Week 12 Waiver Wire: A Closer Look at Two Potential Adds
Ryan McDowell says that his biggest advantage in dynasty is being more attentive than his league mates, especially on the waiver wire. Drafting is exciting. Trading is fun. Lineups decisions will make you pull your hair out. But waivers are a bit tedious, which is why you can win them. If you’re good at the thing no one else likes, you give yourself a big advantage.
This article is one step toward winning the waiver wire. Each week, I’ll talk about two players to add — one for shallower leagues (225-250 offensive players rostered) and one for deeper leagues (275-325 offensive players rostered). In some weeks, both players I discuss will be rostered in your leagues. I understand that, and I welcome feedback about whether I should be digging deeper or shallower.
If you’re a contender, you’re probably scrambling to make up for at least one injury this week. These guys aren’t long-term solutions, but they may provide key depth for the playoff push.
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Shallower Leagues — Jared Cook
The last time Cook finished the season as a top-12 TE was … never. Wow, I didn’t realize it was that bad.
But if Cook were coming out as a prospect today, we’d be drooling over him. His 4.49-second 40-yard dash time would be solid for a WR. For a 246-pound TE, it’s blazing. And his explosion scores are impressive, regardless of position (via Mock Draftable). Here he is compared to other TEs:
And here he is stacked up to WRs:
And it’s not as if Cook has been bad in the NFL. He’s almost always been one of the top two receiving options on his team. The trouble is, he has consistently played for low-scoring offenses on mediocre teams. That is to say, he’s spent his career playing for Jeff Fisher.
2016 was supposed to be different. This was going to be his Delanie Walker-like emergence at age 30. But Cook broke his foot during offseason workouts. Then he saw minimal action in his first three games before injuring his ankle and missing six regular season contests.
If we weren’t talking about Jared Cook, week 11 would look like a coming out party. But we’ve seen this one before, with Cook exploding for isolated big games in St. Louis and Tennessee. Still, 11 targets is 11 targets, especially when no other Green Bay player saw more than six.
Cook is still a headache: he dropped a near-certain touchdown pass and lost a fumble. But in a high-volume Packers pass offense, he should be rostered in every dynasty league.
Deeper Leagues — Rex Burkhead
I’ve added Burkhead more times than I care to admit. His appeal is simple: he’s the only healthy running back on the Bengals depth chart not named Jeremy Hill.
Plus, he profiles as an agile pass-catching specialists, a la Theo Riddick (again from Mock Draftable)
But Burkhead’s NFL production is non-existent. Drafted in 2013, he has just 19 career rush attempts and 19 career receptions (on 27 targets). As a slight consolation, Burkhead has gotten more work with Giovani Bernard inactive. But that is a slight consolation (from RotoViz):
Really, the only good news is that when Bernard left the game in the fourth quarter in week 11, Burkhead immediately subbed in and caught a 14-yard pass. Maybe, perhaps Burkhead can take over the third-down role and offer a few receptions per game. With Bernard and A.J. Green out for the foreseeable future, the Bengals will be replacing 15 targets per game and more than 50 percent of their RB snaps. If Burkhead can carve out even a small fraction of that workload, he’ll be a good desperation start in deeper leagues.
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- Dynasty Capsule: Miami Dolphins - January 26, 2019
- Dynasty Capsule: Buffalo Bills - January 21, 2019
- Dynasty Capsule: Carolina Panthers - January 21, 2018
