Should You Add Tua Tagovailoa, DeAndre Hopkins, Adonai Mitchell, Other Dropped Fantasy Football Players?

Oftentimes, the best pickup of a fantasy football season isn’t a player who went undrafted. Instead, it’s someone who was originally selected but is dropped by an impatient manager after a bad week or two. It’s important to keep an eye on players being dropped in your leagues, but sometimes valuable players can slip through the cracks.

Luckily, the Fantasy Assistant is here to help. The Fantasy Assistant uses Predictive Analytics to calculate Expected Drop Interest (EDI) for every player each week. EDI is an estimation of the percentage of leagues in which a player will be or has been dropped each week. If you sync your fantasy league with the Fantasy Assistant, you will also be able to see which of those players have become available in your particular league. Here are this week’s leaders in EDI:

    

There aren’t as many standout players to target this week as there were last week, but there are still some intriguing names. Let’s break them down:

Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins

I’m conflicted on this one. On the one hand, I do think fear over Tua’s concussion problems has been overblown. He’s not going to retire, and he should return this season. On the other hand, Tua was already just a borderline QB1. Holding an injured QB with limited upside for multiple weeks is not a winning fantasy move. In Superflex formats or if you have an empty IR spot, Tagovailoa is worth adding. Otherwise, he’s a player to add to your watch list if you currently have a weak QB1 — assuming reports about his health are positive, he could be worth snagging in a few weeks when he becomes eligible to return from IR. 

Allen Lazard, New York Jets

How quickly the tables turn. One of last week’s hottest wavier pickups, a solid portion of fantasy managers are already sending Lazard right back where he came from. Given that I was was saying after his huge Week 1 that Lazard was not worth making a priority add, I’m not going to recommend scooping him up now either. Especially with Mike Williams getting more involved, Lazard’s path to fantasy relevance in most leagues is razor-thin.

DeAndre Hopkins, Tennessee Titans

Hopkins is a player I would check your waiver wires for. The 32-year-old receiver has done essentially nothing so far this season, with just two catches for 17 yards. But his role has been limited as he works his way back from a preseason knee injury. This Titans offense looks rough, and Calvin Ridley does appear to have taken over as the WR1, so there’s a chance D-Hop is never going to come good. But unless you’re in a particularly shallow league, it’s worth giving him another week or two to make sure.

Jaylen Wright, Miami Dolphins

In theory, drafting Wright was a long-term play, so giving up on the rookie this early into the season may be a mistake. But I’ve personally dropped him in a few leagues where I drafted him, as I simply struggle to see his path to fantasy success at this point. On Thursday, with Raheem Mostert out, De’Von Achane banged up, and even Jeff Wilson exiting early with an injury, Wright still saw just five carries. 

More importantly, he managed just four yards on those five carries, unable to get anything going behind the Dolphins’ struggling offensive line. The thesis for drafting Wright was that both Mostert and Achane are injury-prone profiles, and he would be able to provide value even on a small workload with huge efficiency. We got the injury, but we didn’t get any hint of efficiency. Given that Wright is arguably fourth on the Dolphins' depth chart and Miami’s offense will be much worse without Tua Tagovailoa, there are other handcuffs I would rather hold.

Adonai Mitchell, Indianapolis Colts

Things didn’t look good for Mitchell in Week 2. He caught just one of four targets for 30 yards as Anthony Richardson continued to struggle mightily with accuracy. For the season, Mitchell has just a 22% catch percentage, with only three of his nine targets having been deemed catchable. Even worse, he saw his role reduced in Week 2, posting just a 65% route participation rate (down from 75% in Week 1) while splitting time with Ashton Dulin. Mitchell has also run over half of his routes so far from the slot, a role that Josh Downs will likely reclaim with his return from injury this week.

With all that said, I’m not ready to give up on Mitchell just yet. Although he has thrived through two weeks of this season, we have a large sample of Alec Pierce being a below-average NFL receiver. If Pierce regresses over a larger sample, Mitchell should eventually take the deep-threat role away from him. If that happens, Mitchell’s elite speed and Richardson’s massive arm will combine to be a big-play threat every week. We know that rookies, especially rookie receivers, often take time to start producing, so I’m willing to wait a bit longer on Mitchell.

Other Priority Adds With Positive EDI

• RB Jaleel McLaughlin, Denver Broncos

• WR Keon Coleman, Buffalo Bills

• TE Evan Engram, Jacksonville Jaguars

• RB Jaylen Warren, Pittsburgh Steelers

• WR Christian Kirk, Jacksonville Jaguars

• WR Courtland Sutton, Denver Broncos

• WR Amari Cooper, Cleveland Browns