Week 16 Fantasy Football Running Back Waiver Adds: Sincere McCormick, Jerome Ford, Kendre Miller, Kimani Vidal

If you’re reading this article, congrats on (hopefully) making the fantasy football semifinals! If you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably already got some decent running backs, but you never know when you will need to turn to someone fresh off the waiver wire to save your season. My most recent title in my longest-running league came with Elijah McGuire in my lineup … and that’s a super shallow 10-team casual league. With that in mind, let’s take a look at running backs to add off the fantasy football waiver wire heading into Week 16 — who knows, one of these guys could be someone you will remember in years to come as the player who saved your season.

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Week 16 Fantasy Football Running Back Waiver Adds

Sincere McCormick, Las Vegas Raiders (38.3% Rostered)

McCormick has actually yet to play in Week 15, as the Raiders are featured in one of the two Monday Night Football contests. With that in mind, you can check out my breakdown of him from Week 15’s RB Waiver article for a full explanation of why he is worth adding. 

The elevator pitch for McCormick is that he has been far and away the Raiders’ best rusher all season and it sounds like they are going to give him a shot to hold onto their RB1 job. Especially if you are in a league where you can drop a player who already played to add McCormick before tonight’s matchup (this is the default setting on the Sleeper app, among others), that is an absolutely no-brainer move. You might just luck your way into a starting RB heading into juicy matchups with the Jaguars and Saints. 

Jerome Ford, Cleveland Browns (53.5% Rostered)

Ford is above the 50% rostered threshold, but he is close enough that I’m going to break my own rules to feature him. With Nick Chubb done for the season with a broken foot, Ford is now locked in as the Browns’ RB1 for the rest of the way. On Sunday, he finished with 17.4 Half-PPR points against a tough Chiefs run defense, although it’s worth noting that 70% of those points came on one long touchdown run. Still, he played 83% of Cleveland’s snaps and handled every single RB touch after Chubb’s exit.

Going forward, we do need to temper expectations for Ford. We saw him operate as the RB1 in this Cleveland offense when Chubb was sidelined to begin the season, and it wasn’t pretty. D’Onta Foreman (who was a healthy scratch this week but will likely be activated going forward) would see large rushing workloads with no prior warning, and Ford averaged just 8.5 Half-PPR points per game. Still, 8.5 points per game and an RB1 job is absolutely nothing to sneeze at. The Browns’ offense has also been much better since they were freed from starting the worst quarterback in the league thanks to an Achilles injury. If he’s available, Ford is a must-add. 

Kendre Miller, New Orleans Saints (11.0% Rostered)

However, Ford might not be the most important running back to target in this week’s waiver run. We don’t yet know for certain, but Alvin Kamara is dealing with a groin injury that forced him to exit Week 15 early. If the veteran is ruled out for even just Week 16, Kendre Miller is the top player to target on waivers. 

After Kamara left in the fourth quarter, the sophomore played 88% of the Saints’ snaps and handled all of their RB touches. Jamaal Williams will likely also be involved if Kamara does miss time, but it’s clear that Miller would be the lead back. He has receiving ability, has graded excellently as a rusher so far this season, and has a good Week 17 matchup with the Raiders. Could we be looking at a league winner? 

Kimani Vidal, Los Angeles Chargers (15.8% Rostered)

In a negative game script as the Chargers lost to the Buccaneers, Vidal was clearly LA’s lead back. He played 65% of the snaps to Gus Edwards’ 29%. Edwards did see far more carries, eight to three, but Vidal was the leader in the receiving game, with three targets on a 35% route participation rate.

At this point, there are two things holding Vidal back. One is the presence of Edwards, who is still the Chargers’ preferred rusher on early downs. The second is that the Chargers have imploded offensively, with exactly 17 points in each of their last three games despite two of the three being theoretically excellent matchups. As of now, it’s hard to see those factors changing. However, Vidal is still a rookie RB with pass-catching ability in a clear lead role. He also has an excellent matchup in Week 17 with the Patriots. It requires a lot more squinting than with Miller, but I can see league-winning potential here.  

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