Final Thoughts for the Last Draft Weekend

Aug 31, 2023

The Indianapolis Star-USA TODAY NETWORK

We’re roughly one week away from the first NFL game–Lions at Chiefs next Thursday –and there will be countless drafts held this weekend, so it’s a good time to discuss a few of the late-breaking storylines of the summer.

In last year’s edition of this article, I covered the following late-August situations:

Brian Robinson was expected to miss time as he recovered from a gunshot injury, so I suggested that fantasy managers target Antonio Gibson to get several starts early in the season. Robinson surprisingly returned in Week 5, but Gibson was the RB20 for the first month of the season.
Dameon Pierce had won the starting job in Houston and I predicted that he would see 12-15 touches as the team’s primary back. He worked his way into a bell-cow role and averaged 19.3 touches per game last season.
With J.K. Dobbins out, I pointed out that Kenyan Drake could find himself in a 10- to 15-touch role in September. He had 12 touches in Week 1 and after losing work to Justice Hill and Mike Davis in Week 2, he was inactive in Week 3 once J.K. Dobbins returned.
Prior to Week 1, it looked like Michael Carter was still starting for the Jets. He had 17, 12, 12, 11, and 12 touches in the first five games, as the Jets began to ramp up Breece Hall’s workload. (Hall began to dominate touches in Week 4.)
Chris Godwin was cleared to play Week 1, and I suggested that he was likely to get off to a slow start but should be back to his WR1/WR2 ways by midseason. Once he returned from a Week 1 hamstring injury in Week 4, he was the WR8 the rest of the way. Michael Gallup’s ACL recovery didn’t go quite as well.
Finally, I discussed the on-again/off-again potential breakout for Albert Okwuegbunam, which…never happened.