“Fat Rob” Kelley burst onto the fantasy football scene in a big way. His breakout party was the week eleven Sunday Night Football game; a matchup of a 2015 NFC Wild Card game that saw the Packers winning on the road in a laugher. Since then, however, he hasn’t been able to do much with his carries, and his carries took a big hit after that game, as well.[embedit snippet=”jeff-ads”]
Prior to the week eight tie against Cincinnati, Kelley had just 17 carries on the season, turning that into 103 yards on a brisk 6+ yard per carry pace while he spelled Matt Jones. Jones’ fumbling got the best of him, and the ever-subtle Jay Gruden gave Kelley 21, 22 and 24 carries in weeks 8, 10 and 11. While Kelley had the monster 137-yard, three-touchdown game against the Packers to cap that three game stretch, he has gotten just 28 carries for 100 yards in the two games that followed. Just as quickly as Kelley jumped up the touches list in week eight, he’s fallen back to the depths in that department, and his production has followed.
This week isn’t looking any better for Kelley, as his production dropped precipitously against quality opponents, and he gets another quality opponent in Philadelphia this week. Overall, they are eighth at stopping running backs from scoring fantasy points against them, allowing just six double-digit fantasy games against them all season long. The worse part? The Eagles are even better than their overall numbers suggest when they play at home, as they will on Sunday. The Eagles allow nearly fifty fewer rushing yards per game at home (72.8) as on the road (121). This makes the Eagles one of the stoutest defenses against running backs, as long as they only play them in Philadelphia. Given how Kelley has shown he can’t really beat plus matchups, this one is a bad game for him.
Fat Rob had a good three game stretch, but he is about to match that with an equally bad stretch of three games. He’s averaged 50 yards per game over his last two, and that is a good place to start for him this week. He isn’t getting a great matchup and he has been on a skid. Given that you likely are in the first round of your playoffs or a win-and-in situation, Kelley’s situation is too iffy to risk this week.