Impact Of Jamaal Charles Injury In Fantasy

Times are about to get tough for fantasy owners of Kansas City Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles. During Sunday’s game vs the Chicago Bears, Charles suffered a knee injury. Coach Andy Reid told the media that Charles has a torn ACL. The team is just waiting on an MRI to confirm that he in fact has a torn ACL. But what impact does this injury have on the fantasy owners?

In 5 games this season, Charles has been off to a hot start rushing for 306 yards, 4 touchdowns on 59 attempts. With the pace that Charles has been going, he was going on for a double digit rushing touchdown season with over 1000 yards rushing. According to Adam Schefter, Charles is all time leader in league history in yards per rush among players with 1,000+ rush attempts. Charles has 5.2 with Barry Sanders and Jim Brown having 5.2 behind him.

Depending on where you drafted Charles, most likely in the top ten, it is a big blow to your fantasy team. Charles is a fantasy workhorse who can put up big numbers every game. Charles owners draft him to be the workhorse of the team. It is hard to replace the production that Charles bring out on the field every week.

For the people that drafted Charles, have a backup plan with your running backs. Have a guy on your bench ready to take the number one workload in fantasy, since most of the workhorse running backs are not going to be on the free agent market. Besides the running backs that do not get playing time on the team.

If you are looking for a replacement for Charles, either it’s free agency or via trade, look for a guy like Rams rookie Todd Gurley. Someone who is young and has yet to prove himself in the league, but also has a high upside. Even though Gurley is a rookie, he is going to have a great season with St. Louis if he can keep up the numbers that he is producing right now.

Another guy that is hot commodity right now in fantasy at running back is Atlanta Falcons running back Devonta Freeman. If you are willing to give up some of your Wide Receivers for him, go ahead.  Freeman has a lot more trade value then Gurley, seeing that he has broken out the past few games having 20 plus fantasy points. His trade value might be a little higher than Gurley, but he sure has more upside then Gurley seeing from what he has done the past few weeks.

Having a depth filled fantasy team is better than having superstar fantasy team. It really comes into play right about now and depth is one of the best things to have. Just in case one of your players goes down with an injury, you do not want to be the guy that is breaking the bank trading your impactful players for the replacement.

For anyone that is winning a league right now, or is in a high contention of winning a league and you have Charles on your team, this is a big blow to your team. .Sometimes if you look closely in the free agent market you will find a little hidden gem in there. Just look at Odell Beckham Jr almost nobody knew him until last season. When he started to get hot and was still on the free agent market people picked him up helping the team winning a championship.