Welcome to the ninth weekly edition of “Raiding the IDP Waiver Wire” for 2021! For those returning for another installment of defensive player recommendations, your interest and support are appreciated!
This weekly column will help you, the reader, plunder your league’s waiver wire for real value where it counts: in your line-ups. We’ll dig into the past week’s top performers among available options for repeatable production.
“Raiding the IDP Waiver Wire” is written for fantasy football gamers in leagues that require a full complement of 11 defensive starters in leagues of 12 to 16 teams. Recommendations rely on scoring settings from FantasyPros.com, even though their value for passes defensed is low. We’ll look for options at both conventional and true defensive positions as they arise. Players qualifying for this column are those rostered in no more than a third of IDP leagues on MyFantasyLeague.com (MFL). These recommendations further assume you, the manager, have finite roster space with challenging cut decisions to add new names.
A big story of the 2021 NFL season for IDP fantasy gamers has been variable linebacker rotations on multiple teams. The Ravens and Chargers reduced the roles of Patrick Queen and Kenneth Murray. Two more full-time linebackers, Kenny Young and Eric Wilson were discarded by the Rams and Eagles, respectively. Additional teams like the Steelers and Chiefs tease with players that gleam like high-end talents but deliver like two-down SAMs in any given week.
The high-reward, high-risk linebacker on some leagues’ waiver wires this week will be TJ Edwards. He’s rostered in slightly more than a third of IDP leagues on MyFantasyLeague.com. No fewer than four Eagles rank in the top 15 NFL linebackers in tackles per opportunity, a Pro Football Focus efficiency metric. Edwards is only the latest to capitalize as the Eagles’ leader in snaps in the box (96%) with 12 tackles in Week 9.
Davion Taylor, Eagles LB
Your choices on the waiver wire are to pay through the nose for players who have performed or try to add a player cheaply a week early. If TJ Edwards is an example of the former, his teammate, Eagles LB Davion Taylor is his complement.
The Eagles’ 2020 third-round pick was considered a raw, high-upside prospect. After virtually no playing time in a pandemic-stained season that seemed to constrain young players, Taylor’s role has gradually increased throughout 2021. The 3-6 Eagles must certainly be thinking about 2022, and Taylor is one of two linebackers under contract for 2022 (Shaun Bradley). The team would be wise to see what it has in Taylor before entering the upcoming season of free agency and draft.
Jonathon Cooper, Broncos EDGE
The best antidote to an unreliable basket of off-ball linebackers to choose from can be a high-upside rush ‘backer. The floor of an off-ball linebacker playing 50% of a team’s snaps resembles that of a nearly full-time outside linebacker; however, the latter can boom for two sacks. In the right scoring system, the rush ‘backer should be the fantasy gamer’s preference.
Broncos rookie outside linebacker Jonathon Cooper epitomized the boom/bust pass-rusher in Week 9. He scored two sacks among his four tackles in 90 percent of his team’s defensive snaps. Your author identified Cooper as a name to watch two weeks ago. After the trade of Von Miller to Los Angeles, Cooper’s path to snaps is clear, and his performance early on has rewarded coaches for their confidence in their seventh-round pick of 2021.
Dawuane Smoot, Jaguars DE
Among the least followed stories of the 2021 free-agency cycle was the fate of 2017 third-rounder Dawuane Smoot. The Jaguars brought back the former Fighting Illini defensive end for a new coaching regime on a two-year, $10 million contract.
Smoot led the Jaguars in QB sacks in their lackluster 2020 season and is on pace to exceed that total in 2021. After opening the season as the Jaguars’ third edge defender behind Josh Allen and K’Lavon Chaisson, Smoot has overtaken Chaisson, the Jaguars’ 2020 first-round pick.
Chaisson played a season-low 13 snaps and didn’t stat in Week 9. Smoot, meanwhile, played a season-high 55 snaps (82%) and scored a QB sack in Jacksonville’s best defensive performance of 2021, holding Buffalo to six points.
David Onyemata, Saints DT
According to final statistics at FantasyPros.com, New Orleans’s David Onyemata finished 24th among all defensive linemen and seventh among interior defenders in fantasy points in 2020. The surprising star from Nigeria via Manitoba, Canada was suspended for performance-enhancing substances for the first seven weeks of the 2021 season. He came timidly out of the gate against the Buccaneers in Week 8, but Week 9 was a different story. Onyemata collected seven tackles and according to Pro Football Focus, pressured Matt Ryan five times in Week 9. He almost certainly represents the last, best opportunity to add an impact defensive tackle in fantasy leagues that require a starter at the position.
Ashtyn Davis/Sharrod Neasman, Jets SAF
The only thing preventing Jets safety Ashtyn Davis from appearing on fantasy waiver-wire articles this week will be an aversion to repeating the name after two weeks. Davis posted his second double-digit tackle total in three games and might very well be a great answer at the safety position for needy fantasy gamers. He will undoubtedly be expensive on the heels of Marcus Maye’s season-ending Achilles injury.
The correct addition might, however, be Davis’s teammate Sharrod Neasman. The former Falcon soaked up most of the box safety snaps after Maye’s injury while Davis remained deep. Both players, however, have played the majority of their snaps deep so far in 2021. We’re unlikely to know which player will occupy the deep-safety role before waivers run in most fantasy leagues. Your writer, ever cost-conscious at the safety position, is more likely to land Neasman for nothing while league-mates pay up for the better-known Davis.
George Odum, Colts SAF
The Colts placed starting strong safety Khari Willis on injured reserve just before their Thursday night game versus the Jets. His replacement George Odum posted an adequate five-tackles performance complemented by a fumble recovery. Odum was the clear preference over Andrew Sendejo as the box safety; however, both players played deep the majority of the time.
This may very well have been a result of a game flow in which the Colts led by two to three scores for much of the game. Odum in Week 9 was deployed in the first two levels of the defense far less often than Willis was throughout the season. At the fantasy cost of free, Odum is the perfect arbitrage play behind the likely popular pick-up, Ashtyn Davis.
Happy Bidding!
Guys like Sharrod Neasman and George Odum exemplify a trend in this column likely to grow in the second half of the season. Players that emerge from this point forward are largely beneficiaries of situations and opportunities. Jonathan Cooper’s unlikely emergence as a 2021 seventh-round pick is a midseason inflection point that further exemplifies this reality.
You’re invited to follow this column weekly for recommendations of players in suddenly favorably situations to produce fantasy value. This column drops every Tuesday afternoon. I’ll attach recommendations of widely rostered players one might consider dropping to make room for these players on Twitter. I look forward to interacting with you there!
A Clemson and Michigan alum, a fan of the Cowboys and Panthers, I try to see both sides of every debate and every fantasy football trade. Reach out to me @DynastyTripp on Twitter.
