Christopher Harris' Fantasy Football Mailbag Week 4

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Harrison L.: How does Josh Gordon stepping away affect Terrelle Pryor for the rest of 2016?

Heath: Rest of the year to replace Josh Gordon at the end of my bench: Steve Smith, Tyrell Wellick, or Jamison Crowder?

First of all, Heath is a podcast listener and I chuckled at the "Tyrell Wellick" mention, because I'm a Mr. Robot fan and for some reason that's what I call Chargers WR Tyrell Williams.

Second of all, yeah, bummer about Josh Gordon. The Browns have been promising we'd see Gordon in Week 5 after his four-game suspension ends, but apparently Gordon's substance-related demons are still poking him. More power to him for getting help in rehab, but the Browns are running a business and just how many chances are you willing to give your employee? I find it hard to believe Gordon will ever play in a Cleveland uniform again, and certainly not in 2016.

So this comes at an exciting time for Pryor. He busted out Week 3 against the Dolphins (admittedly a team with a pretty execrable secondary) to the tune of eight grabs and 144 yards receiving from the immortal Cody Kessler, tacked onto a bunch of Wildcat snaps at QB and a rushing touchdown. In fact, on one short slant I saw on film, Pryor did a pretty fair Josh Gordon impression. He's 6'4", 225 pounds and a freight train in the open field, and I'd say he probably has more lateral elusiveness than Gordon, too. It was an eye-opening performance, and the one downer was that it came a couple weeks before Gordon was supposed to return.

Now? Corey Coleman is still out with a broken hand, so Pryor is a locked-in No. 1 receiver in the NFL, and that gives him value. But it's still the Browns, it's still Cody Kessler and then probably eventually Josh McCown and a crummy offensive line and a dysfunctional organization, and let's just say I need to see that kind of performance again—maybe more than once—before I'm willing to commit to Pryor as an every-week fantasy starter. This news gives him that chance.

As for Heath's question about Gordon replacements: I'd be thinking Steve Smith. He's old and his Achilles' is reconstructed out of old Terminator parts, but he looked really good Week 3 against the Jags.

Gene C.: Any thoughts on Kenneth Dixon and the Ravens backfield?

My thoughts through three games are: How bad does Buck Allen have to be if he's a healthy scratch behind those two turkeys? Justin Forsett has transmogrified into the complementary back we all knew him to be for six seasons prior to '14, and whatever mayhem Terrance West wrought during training camp hasn't translated to the regular season. The obvious hype-monster here is the devil you don't know, the rookie Dixon.

Be careful of painting by numbers here. I'm all for adding Dixon as a speculative waiver guy in a 12-team league. It's smart, if only because the Ravens would love for someone to step forward and lift their running game from its current state of uselessness. But Dixon won't play in Week 4 and he's coming off a knee injury, so how early do the Ravens throw him out there with a full workload you can trust? Does it take until Week 7? Week 9, after their bye? You may find the bench spot too valuable to use on another part-time player. That said, if I want to own one Ravens RB, it's Dixon, because the devils I do know aren't playing well. Dixon was a draftnik's fave in this past NFL draft: a hyper-productive player at Louisiana Tech with enough size to withstand some early-down pounding but a ton of open-field agility and explosiveness. (Of course, it was Louisiana Tech, so Dixon wasn't exactly facing elite defensive talent every week.)

Ryan R.: Are there any wideouts in the league that you think have must-own handcuffs?

This is a really good question, and you'd think I'd have a clever and creative answer for today's NFL, in which passing is so important. But the entire notion of handcuffing WRs like we try to handcuff running backs is tough. Good fantasy RBs, the ones you feel great about owning, dominate the position on their NFL team, leaving only scraps for any other back. There's essentially just one of them. So when he gets hurt, someone who wasn't producing at all jumps into the fray. A passing offense that can sustain one star fantasy receiver usually can sustain two, and that guy is widely owned in his own right. So if one of those dudes gets hurt, the prime beneficiary winds up being the other dude. I can't think of a single current NFL situation where I'd be sure that a player who's currently third on his WR depth chart would be a lock to step in and play the same role in the same way as the stud wideout in front of him. But here are a few possibilities:

• Quincy Enunwa, NYJ (owned in 30% of Yahoo leagues). Brandon Marshall limped around out there for the Jets last week, and Eric Decker could be facing a severe shoulder injury. Enunwa has some appeal anyway, because his team uses three-wide as its base offensive set.

• Sammie Coates, PIT (17% owned). Pardon me for not getting psyched about Markus Wheaton's debut, in which he might've been credited for three dropped passes, including one in the end zone. Coates, too, has problems with drops, but he also has legit size/speed upside in case Antonio Brown goes down.

• Davante Adams, GB (9% owned). Adams already has a couple touchdowns this year, though only 99 combined receiving yards in three games. You'll forgive me for not looking fondly back on '15, when Jordy Nelson was out and Adams was thrust into a primary pass-catching role.

• Devin Funchess, CAR (28% owned). Ditto Honey Bunches of Funchess from '15. We already saw what life without Kelvin Benjamin looked like for the Panthers receiving corps, and it looked an awful lot like Ted Ginn getting double-digit targets. Still, Funchess isn't a rookie anymore. Maybe he'd be better.

Nathan W.: What are your thoughts on Jonathan Stewart for the rest of the season?

Rage. Betrayal. Grief. I was high on Stew Beef for '16. I really like him as a player, and the only risk I saw to a season in which he outperformed his draft position was injury. Surprise! He's injured. Stewart pulled a hammy early in Week 2 and will probably miss a month, whereupon we'll undergo the glorious guessing game about when he'll reassume a full workload. Of course, one concern with any Carolina running back is always going to be the fact that Cam Newton has never played a NFL season in which he hasn't rushed for at least five TDs, and last year he had ten. In his career, Newton has 45 rushing TDs—already the most ever for a QB in NFL history—35 of which have come from inside an opponent's three.

My thoughts about Stewart as a fantasy option are: you married it. You're locked in. Don't cut him, that's silly, but you can't trade him unless you're willing to take nothing in return. You just have to ride it out. When he returns, the Panthers need to click offensively like they did last year (when they averaged an obscene 37 points per game), so you can be assured that even if Newton steals some bunny TDs, there will be enough left over for Stewart, too. (In '15, he had seven TDs in 13 games.) Mostly, though, performing some liturgical ritual to benefit his hamstring seems like it would be a good idea.

Unstuck Billy: What does the Steelers receiving corps other than Antonio Brown tell us about the rest of the season? And next season?

I already mentioned that Markus Wheaton is off to a very Markus Wheaton–esque start; one game shouldn't damn him for the rest of the year, but having seen him blow chance after chance in his career despite being a third-round pick and a supposedly uber-quick prospect, I'm not holding out a ton of hope. Sammie Coates is my guess for value beyond Brown this year, but it really is just a guess. All the potential candidates to accrue fantasy value—Wheaton, Coates, Eli Rogers, Darrius Heyward-Bey—have major warts that figure to make them frustrating fantasy plays. Wheaton and Coates are inconsistent, Rogers is teeny and not a burner, and DHB is DHB.

The larger point here is how much the Steelers could use Martavis Bryant! In glimpses, Bryant has already proved that he is what Pittsburgh hopes Coates might someday be: a burner with size who'll destroy singled-up coverage when defenses cheat toward Brown. I started this mailbag talking about Josh Gordon and I'll end it with Bryant, who's already suspended for the entirety of 2016 and is presumably one more failed drug test away from a lifetime ban. So there's no guarantee the guy will ever play again. But his star shines brighter every day these other guys tussle around on an actual NFL field.

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