For a team that was built around the run for years, the Seattle Seahawks have finally allowed Russell Wilson to throw the ball and carry the offense, creating a new level of elite fantasy football value. However, that does not mean that they have abandoned the run, and this week, players like Alex Collins and Travis Homer look to be integral pieces of their rushing attack due to injuries ahead of them on the depth chart. With both Chris Carson and Carlon Hyde out for Sunday’s game against the Buffalo Bills, do either Alex Collins or Travis Homer become fantasy options alongside DeeJay Dallas in Week 9?
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Running backs Chris Carson and Carlos Hyde are out for Week 9, opening the door for others like Alex Collins and Travis Homer
Week 9 will be the second straight week that both Carson and Hyde will miss due to injuries.
After injuring his foot in Week 7, Carson entered last week as a game-time decision, but the team felt it was better to give him an extra week to get ready. However, things have not progressed in a way that the team feels comfortable with, and after being unable to test out his foot, the Seahawks went ahead and pulled the plug on his chances of playing Sunday.
“He couldn’t make it today,” coach Pete Carroll said. “Today was going to be the day we tried to decide where he was, and they didn’t feel like it was right to bring him out there today, so we’ve got to leave him home, take care of him, and get him ready for next week.”
Related | Fantasy RB Rankings Week 9: Sleepers, must-starts, potential busts
Carlos Hyde missing Week 9 seemed more of a certainty than Carson’s status. Currently dealing with a hamstring injury, Hyde was in question going back to the start of the week, where there was legitimate optimism that Carson would have been able to suit up for the 6-1 Seahawks.
Faced with the same challenge in Week 8, Carroll and the team put their trust in rookie DeeJay Dallas to be the focal point of the backfield. Dallas filled in admirably, rushing 18 times for 41 yards and a touchdown while catching all five of his targets for an additional 17 yards and another touchdown. The rookie from the University of Miami finished as the RB3 last week. Dallas also played on 79% of the team’s offensive snaps.
Fellow running back Travis Homer sat out practice Wednesday and was a limited participant Thursday. However, his knee injury appears to be less of a concern than it was in Week 8 as he won’t carry an injury designation into Sunday’s game against the Bills.
Seattle signs and calls up Alex Collins to join Travis Homer in the backfield, providing interesting fantasy implications
Fans of the Seahawks should remember this name. The team drafted Alex Collins in 2016 out of the University of Arkansas. However, after 42 total touches in his rookie year for 209 yards, the team released Collins, where he ended up signing with the Baltimore Ravens in 2017.
Collins was an extremely reliable running back in Baltimore and showcased both his rushing ability and his pass-catching skills. In his 25 games with the team, Alex Collins rushed 326 times for 1,384 yards (4.2 avg) and scored 13 touchdowns on the ground. He also caught 38 of his 57 targets for 292 yards and one touchdown.
However, injuries and off-field decisions cost Collins dearly. Collins has not played in the NFL since 2019 when he was involved in a traffic accident and was also charged with a number of crimes.
He was released by the Ravens and floated around on free agency until Wednesday when Seattle came calling. HC Pete Carroll was thoroughly impressed with Alex Collins’ ability to get up to speed on such a short week.
“He had a terrific week for us and was really impressive,” Carroll said of Collins. “He kind of fell right back into the flow of things here, and we feel very comfortable with him playing [Sunday] even though he hasn’t been practicing in all this time. We feel good about him. He’s got his head in the right place for it.”
Can either Travis Homer or Alex Collins be played along with Dallas in fantasy this week?
With Homer’s health improving enough not to carry an injury designation into Sunday, the chances of Alex Collins breaking in on four days with the team aren’t great. It seemed Homer was only around for an emergency last week, which aided in Dallas having the game he did but this week seems to be more of a committee approach behind him.
This team is built around Wilson and his consistent peppering of Tyler Lockett and D.K. Metcalf.
Seattle running backs are averaging just 19.75 rushing attempts per game and 6.5 targets per game. So if we are looking at a three-way split between 26 opportunities, there is limited amounts of fantasy upside for any running back who sees less than 70% of these attempts.
I have Dallas as a low-end RB2 this week against a Bills’ defense that allows the 17th-most fantasy points to running backs and has let seven different running backs finish as top-24 options against them, including four inside the top 12. Alex Collins and Travis Homer are both in the same fantasy RB4 range this week for me as I think they eat into each other’s ceilings too much to trust outside of deeper fantasy leagues.
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Tommy Garrett is a writer for PFN covering Fantasy Football. You can read more of his work here and follow him at @TommygarrettPFN on Twitter.