Yahoo Sports fantasy analysts Matt Harmon and Andy Behrens discuss one of the biggest questions of the week – including how the pair of 49ers running backs will be utilized against Tampa Bay. Hear the full conversation on the “Yahoo Fantasy Forecast” podcast – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
The three burning fantasy questions that Andy wants answered this week here in week number 10 of the NFL season, Andy hit me with the first one.
the first one is fairly obvious and I, and I think it’s the biggest one of the week and that is the, the 49ers backfield, right, who is available to us, how much will they play?
And in what order will we see them play?
This, this feels like it kind of hangs over the week, at least for a lot of us, right.
We got mccaffrey back at practice.
We also have Jordan Mason back at practice.
Uh Isaac Grenda never left practice and, uh, we absolutely cannot trust the head coach on any matter related to his personnel decisions, right?
Like he’s been lying to us all year.
Mason has averaged 5.1 yards per carry.
He’s getting almost 3.5 yards after contact.
Um, he is sixth in the NFL right now in missed tackles.
He’s fifth in runs of 10 or more yards.
Stylistically, he’s very different from mccaffrey.
Like there’s, he should play like if anybody’s gonna play in combination with Christian mccaffrey, it probably should be Jordan Mason assuming good health.
So we’ll see what they do.
One thing we know for sure is that the coach isn’t gonna tell us anything in advance.
Yeah, we’re not gonna know anything in advance.
Um, these are great for the burning questions.
Andy, because the answer is just the great shrug emoji when I’ve watched Jordan Mason this year, even from, you know, the first couple of games, he was out there.
I thought, man, that’s a power back.
I thought he’s like the type of tempo runner like power back that would really compliment a mccaffrey and take some of those grinder carries off of mccaffrey’s plate so that we can use him in all these fun and efficient ways that the 49er do.
So, I would think that an ideal scenario would be kind of um a 6040 split in favor of Jordan Mason until mccaffery gets healthy and maybe later in the season, they fully unleash him bottom line too.
Andy, is that from a fantasy perspective?
I kind of wanna start both of these guys and figure it out because this Buccaneers defense is 29th, the defensive success rate.
They’re 27th in epa per play allowed.
And definitely a lot of that is because the pass defense is just atrocious.
However, the run defense is a bottom half of the league unit now too, because the whole thing is starting to crumble here.
I’m on board with your scenario where they ease mccaffrey back in.
I don’t know if it’s gonna happen.
I think if I’d think if I’d actually waited half a season for him, I would just go ahead and play him in his first game back.
But I think they’re both playable and I, I certainly think that Mason is more playable than most seem to give him credit for.