Allen Robinson Injury Update: Is he playing this week?

With just a few short days until kickoff on Sunday, fantasy football managers are starting to set their lineups and hope to have every one of their stars active for Week 10. One player making a surprise appearance on the injury report is Chicago Bears WR Allen Robinson, who has been limited in practice. Is Allen Robinson playing this week, and what can we expect out of the 2020 WR9 in fantasy terms against a susceptible Minnesota Vikings defense?

Monday, November 16 Update: Robinson is active and will play tonight on Monday Night Football.

Allen Robinson is arguably the most underrated elite WR in the NFL

I talked about this in the offseason, and the story continues with Allen Robinson not getting the respect he deserves. It’s also clear the Bears organization undervalues him; otherwise, they would have extended Robsinson already instead of giving RB Tarik Cohen a new deal. That is not to say Cohen did not deserve it, but it still came off as a slap in the face to Robinson.

Even though he has coped with awful quarterback play his entire career, Robinson has done nothing but win in adverse circumstances. What he did in 2019 should have been enough to prove that fact. 

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Robinson played 97% of the snaps in 2019 and ranked fourth overall in targets with 153 balls thrown his direction. He also had an absurd 27% target share for Chicago. Averaging 15.9 ppg, ranked Robinson ninth on a per-game basis. He also led the league in contested catch rate and red zone catch percentage. One of the beauties of Robinson’s game is that he has won before the ball even arrives thanks to his incredible route running. 

According to Matt Harmon’s Reception Perception, which charts WR success rates, Robinson had a 79.3% success rate against man coverage (98th percentile) and an absurd 83.7% against press coverage (97th percentile). Both of these scores are top 10 in the history of reception perception history. 

He has done nothing but continue this success in 2020, even with the play of Nick Foles and Mitch Trubisky under center. 

He is second in the NFL in targets (86), sixth in receptions (57), fifth in yards (712), and has three touchdowns. The part that gets completely overlooked is has done all of this without a single dropped pass.

He is also in the top six when it comes to receiving on deep passes, catching eight of his 16 passes beyond 20 yards for 219 yards and a touchdown. He has caught even catchable deep pass thrown his way.

With better quarterback play, Robinson would have a real chance to be a perennial All-Pro receiver and a top-six fantasy football WR in redraft. Allen Robinson is a player that needed to be in every fantasy lineups any week that he is playing.

Is Allen Robinson playing this week even though he is limited in practice?

Robinson has been a limited participant as recently as Thursday, but it seems to be more of a management issue as opposed to an actual injury.

He has seen over 95% of the Bears’ offensive snaps, so it is hard to think there is any threat of Robinson missing any time this week against a Minnesota Vikings defense that allows the third-most points to opposing wide receivers.

Staying on the field has actually been one of the best attributes for Robinson throughout his career. The only time he has ever missed any significant time was when he tore his ACL in 2017.

When on the field, Allen Robinson is as consistent as it gets in the NFL, even with inconsistent QB play

The Fantasy Football Consistency Score (CS), developed by Phillip Caldwell, is an easy-to-digest metric showing not only how consistent a player is, but how consistently that player scores high fantasy points. There is no need to know who consistently scores half a fantasy point per game.

Simply put, the higher the consistency score, the more consistently that player scores high-level fantasy points. A lower number means the player is either highly volatile or consistently produces low output.

Related | Fantasy RB Injury Report Week 10: Joe Mixon, Austin Ekeler, Nick Chubb injury updates

Allen Robinson comes in with a score of 5.01, 11th best amongst wide receivers in 2020. That is remarkable when you factor in who is quarterbacks are and how poorly they have played in 2020, especially on deep balls.

Combined,  Trubisky and Nick Foles are 18-of-53 on passes beyond 20 yards, but that doesn’t even do it justice. Trubisky, who is 2-of-15 on such attempts, has an adjusted completion percentage of just 13.3%, the second-lowest in the entire NFL. While Foles has been better, he is still QB27 in adjusted completion percentage at 44.7%.

That should tell you how special a player Robinson is and how brutally underrated he is for fantasy.

Robinson is a locked-in fantasy WR1 this week and could finish inside the top 5

112 receptions, 1,530 yards, and 16 touchdowns. That is what the Minnesota Vikings defense has allowed this year. All of which rank in the bottom 10 in the NFL.

The 16 touchdowns they allow lead the league, with the Dallas Cowboys being the only other team to allow more than 13. The cornerbacks for this week’s game will be the same trio that just went against the Lions in Week 9, Jeff Gladney, Kris Boyd, and Chris Jones. Those three combined allowed 18-of-24 passing for 172 yards and two touchdowns in a game where Matthew Stafford played pretty poorly.

There have been 11 wide receivers who’ve finished with at least 13.4 PPR points and as a top-36 wide receiver against the Vikings, including five wide receivers who tagged them for 22-plus PPR points. 

Robinson is likely to match up against Kris Boyd on Sunday. A cornerback who has allowed an 81% catch rate when targeted. There is no reason why Allen Robinson will not be up big numbers in Week 10, even if he has seen a slight dip in his targets in recent weeks.

After averaging 11.3 targets per game for the first six weeks, Robinson has seen just 18 combined over the last three weeks. Still, Robinson has managed to produce at least 70 yards and/or a touchdown in seven of his nine games this year. Part of the drop in targets is due to the surge in targets for Darnell Mooney, as it seems as though the Bears have found their WR2 in the offense. 

However, it also comes down to a reluctance to target an opponent’s best cornerback, even if you believe your WR can make the play. In Week 7 and 8, Robinson saw coverage from both Jalen Ramsey and Marcus Lattimore. It is not that he can’t win those matchups; he absolutely can; it’s that those players expose the quarterback anytime they make a poor throw. 

It was more of a case of risk management on Foles part to shy away from Robinson due to his own inefficiencies than it was either player “locking down” Robinson. 

Currently on pace for over 100 catches and over 1,250 yards, this wEek 10 matchup should do nothing but add to that total, making Allen Robinson is a must-play this week for fantasy.

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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.