After already being sidelined for three weeks because of a bad hamstring injury, the consensus No. 1 overall pick in fantasy football drafts and overall cheat code Christian McCaffrey has been placed on injured reserve, forcing him out for a minimum of another three weeks. With this news, we need to take a deep look at the Carolina Panthers offense and what we should expect going forward.
Chuba Hubbard is going to get a lot of work
Without McCaffrey on the field, rookie running back Chuba Hubbard has been the chief beneficiary. In his first two games with a meaningful workload, including the Week 3 game where he took over after the McCaffrey injury, Hubbard had 52 and 57 rushing yards, respectively.
Last week, however, Hubbard took a big step forward in his rookie season. The Oklahoma State product rushed for 101 yards, adding 5 receptions on 6 targets for another 33 yards.
Since Week 3, Hubbard has averaged an impressive 4.44 yards per rushing attempt and has caught 10 of 13 targets. Going forward, he’ll get an extended audition as Carolina’s lead back, starting with a matchup against the Minnesota Vikings this weekend.
The Vikings have allowed a healthy 20.6 fantasy points per game this year to the running back position (12th-most). Looking ahead to next week, the Giants have surrendered the fifth-most fantasy ppg (23.8). Hubbard is locked in as a solid RB2 with a couple of great matchups on the horizon.
The Panthers offense has pretty much stayed the same without Christian McCaffrey
It’s hard to imagine that losing one of the best players in all of football wouldn’t have a massive impact on a team from a fantasy perspective. And yet, the loss of McCaffrey hasn’t changed much. Putting aside the real-life implications — including back-to-back Panthers losses — the numbers across the board have stayed relatively the same.
Let’s start with quarterback Sam Darnold, who struggled last week with his lowest completion percentage of the year. Yet, he still connected with Hubbard on 5 of 6 targets. Darnold attempted 37 passes, right in line with his season average of 36.6.
The biggest statistical anomaly since McCaffrey went down? Darnold has thrown 5 interceptions in the last two games after throwing only 1 in the first three weeks. That’s worth monitoring.
DJ Moore has been consistently excellent — other than seeing his total targets, yardage, and receptions dip last week in correlation with Darnold’s performance. With or without McCaffrey, Moore has maintained his status as the featured receiver in the Panthers’ offense, pacing the team with 50 targets, 35 receptions, 440 yards, and 3 TDs. He leads the team in all four categories.
McCaffrey is the motor that drives this offense. However, the distribution of touches remains essentially the same with or without him in the lineup.
Can McCaffrey maintain his workload?
After playing all 16 games in each of his first three seasons, McCaffrey solidified himself as one of the top running backs — and players in general — in the NFL. Before the 2020 season, the Panthers rewarded him with a four-year, $64 million contract, making him the highest-paid running back in the NFL.
There’s only one problem with that — McCaffrey hasn’t been on the field. Since Week 2 of last year, McCaffrey will have missed 15 out of 19 games.
There was plenty of speculation as to whether or not his workload would be lightened coming into this season, but it wasn’t. He was given 29.5 touches per game over the first two games before pulling up with his hamstring injury in Week 3.
It’s safe to wonder if the elite days of McCaffrey single-handedly winning fantasy matchups are behind him. If the Panthers want to protect their heavy investment, it would be wise of them to lighten McCaffrey’s load by working Hubbard more into the fold when CMC returns, whenever that may be.