There are a lot of blowouts happening in Baltimore lately and, unfortunately, they haven’t all occurred at the hair salon. The Grim Reaper previously visited J.K. Dobbins and Justice Hill but today he found Gus Edwards. After the Dobbins injury, many drafters jumped right on the “Gus Bus” and I saw him going off draft boards as early as the 4th round. If you were in that boat, hopefully, you also drafted Ty’Son Williams, as he had already won the backup job before the Justice Hill injury. This would have been an exceptionally prudent move, considering Edwards offers next to nothing in the passing game and most of that work looks to have been going to Williams. Now Ty’Son Williams seems to be the top dog in the yard with his only competition being Trenton Cannon (who?) and an extremely washed up Le’Veon Bell. Wait. One second. I just got an alert… Seriously!? It looks like we can now add the half washed up Devonta Freeman to this depleted RB stable. So now the question is, who should you be targeting with your priority waiver claim or with all that FAAB you have? (Side note: If you are still in a league with waivers and not FAAB what year are you living in? Seriously, it’s time to join the 21st century, dinosaur.) The short answer is, who the heck knows? End article…
Still here? Ok, here’s my longer answer. Let’s start with who you should NOT go after. Cannon and Bell. They have nothing to offer your fantasy team. Cannon was signed as a depth piece and special teams asset for the Ravens. Bell was signed to the practice squad with the idea that he would eventually be moved to the active roster but the fact that the Ravens do not seem to be in a hurry to add him is not an encouraging sign.
That leaves Williams and Freeman. As previously stated my hope for you is that you already had Williams on the roster but, if not, he is the guy to put in the waiver claim or spend FAAB on. If you are in a typical league, with typical FAAB, you probably have about $200 to spend. So how much should you spend? I would go as high as $110 or a little over whatever half of your total budget is but I don’t think you should blow the entire thing, unless you went with zero running back strategy and were depending heavily on riding the Gus Bus all season. My last thought on this matter is that you shouldn’t entirely dismiss Freeman. The Ravens made the move very quickly to sign him with the intention of adding him to the active roster very soon. He isn’t what he was when he played in Atlanta but I don’t think the tank is completely empty like in Le’Veon Bell’s case. Also, he has the very clear advantage of being a reliable passing down back who can do some work out of the backfield but also offer valuable protection to Lamar which will mean he will be on the field a fair amount. So don’t not bid him either. However this mess plays out though, good luck!
