CURTIS SAMUEL - WR/RB CAROLINA PANTHERS

Start Him

Coming off a week where the Carolina Panthers were suffering the heartache of another Christian McCaffrey injury, they had to face the irate barrage of Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The two teams looked like polar opposites of their performances in week 9 with the Bucs defense resurrecting as the rigid defense they had been for the majority of the year and their offense being as explosive as the shark at the end of Jaws while the Panthers looked deflated with the loss of CMC and everyone knows Brady has a history of taking advantage of things that are deflated.

The Panthers went from having over 400 yards of offense in week nine to only 187 yards against the Bucs in week 10. Doing some quick maths, that is a more than a 100% decrease between the two weeks in terms of total offense. However, in week eleven, I expect that to change, especially in regard to Curtis Samuel. That is why he is my start ‘em guy for the week.

Prior to week ten, Samuel had three weeks where he scored a touchdown with four total over that period. He also had at least five targets in each of those games and only missed one of his 20 targets in those three games. The Detroit Lions are roughly the polar opposite of the Bucs in terms of rushing defense. The Lions have given up the most rushing touchdowns with 16 and have given up the fourth most rushing yards with 1274 yards. They have also given up the seventh most scrimmage yards per game and Samuel is often used in the the passing game. I expect Samuel to come back to form this week and put up similar number to the weeks prior to the debacle versus Tampa Bay. I think he has taken a lot of the workload from Mike Davis and I see him continuing to do so against Detroit. He is a viable flex play this week with an upside of RB2.