Spencer Ware burst into fantasy football prominence earlier this year as he subbed in for Jamaal Charles—an event we didn’t think would last all year—and filled in quite admirably. In his first two games, he went for over 300 yards and two scores. He provided a more than adequate substitute for Jamaal Charles for the first half of the season or so. However, starting week eight, Spencer Ware’s production started to fall off a cliff. Not coincidentally, Ware’s drop in fantasy production has gone alongside Tyreek Hill’s rise to prominence.
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There are a lot of ways you could measure Ware’s production drop: he hasn’t gone over 100 total yards since week seven, he hasn’t gotten more than 77 rushing yards since week seven, he hasn’t caught more than three passes since week one. Outside of the Atlanta game (a team notoriously bad against running backs) he hasn’t scored a touchdown since week seven and hasn’t run one in since week six. It’s not like he isn’t getting touches, he hasn’t gone under sixteen touches since Kansas City’s week eight Bye. He just doesn’t do anything with his touches. His yards per carry have gone down from 4.69 in week ten to 2.8 last week (which was a bounce-back from his downward trend since week ten). There’s a lot to dislike about the direction Spencer Ware is headed, and it isn’t anything that is going to change anytime soon, let alone this weekend.
This weekend the Chiefs take on the Tennessee Titans, who are incredibly poor against wide receivers but are amazing against running backs. They’re fresh off allowing a hot 1.5 fantasy points to Justin Forsett last week, and they are one of the most stifling defenses against running back fantasy production this season. Only Melvin Gordon has gotten triple-digit rushing yards, and outside of Gordon, only two backs have topped even eighty rushing yards. Other thank those three instances, it’s a whole mess of backs being completely inept against the Titans.
Spencer Ware has been a fantasy mess for almost half a season at this point, and has turned into a desperation matchup play. He’s gotten plenty of attempts this year, but hasn’t been able to do anything for months. This week he takes on a Titans defense that stops the running back from doing anything of value against them. Ware is a bench for me in basically every single scenario outside of starting Robert Turbin or Damien Williams. He may be off your roster this week just in case you need someone for the finals (or if you start him, for the third-place game).