Are you hindered by one of the last major bye weeks in fantasy football this week? Are you in desperate need of a fill-in running back, and happened to miss out on Atlanta’s Brian Hill on the waiver wire?
It’s possible that Washington’s Derrius Guice is a solution for you, but make sure that you know he is a very high-risk option if you were to stick him in your starting lineup. However, if things were to pan out, Guice could help you to a Week 11 victory. Let’s take a look at some Pros and Cons for this play.
Pros:
- Guice is coming off of the Injured Reserve, so he has fresh legs.
- The Redskins have heavily emphasized the running game since Bill Callahan took over, leading to the fantasy success of Adrian Peterson.
- The team said on Wednesday that Guice looks to be filling a nice role in the backfield, catching passes on checkdown routes and offering a change of pace from Peterson.
- Though he’s barely seen the field in his career due to injury, we’ve seen in the preseason — and his time at LSU — that Guice has a unique explosion that can be deadly when he gets into the open field.
Cons:
- Guice hasn’t seen any live-game action since Week 1 when he tore his meniscus, and he was held out of his entire rookie season with a torn ACL. Rust is a real factor.
- The Redskins’ offense is abysmal, and they’ve currently gone 3-straight games without scoring a touchdown, so any fantasy points would likely have to rely on the volume of work unless Washington is able to end that streak.
- AP clearly holds the RB1 role for the Redskins, and they don’t seem to be willing to go away from him any time soon.
- Rookie QB Dwayne Haskins will be making his second career start, so the offense might continue in its stagnant nature.
- We just haven’t seen Guice be an effective fantasy RB as of yet. The skills are there, but until we witness some production, it might be hard to start him with confidence.
- The New York Jets have the second-best defense against the run in the NFL, allowing just 81.9 yards per game on the ground.
Has your confidence been boosted, or did this have the opposite effect? That’s understandable. The truth is that Guice offers an extremely high risk-reward option this week, but we don’t really know how high his ceiling is. I wouldn’t be blown away to see him score 12 points in PPR scoring, but the same would hold true if he put up 3 points — we just don’t know. If you are absolutely desperate, there are worse options on the board.
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