Fantasy Football: 4 Players You Can Drop After Week 9

Michael Crabtree, WR, Baltimore Ravens

Yahoo Ownership: 83%

The Baltimore Ravens started off hot in 2018. Joe Flacco looked like someone who was playing to win, taking deep shots and keeping plays alive the best he could. But over the last five weeks he's only posted one usable fantasy performance. You probably didn't need me to tell you to cut bait with Flacco, but you might still be on the fence with some of his pass catchers -- pass catchers like Michael Crabtree, who's still owned in 83% of Yahoo leagues as of this writing.

Dropping players like Crabtree isn't easy. He's in the top-12 in the league in targets heading into Week 10, so he's seeing elite volume. The problem is that he isn't converting that volume into fantasy production, and it doesn't seem likely he'll start doing so anytime soon.

For starters, the Ravens go on bye this week. Crabtree obviously won't produce any fantasy points while his team is on bye. But even when he returns from the bye he might not produce like you'd expect he would with his volume. His 0.54 receiver air yard conversion ratio (RACR) is particularly concerning. That number means that for every air yard thrown his direction, he's barely turning that yard into half a yard. By comparison, his teammate John Brown has a 0.52 RACR with an average depth of target almost six yards deeper than Crabtree.

He isn't putting up big yardage, and perhaps even more importantly he's a non-factor in the red zone. Crabtree used to butter his fantasy bread in the red zone. He had at least eight touchdowns in each of his previous three seasons, but in 2018 he's on pace for just four touchdowns all season. His seven red zone targets are second on his own team (behind Brown) and rank outside the top 45. He has just three targets from inside the 10-yard line.

Crabtree is playing inefficient football while demanding a high target share. He's hurting the Ravens offense with his ability to draw targets but inability to do anything with them, and he's hurting your fantasy teams with that lack of production. Cut him before he goes on bye and open up a space on your bench for one of this week's top waiver wire adds.