What It Means:

With Rob Kelley nursing a rib injury, it would make sense that Thompson could see more action in Week 3. But Gruden pumped the brakes. "But he's so important to us on third down we just have to be careful," he said. "He's not the biggest guy in the world. We don't want him to get 20-25 carries a game and get a lot of pounding on that body. He's definitely needed in pass protection and the routes and all that stuff on third down and red zone. So we'll try to expand his role a little bit, but we don't want to go too crazy with him." Thompson racked up 106 total yards and scored twice in Washington's Week 2 win over the Rams.

Our models rank Thompson as the 34th-best running back in Week 3. We project him to post 9.1 FanDuel points with 20.41 rushing yards, 0.21 rushing touchdowns, 28.63 receiving yards, and 0.21 receiving touchdowns on Sunday.