Fantasy Football: Players to drop for your Week 13 waiver wire pickups
By Jennifer Eakins, 4for4
Special to Yahoo Sports
This used to be the last week of the regular fantasy season in most leagues, but with an extra game now you have at least two more contests until the postseason. Either way, you want the tightest squad possible moving forward.
These moves may not be for everyone as each roster is different and so are your records and point totals, but below are a handful of players who may be underperforming or underutilized or possibly have difficult matchups down the stretch. If you're looking for some guys to stash for the playoffs I have you covered there as well.
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Tyler Boyd, WR - Bengals (88 percent rostered on Yahoo)
The Bengals have gotten their groove back with three-straight wins, but Tyler Boyd is not heavily in the mix. Even with Ja’Marr Chase out for the last four games, Boyd is hovering around four catches per contest with an average of only 35 yards and just one score in that time frame.
Chase should be back in Week 13, which leaves Boyd even more on the outs in this WR room. There are more fantasy-viable options out there for the fantasy playoffs, like Treylon Burks or Zay Jones.
Curtis Samuel, WR - Commanders (73% rostered)
Maybe they haven’t been eating breakfast together or hanging out in their free time, but Curtis Samuel’s volume has taken a decent hit since Taylor Heinicke took over as the starter in Washington. The wideout hasn't seen more than four targets since Week 7 and has only found the end zone two times since the third week of the season.
Terry McLaurin remains the clear alpha in this receiving corps with 10.3 targets per game to Samuel’s 3.5 over the past five weeks, and yes, Samuel does get some rushing carries, but he hasn’t cleared 29 yards once in 2022. I know options are limited, and eight teams have yet to sit out a week, but Washington is one of them, and Samuel is just not adding enough to rosters for the 73% of you still hanging on.
Cam Akers, RB - Rams (54% rostered)
A repeat offender a few times in this column in 2022, Cam Akers is back for another spin after brief hope for fantasy relevancy following the release of Darrell Henderson. The Rams showed their cards weeks ago with Akers, but 54% of managers got sucked back in, just hoping whatever beef was there was over.
Akers is technically still LA’s early-down back but that really doesn’t matter for our purposes. He had eight carries for 37 yards last week against the Chiefs and possibly could have ripped off some more if the Rams didn’t get behind so early, which could continue moving forward. Their schedule gets softer against backfields in the coming weeks with games against the Seahawks, Raiders and Packers, so if you want to wait around for those, feel free, but the Rams offense and Akers are tough to trust as anything more than a touchdown-dependent RB3/4 at this point.
Devin Duvernay, WR - Ravens (53% rostered)
Despite a several-lane highway to fantasy relevancy due to Rashod Bateman’s foot injury, Devin Duvernay is not panning out in a struggling Baltimore offense. The third-year WR has just five receptions total in his last three contests and has put up a meager 2.5 half-PPR points per game since Week 9.
The schedule does open up for the Ravens down the stretch when it comes to WRs, but it shouldn’t matter, considering this offense is 27th in the NFL in passing attempts (29 per game) and 28th in completions (18 per game), and don’t seem to be gelling well as a total offense.
Trey McBride, TE - Cardinals (12% rostered)
So much for the prospect of another viable TE in this space, as the Trey McBride experiment is over. It was wishful thinking that he’d step into the vacated role of injured Zach Ertz, but with TE as hollow as it is in 2022, we had to try. McBride is heavily involved as far as snap share goes (82% over the past three weeks), but he’s basically running sprints out there, seeing just seven total targets in his three contests as the starting TE for a line of 6-22-0 in that time frame.
The Cardinals have a bye this week, so now is the perfect time to move on from the rookie to hopefully greener pastures in the form of Tyler Conklin or perhaps Evan Engram.
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This article was originally published on 4for4.com
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A proud alumna of the UGA Grady College of Journalism, Jennifer Eakins has been working in the sports industry for well over a decade. She has had stints with CNN Sports, the Atlanta Hawks and the Colorado Rockies. Her first fantasy football draft took place in 1996 where she selected Ricky Watters with the first overall pick, and she has been a fantasy degenerate ever since.
