10 fantasy football busts from NFL Week 3
It was a rough Week 3 for these top 10 fantasy football busts who let down their owners with bad games this week. Check out who’s in our parade of shame and what to expect from them moving forward.
The thrill of victory is fun, but its just as fun to poke fun at those that suffer the agony of defeat. There’s also plenty of company for fantasy football owners who are feeling some misery due to these fantasy football busts from Week 3. If you had some of these these high scorers, you may have been able to overcome these letdowns, but many owners will end up taking an “L” this week if they were relying on the top ten fantasy football busts which you can find on the following slides.
Each week in our top 10 fantasy football busts, you can find the most disappointing options at each of the main fantasy positions. I highlight the players that had high expectations coming into the week but failed to live up to them. Whether due to injury or ineffectiveness, these players burned their owners badly.
You definitely want to avoid using players that end up on this list for your fantasy team. If you’ve got a great story about how someone let you down this week, let us know in the comments at the bottom of the page.
Make sure to check back later today for our fantasy football sleepers who emerged during Week 3 if these fantasy football busts have left you looking for replacement options. For our full fantasy football weekly coverage make sure to drop a bookmark on our fantasy football hub. You can also check out our new start/sit tool and follow @FansidedFantasy on Twitter to help you avoid next week’s fantasy football busts from sinking your team in Week 4.
There were plenty of letdowns this week, so let’s start our list of fantasy football busts this week with a quarterback whose team went down hard on the road.
Roethlisberger played the whole game in the 34-3 rout and ended up with 257 yards while completing 24 of his 44 passes. He didn’t throw a touchdown and turned the ball over twice (one interception, one fumble).
Fortunately, Ben and the Steelers offense will get a boost this week with the return of Le’Veon Bell. After throwing there touchdowns in each of the first two weeks, I still think Ben is a starting QB in all formats as he and the Steelers come home to face the tough Chiefs’ secondary. After Kansas City, though, things get easier with matchups against the Jets and Dolphins in Week 5 and Week 6.
Unfortunately for Ivory investors, he wasn’t able to get much going on the ground, though, finishing with only 14 yards on his 12 carries. It may be that the problem with the Jacksonville run game is with the offensive line and neither Ivory or Yeldon are ready to overcome that hurdle.
Ivory is still worth owning in every format since he looks like he’s back to a pretty large share of the workload. However, I’d leave him on the bench until he shows he is healthy enough and getting enough support for the offensive line to get out of our fantasy football busts.
Through the first two weeks of the season, C.J. Anderson looked like one of the best fantasy backs in the NFL. He was in the top-10 in fantasy points for running backs in both Week 1 and Week 2, but he was a big letdown in Week 3 landing him on our fantasy football busts list for this week.
Anderson took a back seat to the Trevor Siemian show on Sunday as the Bengals loaded up against the run and made Siemian beat them. In good news for Broncos fans, Siemian did. In bad news for Anderson owners, C.J. only ended up with 37 yards on his 14 carries and added one catch for just four more yards.
Anderson failed to get into the end zone this week, but he should be just fine going forward since teams will be hesitant to load up against him after Siemian’s Sunday stats. I’d chalk this up to a bad week, and be ready to roll him back out as an RB1 in some tasty matchups coming up. Depending on who has Anderson in your league, you could try and buy low if they over-react to his bad week.
Green Bay finished with 34 points, but Rodgers four touchdowns went to Jordy Nelson (2), Devante Adams, and Richard Rodgers. Cobb only had three targets and finished wth just one catch for 33 yards.
While the Packers piled up points, there weren’t a ton of yards to go around especially in the passing game. The Packers went run-heavy in the second half with such a big lead. Better days are probably ahead for Cobb, but he isn’t a WR2 any more given the current state of the Green Bay attack. I’d be ok starting him after the Week 4 bye week as a WR3, but he’s not nearly delivering on his draft position to this point in the season.
First, a caveat–Marshall was definitely playing hurt on Sunday and also playing with some of the worst QB performance known to mankind (more on that in a minute). He never got things going against the Chiefs giving him two ho-hum performances in a rough start to the 2016 season.
In Week 1, Marshall had just three catches for 32 yards, and he posted similar numbers this week totaling just 27 yards on three catches. He finished with eight targets but wasn’t able to make anything happen although he did come close to hauling in a garbage-time touchdown.
Marshall gets another tough matchup this week against the Seahawks. He should be healthy enough to play, but he is no longer locked in as a WR1. You can still get him in your lineups, but don’t hesitate to give him a week to get healthy or prove he’s back in sync with Fitzpatrick after te two struggled so mightily yesterday.
Gronk owners who were excited to get their first-round pick back got a huge letdown on Thursday Night Football even though the star TE was active against the Texans. Gronk was apparently healthy enough to be a decoy, but not enough to be involved in any meaningful way.
While the Patriots rolled over the Texans, Gronk was targeted just one and didn’t even catch that one pass. He ended up playing just 14 snaps in the game since New England ran away early and there was no need to risk setback.
The good news is that there wasn’t any reported setbacks, and he should be ready for a full workload against the Bills. Throughout his career, Gronkowski has owned the Bills and put up huge games against them almost every year. He’s set up to be a fantasy football stud going forward, but he was definitely belongs on our fantasy football busts this week.
It was an epically horrible week for Ryan Fitzpatrick. Just one week after being the seventh-best scoring QB he totally fell apart against the Chiefs. Last week, he threw for 387 yards and two touchdowns. This week, he threw six–SIX–six interceptions that is against the Chiefs.
Fitzpatrick threw the ball 44 times completing 20 to his receivers and six to the Chiefs. No Jets scored touchdowns when Fitz threw them the ball, but the Chiefs did take one of his passes back for a touchdown in the fourth quarter.
In his no-good, horrible, very-bad week, Fitzpatrick did “earn” a record.
— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) September 26, 2016
He ended up with -3 fantasy points based on ESPN standard scoring and could have been even worse depending on how much your league penalizes turnovers. The only bright spot for any fantasy owners who started Fitzpatrick is that congratulations–you outscored your starting QB this week. The only reason Fitzpatrick isn’t on the top of our fantasy football busts list is that he did come into the week with pretty low expectations, which isn’t true of the remaining three names on our list.
The Eagles romped over the Steelers and struggling Big Ben in Week 3 putting on a clinic in their 34-3 in-state beatdown. Some Ryan Mathews owners probably saw the score and got excited before opening up the box score only to be crushed by his total lack on involvement.
Mathews did come into the week nursing an knee injury, and maybe that’s why he wasn’t very involved. We don’t have any definite answers since the Eagles didn’t comment on his absence after the first quarter. He did have two rushes but totaled -5 yards. His teammates Wendall Smallwood (17-79-1) and Kenjon Barner (8-42-1) had a field day with the Steelers D in his absence, but Mathews owners were left out in the cold with no fantasy points.
The only bright side of Mathews disappearance form this week’s game is that he does get a Week 4 bye to heal up and be ready to return Week 5. The Eagles didn’t need him in their dismantling of the Steelers, so his owners can hope he’ll return as the feature-back after the bye. It’s never a good thing when you end up with negative yards, and finishing like that usually lands you a spot on our fantasy football busts list.
Benjamin turned into the invisible man on Sunday and didn’t even get targeted until 2:34 left in the game. He missed that target and ended up with as many fantasy points as Calvin Johnson, Lynn Swann, and Phil Simms this week. Benjamin was totally nonexistent and left his fantasy owners completely out to dry as the Panthers offense didn’t show up at all against a good Vikings team that knocked them off 22-10 at home.
Next week, Benjamin will look to bounce back against the Falcons in a good matchup. While I would still start him as my second WR, this week’s performance definitely raises his risk level since now we know just how low the floor is with him. He should be able to bounce back, but he was one of the weirdest and the most absolute fantasy football busts this week.
The Cardinals suffered one of the worst and most surprising losses of the week as the whole team turned into fantasy football busts as they traveled to Buffalo. True, there was the “West Coast team traveling east” factor, but the team laid a collective egg in Buffalo as they went down 33-18.
Palmer struggled throughout the game and earns the top spot on our fantasy football busts for this week since he was expected to do so much against a leaky Buffalo defense. Remember, this is the team that Ryan Fitzpatrick lit up on Thursday Night Football just ten days before Palmer faced them. Even in that good matchup, Palmer ended up scoring fewer fantasy points than any other starting QB except Ryan Fitzpatrick. He was even outpaced by Trevone Boykin who came off the bench for the Seahawks and Cody Kessler, the Browns third-string QB.
Palmer did throw for 287 yards, but he erased pretty much any fantasy points he got you with that total by turning the ball over four times. He completed 26 of his 50 passes, but four ended up in the hands of the Bills who kept Palmer out of the end zone all game long.
That’s two bad games in the first three weeks for Palmer, but he’s still a QB1 moving forward since he throws the ball so much and has such good weapons around him. He has gotten off to a bad start, but matchups with the Rams, 49ers, and Jets the next three weeks should help him get things headed in the right direction.