Has Jacory Croskey-Merritt taken over the Commanders’ backfield for good?
Yahoo Fantasy's Matt Harmon is joined by Joel Smyth to discuss Commanders rookie RB Jacory Croskey-Merritt's Week 5 performance against the Chargers. Hear the full conversation on the “Yahoo Fantasy Forecast” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
I think the one thing we can lead here with the the Commanders is, was this the Jacore Crossky Merritt breakout game.
14 carries over 100 yards on the ground, lost a fumble, but did score two touchdowns and was active in the passing game as well.
Um, I don't know where you stand among the Bill bros on social media, Joel, but I certainly think this was the week where I thought he looked like the, best version of himself, clearly looked like the guy, and they treated him that way in this game, which is encouraging because as I was talking about with Boone on the previous show, this is a good rushing offense.
Like, this rushing offense kicks ass.
And if we just have one guy that can lead the charge here, that player is an every week starter in fantasy.
So what was your kind of assessment of Bill coming out of this game?
Yeah, I would say I'm pretty confident in him going forward in terms of that rushing game.
My goal for him, or my hope, I guess, is a better word, that he was Brian Robinson 2.0.
He still didn't really get too much receiving.
He had a couple of targets, but McNichols is still that receiving back there.
He's only getting about 30% or so of those routes.
But Brian Robinson, he got basically all of his fantasy production on the ground.
And like you said, Jayden Daniels helped so much with that.
Rushing game, that offensive line looks good.
He's been amazing in terms of his back.
He just needed more usage entering the week, and I'm sure he still is after this game.
But entering the week, he was number one in success rate.
So it's not like he's playing himself off the field as a rookie, like he's been awesome.
That rushing percentage looks a lot better than his total carries today, like he backed out basically every single carry among running backs.
So I like him going forward as that maybe low end RB2 with upside.
70% of the running back rushes and 45.5% of the snaps.
Jeremy McNichols was 25.5%.
Chris Rodriguez was 9.1%.
Like, if Bill's gonna fly, that's what needs to happen: he needs to relegate Chris Rodriguez to a pure just kind of change of pace role.
It's one week, but this was a really encouraging sign for the rookie running back.