Christopher Harris' Fantasy Football Mailbag Week 8

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Cody: What percentage of my Free Agent Acquisition Budget should I spend for Devontae Booker?

All. Of. It. C.J. Anderson is on injured reserve with severely damaged knee meniscus ("Severely Damaged Knee Meniscus" is also the title of my prog-rock band's latest concept album), and Booker is set to inherit the majority of the Broncos' rushing workload. Right now, Kapri Bibbs figures to be the backup.

Could things go wrong here? Oh, absolutely. Booker is a rookie. He famously fumbled the first carry of his regular-season NFL career. The Broncos offensive line has been inconsistent and their quarterback is a future Case Keenum. The worst-case scenario for fantasy owners who spend everything to get Booker is if the team just goes out and finds a street free agent. Is Marshawn Lynch answering his phone? C.J. Spiller and Joique Bell just got cut; you wouldn't think those guys would generate enough juice to supplant Booker, but you never know.

Booker's upside? He could be really good! He has excellent vision and is a slashing, violent runner and a good pass catcher, and he might wind up a full-time starter on a run-focused squad, a confluence of ability and opportunity you don't often find on your waiver wire. Pony up.

Tyler: Thoughts on T.Y. Hilton's value with Donte Moncrief about to return?

I don't think Moncrief returning from his broken shoulder blade is any kind of death knell to Hilton's fantasy value, but it's probably a small demerit. The Colts haven't found anyone they seem to consistently like other than Hilton (and that includes Philip Dorsett, whom I hyped this summer, but who just doesn't get targets). That Indy aerial offense is weird: Andrew Luck is inconsistent but still good, and yet there's a herky-jerky quality that prevents them from being the terrifying attack they probably should be. Like, great NFL quarterbacks tend to get on streaks where everything is firing and they produce drive after unstoppable drive, but it just doesn't happen with the Colts. Maybe that's the offensive line, maybe it's the lack of outside weapons.

Hilton himself tends to disappear for large stretches of games, though, to his credit, he's shown up huge in key moments for a month. Maybe Moncrief coming back settles everything down, and gives Luck multiple receivers he trusts. I'm not willing to go all-in starting Moncrief at all costs this week, because he's been out a long while. But maybe Hilton's slice does diminish slightly—only slightly—in order to grow the pie.

Brett: With Dion Lewis supposedly returning to practice, what's your take on his value and James White's value? Thoughts on how this may play out?

It's the Patriots, so I have to cop to just not knowing. Lewis has returned to practice while still on the PUP list, so the clock has started: he gets 21 days and then the team either has to activate him or send him to injured reserve. The only new information we have about Lewis's health is that he needed a procedure to repair a patella stress fracture, which apparently can happen to folks recovering from ACL tears. Is three weeks enough time for him to get pain-free and regain lost strength and conditioning? There's no way of knowing; the Patriots themselves probably don't know, and they wouldn't tell us if they did. I'm cool stashing Lewis in the hope that the lightning he captured for six weeks last year might return, but my sniffer tells me that time is probably bygone. He was an unrelentingly quick player, and was a special kind of awesome with Tom Brady throwing it to him seven or eight times per game last year—much better than James White—but he's so brittle. I wouldn't think about dropping White until I saw Lewis in uniform! If and when Lewis comes back and shows a full game of usefulness and health, that's when White's owners will be in trouble.

Nick: What are you doing with Knile Davis, Don Jackson, and the rest of the Packers backfield?

I'm not starting any of the traditional running backs on Green Bay's roster in Week 8, not after they played a total of ten snaps last Thursday against the Bears. (To be fair: Jackson injured a hand early in that contest.) Yes, Mike McCarthy said that Jackson's hand is feeling better and that he can envision Davis playing more than a few garbage-time snaps now that he's more familiar with the playbook, but I'd need to see it before I'd believe, especially when using Ty Montgomery and Randall Cobb out of the backfield went swimmingly in the second half last week.

Longer term, I think a NFL team needs to have real running backs it trusts; throwing 56 times in a game tends to be detrimental to your quarterback's health when you start playing competent defenses. Short term, though, the Packers probably try to recapture their Week 7 magic in Week 8 against the Falcons, and that makes Montgomery and Cobb more appealing starters. Should you roster Davis or Jackson? In a ten-team league, no. In a 12-teamer? I don't hate it, but I'd prefer to spend a spot on James Starks, who's out after a knee scope but should return by mid-November.

Kyle: Favorite running back stashes?

I'll leave the handcuffs out of this conversation: you should still be keeping Alfred Morris, DeAngelo Williams, Tim Hightower, et al., if you own their respective starters, at the expense of any speculative running back adds. In the realm of non-handcuffs (or players who don't currently have an obvious one-to-one backup role), I just mentioned James Starks, and he's a good one: Eddie Lacy is gone and the Packers are mixing and matching with wide receivers in their backfield, but at some point they'll need a banger. Starks is a perennial tease, but he'd have upside with a full workload. I've stashed Jeremy Langford in a few leagues, not with the idea of using him anytime soon (even if he's active for Week 8) but rather just to see how the Bears backfield develops when their schedule loosens up. I'm still keeping Kenneth Dixon on speed dial because I don't believe Terrance West is an above-average player, and the Ravens need an injection of something into their offense. Paul Perkins hasn't shown anything yet for the Giants but then neither has Rashad Jennings, so maybe they give the rookie some more run. Dion Lewis deserves consideration. And to round out a half-dozen, I'll mention Thomas Rawls, who himself may never be able to get healthy. My "stash philosophy" here is, I'd rather take a crack on someone with ceiling rather than someone whose best case is working as part of a committee.

S.F.: Pro sports in Las Vegas: Is it really a good idea?

Random topic! But I'll bite: I'm not an expert on Las Vegas politics or demographics, and in my opinion no public financing for these giant boondoggle stadia is ever a good idea. (Yes, yes, the public part of the financing for the proposed Vegas stadium is a hotel tax hike. You know what else you could do with a hotel tax hike? Fund schools.) But setting aside the scam of billionaires getting tax incentives to make millions more, the real question S.F. is actually asking here is: Will the siren's song of legalized gambling sully the integrity of professional sports?

Ha.

There was a time when we weren't all connected by glowing electronics during our every waking hour, when being physically close to gamblers and gambling might've posed more danger than being physically far from them. That time has passed. Whatever trouble an athlete or coach or executive might get into because he's surrounded by gambling pressures, he can already get into now. The pearl-clutching that pro sports leagues have done over gambling lately—and said pearl-clutching is shared by many of the people who run our governments—is (surprise!) cynical grandstanding.

Gambling is an accepted part of the world, is totally accessible to any American who wants to partake, and mealy-mouthed moralists (by the way, I'm not calling S.F. one of these…he or she just asked a question) who claim to be shocked—shocked!—to discover there's gambling going on in this establishment are almost always angling for a piece of the pie. I have no doubt that when a pro sports team goes to Las Vegas (and the NHL has approved an expansion team there starting next season), dumb people will write dumb stories about what a compromising effect it's had on the ethics of sports. As if we didn't have enough stories about that without a team located in Las Vegas.

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