Should You Add Audric Estime, Cedric Tillman, Dawson Knox, Other Dropped Fantasy Football Players?

So far this season, the fantasy football waiver wire has been very bare, with few truly league-changing pickups and a lack of even solid options in many weeks (this week included). With that in mind, some of this season’s best wavier moves will be adding players that your leaguemates have given up on and dropped. This week in particular could be one of the most profitable weeks for staying alert on the waiver wire, as managers will be squeezed into some tough decisions by the huge amount of teams on bye.

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, you will be able to see which of those players have become available in your particular league. Here are this week’s leaders in EDI:

    

We start with a couple of last week’s streaming defenses, and then we get right into a perfect example of how this season’s waivers have gone: Audric Estime, last week’s top pickup and one of the more exciting options of the season, is already being sent back to waivers in plenty of leagues. We also have quite a few more players who have gone from hot adds to old news. Let’s break down who is worth snagging if they are available in your league.

RB Audric Estime, Denver Broncos

In Week 10, Estime easily led the Broncos in carries while Javonte Williams recorded just one rushing attempt. Leading up to Week 11, fantasy managers everywhere added Estime and benched Williams, while Sean Payton said that the rookie would continue to see more opportunities. Of course, this all finished with Williams leading the Broncos’ backfield on Sunday, finishing with nine carries to Estime’s six while seeing a healthy 57% snap share. However, I wouldn’t drop Estime just yet. Williams has been consistently inefficient on the ground and this backfield is clearly capable of changing from week to week. There’s still a chance that Estime secures a large enough role to be a startable option (he’s already a desperation flex option for this week against a terrible Raiders defense). 

WR Cedric Tillman, Cleveland Browns

Tillman is a must-add in any leagues where he has been dropped. He has finished a top-20 receiver in three of his last four games, including a top-three finish in Week 8. He didn’t do much in Week 11, and the Browns’ schedule takes a turn for the worse coming up. But Tillman is still averaging a 21% target share and a 31% air yards share since Amari Cooper was traded to the Bills. With Jameis Winston chucking the ball around in most of those weeks, that usage has corresponded to 9.8 targets, 128 air yards, and 15.6 Half-PPR points for Tillman. Those aren’t just rosterable numbers — they are elite, WR1 numbers. Regression is likely coming for the Browns’ passing attack (Winston is averaging over 44 attempts per game in his three starts), but Tillman can afford to regress and still be a quality fantasy option. If he has been dropped in your league, add him immediately. 

TE Dawson Knox, Buffalo Bills

This is one I’m not going to argue with. Streaming Knox in Week 11, in a great matchup against the Chiefs without Dalton Kincaid, made a ton of sense. Now the Bills are on bye, and Kincaid will likely be healthy by the time they return. Knox can very safely be left on the waiver wire. 

QB Russell Wilson, Pittsburgh Steelers

On the one hand, it feels harsh to drop Russ after his first truly bad outing since taking over as the Steelers’ starting QB. On the other hand, Wilson’s early success absolutely screamed incoming regression, as they relied on an unsustainably high TD rate and some elite catches by his receivers. Wilson failing to take advantage of a paper-soft Ravens secondary may just be the first step in that regression. Even with multiple teams on bye, he won’t be in my top-12 quarterbacks for Week 12 — that alone is enough to make him droppable in one-QB leagues, where non-elite QB production is easy to come by.

WR Ricky Pearsall, San Francisco 49ers

After a big outing in Week 10, Pearsall dropped a complete donut in Week 11, failing to catch either of his two targets. While I wouldn’t have predicted this goose egg, bad days were always inevitable for Pearsall, who is the fifth option on the 49ers’ offense when everyone is healthy. Even in his big Week 10 outing, he posted just a 67% route participation rate, and that fell to 57% on Sunday. In deeper leagues, he’s rosterable as a boom-or-bust flex option. In shallower formats, don’t bother checking your wavier wire for the first-round rookie.

QB C.J. Stroud, Houston Texans

The last time C.J. Stroud finished as a top-12 fantasy quarterback was in Week 4. To be fair, he was without superstar WR Nico Collins for most of those weeks, but his 13.7 point-per-game average simply isn’t going to cut it. He’s a streaming option for Week 13 against the Jaguars and Week 17 vs. the Ravens, but you certainly shouldn’t add him just to hold on your bench in the meantime.

WR Diontae Johnson, Baltimore Ravens

I have always loved Diontae Johnson, so this hurts me to say: You don’t have to add him if he has been dropped in your leagues. In fact, because I loved him so much coming into the season, I found myself dropping Johnson in multiple leagues this week. Since being traded to the Ravens, Diontae has run a grand total of 14 routes and caught only one pass for six yards. Forget Rashod Bateman, Zay Flowers, and even Nelson Agholor — Johnson has only run two more routes than Tylan Wallace. I’m holding out hope in a few deeper formats, but even that is probably a mistake. The chances that Johnson will carve out a fantasy-viable role before the end of the season are essentially zero.  

TE Jake Ferguson, Dallas Cowboys

Things just keep going from bad to even worse for Jake Ferguson. He was already struggling to provide useable production with Dak Prescott under center, and then the change to Cooper Rush completely destroyed any hopes of competency from Dallas’ offense. Ferguson then suffered a concussion in the Cowboys’ demolition at the hands of the Texans, which will likely keep him sidelined for Week 12. Unless you’re truly desperate for TE production, he’s not worth chasing if he pops up on waivers.   

QB Kirk Cousins, Atlanta Falcons

Cousins hasn’t been quite as unproductive as Stroud, including a couple of weeks of truly elite production. However, he still fits in the same bucket of fringe QB1s without much upside. Especially heading into a bye and then two straight tough matchups, that isn’t a profile worth holding.

TE Pat Freiermuth, Pittsburgh Steelers

The last time Freiermuth scored double-digit Half-PPR points was all the way back in Week 4. He is also trending in the wrong direction, posting his lowest route participation rate of the season Week 11 with just 61%. At this point, the only thing keeping him and Ferguson rostered in one-TE leagues is name recognition — there are almost certainly better TE options on waivers, even in deep leagues. 

Ted Chmyz is a fantasy football contributor for FantasySP. Find him on Twitter @Tchmyz for more fantasy content or to ask questions.