If Week 2 is the end of our priors, Week 3 and 4 are often weeks where we’re waiting for the carnage to settle. Sometimes things look a little better than we expected, sometimes things look a bit worse. And sometimes, sometimes, Drake Maye turns into a pumpkin and we’re all wondering what to do.
Stock Up
Kenyon Sadiq, New York Jets
It was always evident that Sadiq would be a big weapon for the Jets at some point, but the question was when “some point” would happen. With Adonai Mitchell down, Sadiq stepped into a featured role for the Jets as he managed a 7/105 line on eight targets against the Lions, adding a touchdown.
Kenyon Sadiq's FIRST career TD 👏@NYJvsDET on CBS/Paramount+
— NFL (@NFL) September 27, 2026
Stream on @NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/Hi0wg1aL4R
Sadiq’s breakout does leave us with more questions than answers. What happens when Mitchell is healthy? What happens when Mason Taylor actually plays? What happens when he plays a secondary full of players with a major NFL contract in their future instead of the replacement-level guys the Lions called in to surround DJ Reed? But he looked talented enough that it will be hard to stuff the entire genie back in the bottle. And the line to crack “TE1" relevance is lower than ever. Sadiq needs to be waiver claimed in all leagues where he is available. He has league-winning upside even if the situation is murkier than we’d like.
Jeremiyah Love, Arizona Cardinals
Love did not make a major move on Tyler Allgeier purely on the snap counts, as he managed just a 55-35 split of the running back reps. But the No. 3 overall pick had 26 touches to Allgeier’s six, a split that frankly even Bijan Robinson struggled to create with Allgeier for four years. Love wound up with 119 total yards and a receiving touchdown as one of the best volume backs of the week.
Jeremiyah Love makes it a one-score game in the Bay 👀@AZvsSF on FOX/FOX One
— NFL (@NFL) September 27, 2026
Stream on @NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/0mdc38FjPE
The caveat here is that this was a game where the 49ers dominated the game script. NFL Pro never gave the Cardinals more than a 30 percent chance of winning the game based on their modeling and the game situation as the 49ers quickly developed a 17-6 halftime lead. This is something I don’t think we talk enough about in fantasy circles: When we hit catch-up mode, the running back snap splits can often be radically different.
Anyway, call me a bit of a Love skeptic: I still don’t think I’d trust him to develop this kind of ball domination on a game-to-game basis based on how this one went. But it’s impossible to say that his stock isn’t up after showing this kind of upside in a trailing game script, especially since the Cardinals do figure to be the kind of defense that does this from time to time. That feels like an upside RB2 instead of someone who I’m sort of struggling to deal with every week on workload concerns.
Ollie Gordon II, Miami Dolphins — Some of these Stock Up ideas don’t wind up being complex and ultimately wind up being about injuries. Injuries suck. It appears that De’Von Achane (knee) has suffered a major one as we sit on Sunday night.
Gordon had a team-high 17 carries and added three catches in creating 55 total yards and a rushing touchdown against the Chiefs. I suspect this will be the high-water mark for his season mostly because the Dolphins simply didn’t have a second pure backup running back with Jaylen Wright hurting and inactive. Jarquez Hunter and Carlos Washington are on the practice squad and I suspect someone will split the workload with Gordon.
But that doesn’t mean that Gordon will be valueless either. He’s likely to be the lead back at least until Wright is healthy, and he’d presumably have a strong chance at being the head of a committee for the rest of the season. The Dolphins clearly want to run the football. Even in a game where they were crockpotted by the Chiefs, they still ran the ball 31 times. Malik Willis will help draw some attention away from whoever the back was here. Don’t think Gordon will bring RB2 numbers, but he can be a fine bye-week fill-in.
Tre’ Harris, Los Angeles Chargers
The Chargers have never played a normal football game. I thought it would be Oronde Gadsden that benefitted from the absence of David Njoku and Charlie Kolar. Instead, he bageled and they went with Harris as a main passing game piece. Now Harris had been pretty involved so far this year. He has actually played 136 snaps in three games, and he already had a six target game in Week 1 as well as a 53-yard catch in Week 2. So there’ve been signs, but we hadn’t seen it put together the way it was in Week 3 when he led the team in yards, targets, and receptions.
The real story here is that Quentin Johnston has been miserable through three weeks, as his 64 receiving yards on 17 targets has given room for other receivers to get in on the action. I don’t know that Harris is quite a fantasy starter yet — I don’t think anyone on the Chargers is a surefire fantasy starter right now, as we’ll get to — but he’s at least creating a FLEX case with some room to grow if Mike McDaniel ever figures out how to put these pieces together. His history suggests he will, and as I was reminded all week when I posted that I didn’t think the Chargers offense was dead, the Chargers history does not.
Stock Down
Malik Nabers, New York Giants
Perhaps this is a short-term listing in the Stock Down section, but it is already extremely clear that Nabers is not the kind of quarterback that jibes with what the Giants want to be as an offense through two games. He finishes Week 3 at 5/26 on six targets and Week 2 at 1/4 on four targets. The Titans are not exactly a unit that a good offense should have trouble with, so it was very concerning for the Giants to come out of there with 12 points, wind or not.
The hanging sword of this is how effusive the reports are that the Giants are trying to bring in new quarterbacks. Some of the reports have mentioned “multiple” quarterbacks coming in. If it’s Brandon Allen, well, tough scene for Nabers. But I’ll maintain a little bit of optimism here that the Giants can trade for someone to help them (snicker, snicker) stay in the playoff race at 2-1. As things stand, though, it looks like it’s going to be hard for Nabers to do better than WR3 value for fantasy managers that likely spent a top-15 pick on him.
Omarion Hampton. Los Angeles Chargers
Looking for some kind of spark against the Bills, the Chargers actually divvied some carries over to Keaton Mitchell. What’s worse? It worked. Mitchell averaged 6.5 yards a pop and scored a touchdown on a red zone pass. Hampton had minus-11 rush yards over expected against the Bills and, though I think a lot of the problem is his offensive line, is not helped by his running style. The Chargers need some track meet speed to get past defenders in the backfield before they blow a play up. Through three games, per TruMedia, he’s averaging just 0.86 yards before contact per rush.
Keaton Mitchell opens up the scoring 👀@LACvsBUF on FOX/FOX One
— NFL (@NFL) September 27, 2026
Stream on @NFLPlus pic.twitter.com/vbkqdKEm3S
I don’t think this is all Hampton’s fault. He’s still a good player trying to make the most of a bad situation, but given how desperate the Chargers are for a spark on offense I could see them continuing to lean further towards Mitchell. And while Mitchell may not be better than a FLEX play in the interim, he could kneecap Hampton’s fantasy value in a real way.
Drake Maye and the Patriots offense
I get very tired of doing the “this young quarterback is a superfraud” thing. If there’s one thing that the last few years has taught us, it’s that good young quarterbacks can statistically regress in a hurry. C.J. Stroud and Jayden Daniels walked in their second years so that Drake Maye could run in his third. I think quarterback is a position where if we’re not getting into the big names with tons of experience who know every last inch of the rolodex against every pressure, the picture is painted with the supporting casts.
Drake Maye has 5 turnovers this season, no one in the NFL has morepic.twitter.com/Q10FEMpNng
— PFF (@PFF) September 27, 2026
And Maye’s supporting cast isn’t good. A.J. Brown is on injured reserve. The offensive line is struggling. Maye has been holding the ball too long trying to find knockout shots while he jives with a new “No. 2" in Romeo Doubs. His average pressure, per PFF, comes with an average time to throw of 3.72 seconds. He’d been struggling already, but this week’s debacle in Jacksonville was so bad he could only blame himself.
The issue is: It doesn’t really matter if I think Maye is still a good quarterback. When these situations start to snowball, they don’t always get better. Mike Onwenu isn’t coming back any time soon. Jared Wilson isn’t going to be a good pass blocking center. Alijah Vera-Tucker may just be a solid veteran rather than a difference maker. I still think very highly of Maye. But I also think highly of Stroud and Daniels, and that doesn’t mean I want either of them starting in fantasy football either. I would park Maye at the back of the QB1 ranks for now.
Baker Mayfield and the Buccaneers offense
Even when the Buccaneers were healthy this year, they already had been pretty healthy disappointments. Sunday night’s update on Mayfield, who left the game with an injury that wound up being a dislocated thumb with an incoming MRI, was brutal for just about everyone involved. True rookie UDFA Jalon Daniels is the backup, so there’s not likely to be improvement on the bench. And Mayfield played through injuries so poorly last year that it’s hard to believe he’s going to get better from where things stand. Bucky Irving similarly was spotted on the sideline for much of the fourth quarter, leaving his status for Week 4 in real doubt.
It’s hard to figure out the full damage from where we sit on Sunday night, but I’d be surprised if anyone but Emeka Egbuka and Irving (when healthy) emerged from this wreckage as a fantasy starter in most leagues. Even that remains mostly a volume play. Chris Godwin hasn’t had more than four targets in a game yet. Jalen McMillan has taken a backseat to Ted Hurst, who came down with a 40-yard touchdown in this game but has mostly been a prayer yards merchant.
As for Mayfield, well, we’ll see how the injury spits out. He is playing so frenzied right now that it’s almost impossible for this offense to stay on schedule. He’s taken 13 sacks in three games. There are a number of quarterbacks battling at the end of the QB2 ranks to stay in superflex consideration and Mayfield is currently playing like someone who doesn’t want to be on that line.
