Fantasy Football Mailbag: Thursday 10/6/16

Fantasy football research never stops, and roles change drastically from one week to the next. That's where our fantasy football mailbag comes into play.

Have a question about a certain player, team, strategy, or anything football? Shoot us a question on Twitter or send an email to Brandon.Gdula@FanDuel.com, and we can talk anything fantasy football related -- even daily fantasy football.

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Now, let's answer some questions.

I think John Brown can be trusted tonight, Jonathan. It's not ideal that he'll be playing with Drew Stanton rather than Carson Palmer, but Smokey played 91% of the Arizona Cardinals' offensive snaps last week and drew 16 targets, the third-most targets in a single game for a receiver so far this year. He drew 11 in Week 3. Michael Floyd played fewer than 50% of the snaps in Week 4, and Brown is looking like the clear second option right now behind Larry Fitzgerald. You can't expect a big game, but you won't find that type of volume from many receivers right now, so he's a decent flex play for Week 5.

As for Latavius Murray, yes, there is a chance he could lose his starting job. He shouldn't. He actually should be getting more work, but he is doubtful for Week 5. He's already failed to top 60% of Oakland's offensive snaps three straight games, so even though he's the nominal starter, he's far from a bell-cow. This is a tough one to peg -- he's earned more work, but he's not likely to get it. The injury only makes it worse.

No, that's not unreasonable. Palmer is not an every-week starter at this point in the year, and history isn't on his side to have another great year. You're better off streaming the position. That makes Carson Wentz a great target this week against the Detroit Lions, who rank last in the NFL in pass defense, according to our Adjusted Defensive Passing Net Expected Points (NEP) metric. Our projections see Wentz finishing as the QB7 this week.

Our remaining projections consider David Johnson the RB2 moving forward and Amari Cooper the WR21. That's a nice duo for sure. Melvin Gordon is our RB10 for the rest of the season, and Kelvin Benjamin is the WR20. That makes Johnson and Cooper the better combination.

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