Roundtable Week 9: Wounded Wide Outs

Photo: Jeff Curry, USA Today Sports

Welcome to Week 9 of the 2022 Footballguys Roundtable. Our intrepid panel of fantasy pundits discusses and debates four topics every week. Topics are now split into separate features.

This week's roundtable features these four topics:

• Wounded Wide Outs (see below)
• Zach Wilson's Future
• For-Real Fool's Gold
• Second-Half Slump Candidates.

Wounded Wide Outs

Matt Waldman: Rashod Bateman, Michael Thomas, and Kadarius Toney have been or are about to miss time.

• Which one is most likely to return and help your fantasy team?
• Which one is least likely to help out your fantasy team, regardless of the reason?

Chad Parsons: Thomas has the best profile of production, even in his limited time in 2022. Jene Bramel has Thomas questionable for Week 9 and close to returning in general. If healthy, Thomas is in fantasy lineups where the other two are not locks to be quality starts. Toney has quality competition for targets, has durability issues, and is changing teams as a young player yet to prove much in the NFL. That is a tough combination to sharpshoot to a fantasy starter stretch in 2022.

Gary Davenport: I'm going to go Bateman here if only because of the process of elimination. At this point, I have zero faith in Thomas' ability to stay healthy for more than 10 minutes, and Toney has a new offense to learn in a crowded wide receivers room.

Toney narrowly over Thomas (or is it under Thomas?) for least likely to help a fantasy team. It's within the realm of reason (narrowly) that Thomas could get back on the field, and he was productive earlier in the season. But I just can't see Toney getting enough targets to be anything more than a desperation play. Not with Kelce, Smith-Schuster, and Valdes-Scantling all ahead of him.