While the draft and waiver wires impact a fantasy football team, nothing else matters if you make the wrong lineup decisions. As managers make the final tweaks to their lineups for Week 1, should you start Philadelphia Eagles RB Miles Sanders against the Detroit Lions in your fantasy football lineup?
Should you start Miles Sanders against the Detroit Lions in your fantasy football lineup for Week 1?
If you do enough drafts, you begin to notice guys who no one wants to draft. They slide and slide until finally, they take one for the team and say, “well, it’s value, right?” That pretty much sums up how people felt about Sanders.
He was never a target but was a value at the right ADP. And I agree, he can be a value for fantasy football. After averaging 13.5 PPR fantasy points per game as a rookie and 14.2 as a sophomore, Sanders saw his totals drop to 9.8 PPR/game in 2021, ranking 41st amongst RBs. Sanders had a career-high 4.5 yards per carry in 2021 and 11 runs of 15+ yards. If I left it there, you’d think it was a good thing. That’s why stats without context can be misleading.
Sanders posted career lows in attempts (137), yards (754), targets (34), receptions (26), and receiving yards (158). To top it all off, Sanders never even scored a touchdown. To have 163 touches with zero TDs is both remarkable and puzzling. I still don’t even know how this is possible, but it is. It’s not like the Eagles didn’t run the ball. From Week 8 on, they were No. 1 in rushing rate at 68% in neutral scripts and ninth in red-zone rushing attempts (78).
The problem, though, is Philadelphia opted not to use him in there. Of those red-zone rushes, Sanders saw 20, which is miles behind Jalen Hurts (31) and below Jordan Howard’s 23. Sanders did beat out both Boston Scott (19) and Kenneth Gainwell (10), but when you have this many hands in the cookie jar, someone is walking away with just crumbs.
Miles Sanders’ fantasy upside is capped due to the presence of Kenneth Gainwell and Boston Scott
Philadelphia has a scheme that annoys fantasy managers. The talent is there, but they are capped by the rotation.
Just look at Gainwell for a second. As a rookie last year, in the five games where he saw over 35% of the snaps, he averaged 17.5 PPR/game on 12.4 touches, 4.2 of those coming via the air. Gainwell topped out in Week 18, where he saw 53% of the snaps, recording 16 touches for 87 total yards with 18.7 PPR points.
All five of Gainwell’s touchdowns came from inside the 20. Therefore, he could see more opportunities in this high-leverage area. You can’t just keep that bottled up if you are Nick Sirianni. According to the reports of the team wanting to get him involved more, plus sitting as the No. 2 RB on the depth chart, I don’t think he’s keeping Gainwell on the sidelines.
With Jordan Howard no longer on the team, Boston Scott is ready to scoop up more volume. Rushing just 87 times in 16 games a year ago, Scott carried the ball for 373 yards with a whopping seven touchdowns. He also had 13 receptions on 16 targets for 83 yards. Scott capitalized in games where Sanders missed due to injury. In games where both Scott and Sanders played (five), Scott averaged 8.3 PPR fantasy points, eight rushes, 29 yards, and 0.6 TDs. Without Sanders (four), Scott averaged 12 rushes, 57 yards, one touchdown, and 14.78 PPR/game.
Now we add in Jalen Hurts’ prolific rushing ability that led the league in yards (784) and touchdowns (10), and it’s starting to become more and more evident why Sanders was a “screw it” pick. In fairness, he did tell us not to draft him this year.
Can Sanders be started in Week 1 against the Lions?
Unless you went super WR heavy or went with a Hero RB approach, odds are you have better options than Sanders, who comes in PFN’s fantasy football rankings as the RB29 on the week.
Ideally, spend the week not stressing over what happens and watch the rotation of backs and how this offense will look. I don’t believe they will be as pass happy in 2022. For the first seven weeks, Hurts was on pace for 588 attempts before they threw the anchor out. Sirianni adapted the scheme to fit the personnel they had. Philly lacked WR options but had a surplus of RBs. It worked.
But is it also not reasonable to believe the trade and signing of A.J. Brown this offseason couldn’t indicate a return to passing volume now that the team has their No. 1 option? It’s a similar story to Stefon Diggs going to Buffalo and them changing their scheme.
So if the Eagles do revert back to the more NFL-norm of a passing-first attack and they keep utilizing a committee as there has been no reason not to do it, how much wiggle room does Sanders really have before his glass floor falls out from under him?
The matchup against Detroit is tantalizing. As much as I want to run through a brick wall for Dan Campbell, they aren’t a great team. Aidan Hutchinson will certainly speed up the rebuild, but one man cannot fix an entire defense that ranked 29th vs. RBs (26.6 PPR/game) and allowed the second-most total touchdowns to the position (26).
There’s a very real chance Sanders has a good game if he can break one loose, which he’s known to do. Heck, he might even find the end zone for once after tying me and you last year. But I’m perfectly willing to use Week 1 as a learning opportunity to make better, more well-informed decisions down the line. At least then, I’d feel better about Sanders, even if he struggles for fantasy as would be expected.