Fantasy Football: 3 Players You Can Drop After Week 11
Latavius Murray, RB, Minnesota Vikings
Yahoo Ownership: 77%
Latavius Murray has been a borderline workhorse back in 2018. He stepped up for an injured Dalvin Cook for the second year in a row and helped carry the load for a competitive Minnesota Vikings team. But now, Cook is healthy again and Murray is going to take a back seat.
Cook's presence doesn't totally relegate Murray to the bench, but it takes away a significant amount of his volume. In the last two games since Cook's return, Murray has had 10 and 4 carries, and just 1 target. Back at the beginning of the season -- when Cook was still healthy -- he logged touch totals of 11 and 4 in Weeks 1 and 2, respectively. So again, he's still a part of the offense, he just doesn't see a ton of volume. For a back that doesn't catch a ton of passes, that volume is crucial to fantasy production.
He's unlikely to have many more games with 10 or more carries this season, too, and not just because of Cook. The Vikings face a very tough string of opponents in the coming weeks, including the Green Bay Packers, the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks. The Vikings could easily fall behind in any of those games, which would take him out of the game entirely. That one target I mentioned above happens to be the only target he's seen in games Cook played, so if Cousins is forced to play catch-up Murray will be phased out of the offense entirely.
Then, finally, we come to the team's offensive line. I went over how much that line is struggling in an article yesterday so I won't go into too much detail here, but to quickly recap: they're bad. If we exclude Cook's amazing 70-yard run, Vikings backs have produced just 2.4 yards per carry in their last two games. Of course Cook's run counted, but it's scary that they're getting so few yards with every running play.
So Murray is stuck on the wrong half of a running back committee and running behind a weak offensive line. His workload in positive game scripts isn't guaranteed, and when the team is losing he's a non-factor. This positions him more as a low-upside handcuff to Cook than as a start-able running back for fantasy football, which means you can drop him for more productive players heading into Week 12.
