dobbins sidelined due to injury. The issue here is two-fold: Not only have Edwards and Vidal been splitting snaps, they’ve also been mostly ineffective with their opportunities. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for viability.
Across the past two weeks, Edwards has out-snapped Vidal 50-to-44, though it should be noted that the latter’s 53.3% snap share in Week 14’s loss to the Chiefs was higher than the former’s 43.3% rate. Edwards has seen 16 carries in this same span, as Vidal has rushed the ball 12 times. Both have been virtually non-existent in the passing attack, racking up just a single target since the beginning of Week 13.
This does feel like a bit of an anomaly. Under Jim Harbaugh, Los Angeles has committed to the ground game, entering Week 15 with the NFL’s ninth-highest run ratio (46.4%). At some point, you’d expect Edwards to see something closer to 15 carries, despite the fact that the Chargers last two contests without Dobbins have been relatively neutral scripts. It’s not all that optimistic when looking ahead, either, as the Buccaneers have surrendered only 81.7 opponent rushing yards in their past three matchups.
Los Angeles is not an explosive offense. The team averages a paltry 2.5 red zone drives per game — the third-lowest mark in football. So it’s not like Edwards and Vidal can stake a claim to a high touchdown expectancy. Combine that with the Chargers’ reluctance to involve their RBs in the pass game and it simply appears that this is a backfield timeshare with no real winners. Edwards and Vidal might have some FLEX appeal in deeper formats, but you’d be starting both with little to no confidence.
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All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests.
