To freak out, or to keep calm? That’s the question almost any fantasy manager will have about at least one player on their roster each week. It can be easy to overreact and lose control over a disappointing performance, but each week, we’ll dive into a few of fantasy football’s biggest names and help you decide if we should panic over a poor fantasy output or if we should stay the course and keep them in our lineups. Are there reasonable excuses for why the player had a down week or a few concerning performances? Is it an outlier, or is there something to their struggles and time to look for alternative options? That’s what we’ll aim to answer in Patience or Panic each week throughout the season.
You might be thinking, why is this being posted late in the week? Shouldn’t we decide to panic or be patient right after the previous week’s games? The goal is to look forward to the following week regarding lineup decisions, while being a few days removed from the emotions of a down performance.
For September, we’ll have three verdicts when it comes to deciding our panic level over a particular player: patience, panic, or patience with concerns. As the season progresses, it should become clearer whether we need to panic or be patient regarding a player, given the larger sample size of data we can draw from. For this part of the year, however, we’ll have the “patience with concerns” designation for a player we don’t want to give up on, but there are some alarming aspects of their fantasy situation. To finish up the disclaimers, we’ll largely avoid rookies this early in the season, and we’ll steer clear of players with injuries, since that’s too obvious.
Heading into Week 4, there’s no shortage of players we can lose control over. We’ll hone in on one Wide Receiver and Running Back taken in the first couple of rounds of fantasy drafts struggling to get going in 2025.
Marvin Harrison Jr., Wide Receiver, Arizona Cardinals
Unfortunately for the 2024 4th overall pick, 2025 is starting to turn out a lot like how his rookie season went: disappointing. Through three games, the Ohio State product has a sub-20% target share and hasn’t even made it to 8 PPR points in Weeks 2 or 3, according to JJ Zachariason (@LateRoundQB)
Of course, if MHJ was able to just come down with this wide-open pass from Kyler Murray this past week, we might be looking at his season through a whole different lens, but that’s not the case. One of the issues for Harrison Jr. is that his lack of a significant target share means fewer opportunities, and when those opportunities come, they have to be taken advantage of. Even in Week 1, when MHJ had 18.1 PPR points (5 receptions, 71 yards, TD), it came on just six targets, and a large portion of his yardage came on one deep pass down the sidelines. The volume just doesn’t seem to be there for MHJ in this offense, as he has just 17 targets through three games.
I’m guilty of banking on a year two leap for Harrison Jr. and practiced what I preached from my fantasy discounts series over the summer by drafting him in the third round of my home league (12-team PPR keeper league). I bet that the traits and one of the most highly touted Wide Receiver prospects we’ve seen in a while would overcome his questionable environment, but so far, that’s not reality. The fact that nothing’s changed for MHJ from his rookie season doesn’t make me feel any better about his fantasy situation going forward. He still has the same quarterback, same offensive coordinator, and this offense still runs through Trey McBride. It’s panic time, as much as that pains me to say.
Verdict: Panic
Alternative options: I’m living proof of someone hitting the abort button on Marvin Harrison Jr, so I can share my first-hand account of the alternative routes I’m taking. The fourth to sixth rounds were an attractive area for me when it came to Wide Receivers during draft season. Zay Flowers, George Pickens, and Tetairoa McMillan all look to be better fantasy options than MHJ at the moment, and all were drafted later than Harrison Jr during drafts (on average).
Zay Flowers looks like he’s on his way to a year three breakout season, despite a down Week 3, and McMillan is already the clear leading receiver in Carolina. He’s had a target share of over 25% in two of three games so far, according to JJ Zachariason, markedly higher than MHJ. The 2025 first-round pick was held out of practice on Wednesday with a calf injury, something to monitor this week, but as long as he’s good to go, McMillan appears to be a safer option moving forward than Harrison Jr. George Pickens now moonlights as Dak Prescott’s #1 WR with CeeDee Lamb out with a high ankle sprain. The Cowboys’ defense looks like one of the worst units in the league, meaning their offense likely will be playing catch-up to the Packers in Week 4.
Chase Brown, Running Back, Cincinnati Bengals
I’m not sure I’ve seen a 2-1 team have more of a nightmare start to a season than the Bengals have had through three games. Between losing Joe Burrow for three months and getting run out of the stadium by the Vikings in Week 3 (48-10 loss), things look bleak in Cincinnati. As a by-product of their struggles as a whole, Chase Brown has had an alarmingly rough beginning to his 2025. Brown finished 2024 as a bell cow, helping launch his ADP in drafts this summer to the 2-3 turn. With how things have gone so far and with how different his environment is compared to a year ago, it’s starting to look like it’s almost impossible for the 25-year-old to return that type of draft investment.
Brown’s Week 3 performance was particularly poor (10 carries/3 yards, 4 receptions/17 yards), as his six PPR points on a 19% target share was his worst outing since Week 2 of 2024. It would be drastic to assume every week will be just as bad, but through three games, Brown is averaging just two yards per carry and 5.4 yards per reception. To be fair, Brown has had some challenging matchups so far. The Vikings allow the 10th-fewest fantasy points to Running Backs, according to NFL.com. In Week 1, he faced off against a Browns defense that has allowed -.12 yards before contact, while the league average is at 1.18, according to Josh Norris of Underdog Fantasy
Difficult opposing defenses and a better matchup in Week 4 against the Broncos could point to some positivity for Brown going forward, but the biggest challenge to Brown’s fantasy outlook is his situation. In 2024, Brown dealt with eight-man boxes just 26.8% of the time, as defenses were forced to account for their Joe Burrow-led explosive passing game. With Burrow’s absence, that eight-man box percentage has jumped to 46.8% of the time. That can help explain the two yards per carry number, and at this point, I’m not sure why that number would change drastically. Jake Browning, of course, puts nowhere near the same amount of pressure on a defense that Burrow would. Brown was drafted at the 2-3 turn largely because he was the top Running Back in one of the NFL’s best offenses, not necessarily because he himself is worthy of second or early third-round draft capital. Now that his situation has changed significantly for the worse, it’s hard to imagine it getting that much better. If Burrow was on his way back in short order, I’d say let’s relax, but three months is way too long to be patient. It’s panic time in the Bengals’ backfield.
Verdict: Panic
Alternative options: Browns Running Back Quinshon Judkins looks like he’s close to completely taking over Cleveland’s backfield, even after missing all of training camp and Week 1. Judkins led the Browns’ backfield with a 55% snap share, while Dylan Sampson only played five snaps in Week 3, according to JJ Zachariason. Judkins was a cheap flyer in later rounds of drafts or even a waiver wire option in some leagues due to his legal situation. If you took a chance on him in drafts or were able to snag him off waivers, he looks to be a potentially solid alternative if you’re in panic mode with Chase Brown.
Vikings Running Back Jordan Mason was another ball carrier taken significantly later in drafts than where Brown went, and for the time being, is in a much better fantasy situation. Mason owns the Vikings’ backfield while Aaron Jones is on IR, and could continue to lead the backfield in snaps and goal-line area touches even when Jones comes back. Noted trenches guru Brandon Thorn of Establish The Run ranked the Vikings as his fifth-best offensive line for Week 3, and with how things went against the Bengals, that shouldn’t change much going into Week 4.
Photo by Jordon Kelly/Icon Sportswire | Featured image by Ethan Kaplan (@djfreddie10.bsky.social on Blue Sky and @EthanMKaplanImages on Instagram)