Tyjae Spears suffered a high-ankle sprain during a preseason game in early August and the back was placed on injured reserve Tuesday, meaning Spears will miss a minimum of four games, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
With Spears sidelined for at least the first four weeks of the season, Tony Pollard becomes a much more appealing target for fantasy football drafts. Spears is the No. 2 back behind Pollard for the Titans and with Spears missing, Pollard will naturally see more work, especially in passing downs.
Pollard played five games with Spears inactive last season and in those contests, Pollard handled a mammoth role, averaging 22 carries per game – including 12 red-zone carries – while logging 84.6% of the snaps. As a receiver, the back garnered a target on 13% of his routes while running a route on 68% of his team’s dropbacks. With this immense workload, Pollard produced 12.5 FPTS per game, which was an encouraging result given how poor the Titans’ offense was with Mason Rudolph and Will Levis at quarterback for those games.
Now, with No. 1 overall pick in Cam Ward under center, Tennessee is expected to be one of the most improved offenses in the league this season, which is obviously great news for Pollard. The 28-year-old is a very durable back that has played in at least 15 games in each of his first six seasons in the NFL and with Pollard likely to handle one of the largest workloads in the league for at least the first month of the season, the veteran is an excellent RB2 to target in fantasy football drafts. Pollard carries a current ADP of 68.1 for Best Ball drafts on DraftKings and in that area of drafts, the back is a steal.
