Welcome back to another season of “Raiding the IDP Waiver Wire!” 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. We rely on scoring settings from FantasyPros.com; although, their value for passes defensed is a bit low. We’ll look for options at both conventional and true defensive positions as they arise. Qualifying players are those available in no more than a third of IDP leagues on MyFantasyLeague.com (MFL).
The first week of the football season might be the toughest on fantasy gamers. There is so much to learn! Some teams deployed personnel and schemes much as we expected while others stunned us. We rely on beat writers and others paid to follow teams closely for actionable information in fantasy football. One Bills podcaster would have made a big difference if he’d had more conviction in his gut feeling that Zack Moss was really the second coming (to Buffalo) of T.J. Yeldon.
Players with surprisingly low snap counts in the first week of the 2021 season include Cardinals LB Zaven Collins, Packers LB Krys Barnes, Giants safety Jabrill Peppers, Patriots safety Adrian Phillips, and my favorite sleeper, Dolphins safety Brandon Jones. Quite a few more players missed snaps due to in-game circumstances. Fantasy gamers should investigate these absences before panicking.
Javon Hargrave, Eagles DT
Few positions showed as many wrinkles as interior defensive lineman Sunday. Three interior linemen notched two quarterback sacks. For two of them, the accomplishment amounts to a career year.
Former Steelers nose tackle Javon Hargrave played his way to a big contract in Philadelphia by substituting for injured defensive ends. Hargrave himself was slowed by injury in 2020 but began to reemerge late in the season. By all accounts, he picked up this summer where he left off. Philadelphia’s opening showing as a functional team speaks well for the fantasy values of all Eagles playmakers. Hargrave collected six tackles and two sacks in Atlanta.
https://twitter.com/EaglesXOs/status/1437503140656566272?s=20Malik McDowell, Browns DT
How deep is your league? Malik McDowell was among several surprise interior defenders who led their rotations in snaps. In baseball terms, McDowell is a rookie. He was considered a first-round talent in the 2017 NFL draft but slid for character reasons that seemed to bear out. Four years later, he has a chance to be a bigger breakout than Aldon Smith in 2020, the year of the most improbable returns to play in memory. McDowell is off to a good start: three tackles including one for loss in Kansas City.
https://twitter.com/Sam_Penix/status/1437416830784651266?s=20John Franklin-Myers, Jets DE
Your author has been rostering Myers in deeper leagues all summer. Once cut by the Rams, John Franklin-Myers panned out in former Jets defensive coordinator Gregg Williams’s desperate search for pass rushers in 2020. Williams rotated through multiple 5-technique defenders that he inherited, trying them on the edge. Luckily, he found one that stuck.
No surprise, the Jets are somehow destitute in the pass rush once again in 2021. Myers led the team’s defensive linemen in snaps on Sunday and was the only Jet to score a sack. He compiled a total of three tackles including two for loss in Charlotte.
My only hesitation in rostering Myers in shallower leagues was how much he’d play on the edge versus the interior. The answer is a palatable 80 percent of edge snaps in the first week per ProFootballFocus.com.
Rasheem Green, Seahawks DE
Those following your author know that I’ve begun appearing on podcasts to talk football. I have not heard uttered or seen written the name “Rasheem Green” in all of 2021. Yet, here the former third-rounder is… leading all Seahawks defensive linemen in snaps. Rasheem Green made good on his workload for four tackles, a sack, and two passes defensed.
The Seahawks’ recent historical predilection for game-to-game rotation gives me pause in making a full-throated recommendation for most leagues, but players earning 70% of the work with a DE designation on the waiver wire are rare. Those in need of such a commodity should make a move.
Jermaine Carter, Panthers LB
The Panthers have diverged from their unusual three-safety defense of 2020, deploying instead two nearly full-time linebackers in Week 1 of 2021. Jermaine Carter took a big step forward this past summer to make known veterans expendable and earn the role.
The revised scheme paid dividends against the Jets, enabling defenders to pile up big plays. (OK, so it was the Jets.) Carter just missed out with five tackles and a QB hit. The opportunity to play full-time in a competitive defense makes Carter the top pick-up at linebacker this week.
Alex Anzalone, Lions LB
The lackluster stat line (three tackles) will put some fantasy gamers off, but Alex Anzalone was the one full-time linebacker in Honolulu blue on Sunday. His performance will need to improve if he’s to hold the role all year, but in most full-IDP leagues, all full-time linebackers should be rostered.
Kyle Dugger, Patriots SAF
People, how is Kyle Dugger available in more than two-thirds of IDP leagues on MFL?! OK, we weren’t sure he’d overtake veteran Adrian Phillips, but the upside is absolutely tantalizing. Dugger made good with seven tackles including one for loss on 93% of snaps. He further played more than half of his snaps in the box, closer to the action. Dugger is this week’s top add and should be starting on fantasy rosters well ahead of whoever you think is your SAF2.
Jacquiski Tartt, 49ers SAF
Veteran safety Jacquiski Tartt played nearly half his snaps in the box as well (per PFF). As we saw in the preseason, the 49ers’ defense is ebbing back toward its Cover-3 roots from their Cover-4 tendency of the past couple of years. This adjustment means that one safety plays deep while the other walks down to the second level. The change in defensive coordinator from Robert Saleh, now of the Jets, to his former assistant DeMeco Ryans signaled the need for IDP gamers to keep an eye out for new wrinkles.
Tartt’s tweaked role helped him to two stops for loss among his seven total tackles in Detroit. Tartt is playing forward while Jimmie Ward stays primarily deep (7 tackles, none for loss)
Jalen Ramsey, Rams CB
Only 15 cornerbacks are rostered in more than a third of IDP leagues on MFL. Surprisingly, Jalen Ramsey is not one of them. That will change shortly, as Ramsey filled the box score with nine tackles including two for loss and a pass defensed.
I watched Ramsey closely to start the 2020 season in light of reports that he would play significant snaps in the STAR role in LA’s defense. His assignments on Number-1 receivers took precedence, however, and slot cornerback Troy Hill took the majority of the STAR snaps en route to a CB1 fantasy season.
The same narrative surfaced around Ramsey this season but with a new defensive coordinator. I had to watch Week 1 to settle on a positive recommendation of Ramsey. The lure of Bears WR1 Allen Robinson would prove a definitive test of the Rams’ commitment to Ramsey at STAR.
It happened! Ramsey played only 25 snaps at corner while seeing seven snaps in the defensive front seven (per PFF). He rushed the passer, contributed to run defense, and blanketed tight ends from his tighter alignments. More importantly for fantasy football, he’s tied for the league lead for tackles by a cornerback.
Ramsey becomes my seventh recommended fantasy cornerback for 2021 following a simple formula. I seek full-time cover men who play significant snaps inside. Four of them are rostered in fewer leagues than Ramsey: Steeler Cameron Sutton, Cardinal Byron Murphy, Washington’s Kendall Fuller, and (I suspect) Bradley Roby, now in New Orleans. These players combined for 14 tackles including two for loss and five passes defensed in Week 1.
Happy Bidding!
Fantasy football doesn’t have to be hard, people! There are underlying conditions supporting fantasy value that are easy to spot during the game if you know what to look for. Clues are also recorded in data collection sites like Pro Football Reference and Pro Football Focus.
We at Dynasty Football Factory are here to help you navigate this torrent of information! 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. Feel free to reach out to me @DynastyTripp on Twitter.
