With Omarion Hampton (foot) on IR and Najee Harris (Achilles) done for the season, the Chargers are left with Hassan Haskins ($5,000) and Kimani Vidal ($5,000) at running back. While both players should see work this Sunday vs. the Dolphins, Haskins should be the starter and see slightly more usage than Vidal.
With Hampton only available for 58.2% of the snaps this past Sunday before getting hurt, Haskins and Vidal both played 14 snaps, but Haskins out-carried Vidal 5-4. In the passing game, Haskins ran seven routes to Vidal’s six and both players saw one target.
Based on this usage, Haskins appears to have a slight edge over Vidal. Plus, Chargers’ head coach Jim Harbaugh coached Haskins for all four years of his college career at Michigan, so Haskins and Harbaugh’s rapport should be a factor in how work is distributed within this Los Angeles backfield.
This should be around a 60/40 split in favor of Haskins and he should see around 15 touches Sunday vs. Miami, giving Haskins solid upside in this elite spot. The Dolphins are the worst-graded defense on PFF and they are allowing the second-most yards per rush this season (5.6). Just this past Sunday, Panthers backup Rico Dowdle ($5,800) started in place of the injured Chuba Hubbard ($5,800, calf) when facing Miami and Dowdle erupted for 234 scrimmage yards and a touchdown on 26 touches (35.4 FPTS), which is a testament to how bad this Dolphins defense truly is.
Haskins is only averaging 2.6 YPC this season, but that is only on five rushes and he should be far more productive against this terrible Miami defense. We can’t expect anything close to Dowdle’s performance from last week, but Haskins has a ceiling in the 15-20 FPTS range this Sunday. The back is a viable FLEX option for season-long leagues and he is a solid DFS value play for all formats on DraftKings.
