Welcome to the 12th 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); moreover, new names appear in each edition. Occasional readers are encouraged to visit past weeks’ write-ups for more options. Finally, these recommendations further assume you, the manager, have finite roster space with challenging cut decisions to add new names.
The dog days of the NFL season began to set in as the calendar turned over to December. One team’s stretch run is another’s last gasp and yet a third’s show of pride. Huge tackle totals from nose tackles as well as linebackers as well as multiple-sack games from relative unknowns pepper the Week 13 box scores.
The festivities offer fantasy gamers numerous stat lines to chase. The purpose of this article is to guide the reader to repeatable performances. Some of Week 13’s outbursts relate to the replacement of injured players, while others emerged from unexpected game scripts. A handful of high-quality fantasy days arose from situational changes and increased opportunities.
Jacob Martin, Texans DE
Texans defensive end Jacob Martin is little more than the answer to a trivia question in Houston. What player did the Texans get back in their trade of Jadeveon Clowney to the Seahawks?
Martin will have ample opportunity to add to his career-high sack total against his old team in Week 14 and again versus the Jaguars in Week 15, the opening week of many fantasy leagues’ playoffs. It has been the fourth-year man Martin, not breakout sophomore Jonathan Greenard, who’s seen a big uptick in snaps since the Texans cut Whitney Mercilus and dealt Charles Omenihu. Martin has played 168 of the Texans’ 220 defensive snaps over the past three games (76%). The production might be following; Martin has collected three sacks in his past four games for a total of 4.0 on the season.
Uchenna Nwosu, Chargers EDGE
Like Jacob Martin, Uchenna Nwosu is finally emerging in Year 4 of his career as an NFL pass rusher. After opening the season as a rotational player, Nwosu’s workload has eclipsed two-thirds of his defense’s snaps for four weeks running. Pro Football Focus has graded his in-game performances no lower than 72 after many weeks – an entire career, really – of forgettable performances. He’s elevated his season-long pass-rush grade above 70 for the first time in his career.
Nwosu has a couple of attractive upcoming match-ups starting with third-stringer Jake Fromm likely starting for the Giants in Week 14. He could face statuesque rookie QB Davis Mills and the Texans in Week 16.
Christian Kirksey, Texans LB
A lack of both, patience and IR spots has been a theme of IDP leagues on www.MyFantasyLeague.com this season. The latest player to hit waiver wires in droves only to return to relevance is Christian Kirksey of the Texans. The number-26 linebacker in points per game (FantasyPros.com scoring) was activated and once again displaced Zach Cunningham in the middle of the Texans’ defense. While Cunningham was suspended this past week and thus inactive, he has now been demoted twice this season in favor of Kirksey.
The Texans have attractive matchups in Weeks 16 and 17, making a Kirksey good LB2 the rest of the way.
Divine Deablo, Raiders LB
Raiders linebackers dropped like flies in a smashmouth game versus the Washington Football Team. Denzel Perryman and Nick Kwiatkoski both tweaked ankles and missed series. Cory Littleton also left the field. The Raiders signed all three players to free-agent deals, and according to Spotrac.com, all three are at risk of becoming cap casualties in March on a team fading from contention this season.
Divine Deablo is a 6’-3” 226-lb. college safety whom the Raiders drafted in 2021’s third round to play linebacker. He entered the game in relief and collected a remarkable 11 tackles in 38 snaps. If he’s tabbed to start in Week 14, Deablo will play in a defense that’s propelled three of their linebackers to the top-21 most efficient tacklers per opportunity in the NFL. The aforementioned Perryman is first.
The Raiders’ upcoming schedule features a gauntlet of teams that feed off-ball linebackers with fantasy points. There’s a chance that Deablo catalyzes a perfect storm for IDP gamers like Donald Payne did in Jacksonville in 2019. On top of this, Deablo is eligible at safety on some fantasy football platforms!
Elijah Riley, Jets SAF
Marcus Maye tore an Achilles’ tendon in Week 9 leaving open a question of who would replace him at strong safety. The answer has finally become clear after Week 13, and it’s not a name many could have recalled from the roster at the time.
A 6’-0” 205-lb. undrafted college cornerback from West Point has paired with Ashtyn Davis to hold down the Jets’ back end. Davis’s discomfort with run fits has opened the door for the former Cadet to do the yeoman’s work of a strong safety in Robert Saleh’s Cover-3 defensive sets. Elijah Riley played more than half his snaps in the box en route to seven tackles including a QB sack in Week 13.
Dean Marlowe, Lions SAF
A dearth of injures in the Lions’ cornerback room necessitated reassignment of starting safety Will Harris to the slot. Dean Marlowe, the team’s third safety, has thus moved into the starting lineup. Marlowe has capitalized on his opportunity with 17 tackles and a pass defensed in two games.
Marlowe, moreover, has seen a higher share of snaps in the first two levels of his defense than running mate Tracy Walker. The Lions, however, play a high number of snaps with two very deep safeties, making the deployment only so compelling.
More compelling, though, are the Lions’ upcoming matchups with the Broncos and the Falcons in Weeks 14 and 16. Marlowe makes for an interesting option in a fantasy gamer’s safety platoon in these spots against two of the top-five teams for fantasy points “allowed.”
Happy Bidding!
Mid- and late-week injury news has been more prevalent this year in this writer’s mind’s eye. COVID list designations have certainly contributed to this. Rewards are there to be reaped for those fantasy gamers keeping tabs.
Here’s a list of players and situations to monitor as the week progresses. Most relevant among these is Seahawks safety, Jamal Adams. His replacement would likely be Ryan Neal, who had 28 tackles and 3 TFLs in four starts in place of Adams last year.
Viking Blake Lynch subbed for Anthony Barr and contributed nine tackles and two sacks versus the Lions in Week 13. Lynch deserves a spot on watch lists in the event the Barr misses again; however, reactionary fantasy gamers are likely to overpay for the production on the waiver wire this week.
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.
