We are well into the second half of the 2022 NFL season, and daily practice reports are becoming longer and longer as injury updates pour in. The Los Angeles Chargers have had their entire wide receiver corps healthy for about 4.5 quarters this season. Currently, it’s Mike Williams that remains out with an ankle injury.
What is the latest on Williams’ high ankle sprain, and should fantasy football managers prepare to be without him for yet another week?
Mike Williams Injury Update
It’s actually quite ridiculous that we’ve been writing injury updates on Chargers wide receivers every week since Week 2. Allen and Williams were on the field together for the entirety of Week 1 and then for about half of the first quarter in Week 11. I’m choosing not to count Allen’s brief return in Week 7, where he played just 32% of the snaps at clearly far less than 100%.
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Fortunately, Allen has looked fully recovered since returning to action in Week 11. The same cannot be said about Williams, who played just six snaps in Week 11 before aggravating his high ankle sprain on his only catch of the game.
Following that Week 11 game, head coach Brandon Staley said the aggravation wasn’t serious and that Williams would be back. However, Williams did not practice ahead of Week 12 and did not appear particularly close to returning.
Will Mike Williams Play This Sunday?
By midseason, Wednesday practice reports are largely meaningless… in most instances. If you see a previously healthy player not practicing on a Wednesday, there’s really no reason for concern unless he misses practice on Thursday. However, when it comes to players that missed the previous week, Wednesday is actually quite telling.
Typically, players returning from injury will at least get in a limited session on a Wednesday before ramping things up over the remainder of the week. Unfortunately, Williams opened up this week with another DNP.
According to Chargers’ team reporter Hayley Elwood, Staley said that Williams is progressing. They will try to get him on the field this week, but he’s day-to-day.
It doesn’t take much of a leap to read between the lines here. While we can’t make any definitive claims about Williams’ status until we get the final injury report on Friday afternoon, I can confidently say that I do not expect Williams to play this week.
Fantasy managers should prepare for Williams to post three straight DNPs before (hopefully) being ruled out on Friday. The Chargers could elect to list him as questionable, which would only serve to frustrate fantasy managers looking to place him on IR and pick up someone else or those looking for clarity on their Underdog Fantasy selections.
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Assuming Williams is out, we once again look to Joshua Palmer and DeAndre Carter. One of them will likely be highly productive, especially in a potential shootout against the Raiders. Unfortunately, we have yet to see a week where both have been fantasy relevant.
Every time Palmer has scored at least 13 PPR fantasy points, Carter has scored fewer than 11. Every time Carter has scored at least 15 fantasy points, Palmer has scored no more than 10.6. Both are startable, but someone is likely going to be disappointed.