Monangai had a strong rookie season playing behind Swift, averaging 4.6 YPC and exploding for nearly 200 scrimmage yards in his one start with Swift sidelined. While Swift remains atop of the depth chart, Monangai figures to see a bigger role in his second season. Unfortunately, an injury for Monangai this summer has raised some concerns.
Injury Update
The second-year back hyper extended his knee in mid-August and Bears’ HC Ben Johnson told the media on September 1st that Monangai is still week-to-week.
This update obviously isn’t encouraging and doesn’t bode well for Monanagi’s chances of playing in the Bears’ season opener vs. the Panthers next Sunday. With this news, how should we view this backfield for fantasy football this season?
Fantasy Outlook
For Best Ball drafts on DraftKings, Swift has a current ADP of 41.1 while Monangai has fallen all the way down to 122 after his recent injury. Swift should see a large workload right out of the gate with Monangai beat up, but once he gets healthy, this backfield should be a close split and with Monangai going so late in drafts, he is the better value to target.
After Monangai went nuts for 198 scrimmage yards on 28 touches in Week 9 vs. the Bengals with Swift sidelined last season, Monangai saw a larger role. Swift returned the next week and playing alongside the veteran for the final nine games of the season, Monangai handled 45.5% of the running back carries on a 41.4% snap rate, which was a big increase after seeing 27.8% of the running back carries on a 31.9% snap rate in the first seven games of the season with Swift active.
In those final nine games together, these running backs were close in carries with Swift seeing 123 rushes, compared to 101 for Monangai. In the redzone, Monangai actually held a slight edge, out carrying Swift 19-18. In the passing game, Swift was used more, garnering 22 targets on 167 routes, but Monangai’s usage was still decent, seeing 16 targets on 121 routes.
During this span, Swift averaged 13.6 FPTS per game, but Monangai was also solid, averaging 9.6 FPTS per game, including four outings of double-digit FPTS. In terms of FPTS per snap, these backs were virtually the same, with Swift and Monangai averaging 0.35 and 0.33 FPTS per snap, respectively.
As you can see, when these two backs were healthy in the second half of the season, Swift was the top the back, but Monangai was still being used enough to make him a fantasy relevant option. Monangai may miss the season opener next week, but he should return in the early stages of the season and when he does, he should once again see enough volume to make him a rock solid fantasy asset and at their current ADPs, taking a late round flier on Monangai has more merit than using a fourth-to-fifth round pick on Swift.
