With week four already underway and Sundays games just hours away we are excited to bring you our weekly IDP rankings installment. As always you can see our rankings before our write up by clicking here, we update it to the current week every Wednesday night.
This week we will not spend a lot of time covering the obvious such as Darius Leonard’s breakout season or Derwin James quickly becoming a DB1 and defensive rookie of the year favorite, instead we will focus on one player at each position who has disappointed thus far but can turn it all around as soon as this week.
One of our offseason favorites at linebacker was the Miami Dolphins Raekwon McMillan. With McMillan lined up in the middle the feeling here was that he would be able to soak up an appreciable amount of tackles week in and week out en route to an easy LB2 finish. However that has not been the case this season with Kiko Alonso finding his pre-injury form and sideline to sideline speed. McMillan did miss the entirety of his rookie season so he has some catching up to do as far as the game slowing down for him but in playing beside one of the more productive linebackers in football McMillan should start to see more tackle opportunities as team begin to slide protections to scheme themselves away from Alonso. The loss of William Hayes should also lead to more opportunities for the Dolphins linebacking corps.
At defensive line Brandon Graham has been an utter disappointment thus far this season. Outside of a five total tackle week two Graham has not been of much use to fantasy owners with only nine total tackles, two of them for a loss with no sacks, while at this time last year he already 2.5 sacks with an identical number of tackles for loss. Luckily for fantasy owners Graham has a date against a run heavy, struggling offense in the Tennessee Titans, a game where Graham is a threat to find Mariota multiple times and rack up a needle moving amount of tackles.
At defensive back the Tennessee Titans Kevin Byard has been a massive disappointment with only eleven tackles a over three games and only one pass defended despite playing every defensive snap. At this time last season Byard had already racked up 13 solo tackles, 7 assists with two pass breakups. Byard broke out last year with eight interceptions and was drafted as a high end DB1 in many leagues this draft season. Byard still maintains one of the highest fantasy ceilings at the defensive back position but expectations as far as the interceptions department should be tempered. With a matchup against the Eagles on tap this week Byard should see plenty of tackle opportunities and gives him a chance to restore owners confidence in him going forward.
