New Orleans Saints wide receiver Chris Olave recently popped up on the injury list with a hamstring injury that he suffered in practice. Will Olave suit up in Week 4 when the Saints take on the Atlanta Falcons? Here’s the latest on Olave’s injury.
What Is the Latest on Chris Olave’s Injury?
This season, quite a few NFL players have been getting injured during practices. In recent weeks, we’ve seen A.J. Brown, George Kittle, Bijan Robinson, Diontae Johnson, Nico Collins, Davante Adams, Chris Godwin, Mike Evans, and Bucky Irving pop up on the injury report despite entering the week completely healthy. Now, add Olave to the list.
Olave injured his hamstring during Friday’s practice, which put his status for Sunday’s game up in the air. Olave was a limited participant in that practice, and he’s listed as questionable to play in Week 4.
Fortunately, Olave is now expected to play in this NFC South divisional showdown. NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport reported early this morning that Olave is good to go.
#Saints RB Alvin Kamara (hip/ribs) and WR Chris Olave (hamstring) — both of whom are questionable — are both expected to play, sources say. The OL is banged up, but Kamara and Olave should be out there.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet)
This lines up with what ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported, as Schefter stated that Olave would test his hamstring pregame but the team is “confident” he’ll be able to play today.
Check back right before kickoff to make sure there isn’t any kind of pregame setback, but it seems Olave is good to go, and he should be locked and loaded in your fantasy lineup.
Olave’s Fantasy Outlook
Olave’s Week 3 was nice, and I’m tempted to think that it was the calm before the storm. He had a highlight-reel toe-drag touchdown in the fourth quarter, saving what should have been an incompletion. And as impressive as that was, it was third on my list of takeaways from Week 3 for him.
I loved the fact that he recorded the Saints’ first two receptions against the Philadelphia Eagles and that he had three third-down receptions, two more than he had through two weeks.
If Derek Carr is going to treat him like the alpha I believe him to be, those are the first steps.
Olave has exactly nine targets in each of his past three games as a road, dome team, including a 7-114-0 line in the Georgia Dome in Week 12 of last season.
In that contest, he posted a 29.2% reception share and totaled more receiving yards than any two of his teammates combined.
Rashid Shaheed is a good player, and Alvin Kamara still has more juice in the tank than I gave him credit for, but Olave projects as the center of the offensive universe in New Orleans — I suspect we see that prove to be the case more often than not in rather short order.
Carr was a top-five fantasy QB in the first two weeks this season, but he had no answer for the Eagles last week (142 pass yards with a touchdown and an interception) as the league’s longest multi-pass-touchdown streak came to a screeching halt.
The Falcons rank 26th in defensive success rate (for reference, the Carolina Panthers rank ahead of them), and that has me thinking that Carr can bounce back despite not having a touchdown in any of his last 71 throws as the road team playing indoors.
Weird facts like that are made to be broken. Look for the Saints to rely on the pass against the ninth-best defense against the run in terms of yards per carry.
