The Titans signed Joshua Dobbs off Detroit’s practice squad. A week later, they’ve apparently decided he gives them the best chance of winning the AFC South. We've e-mailed and posted revised rankings to account for this change, plus updates to Derrick Henry, Hassan Haskins and other players.
Ryan Tannehill is that injured, and Malik Willis has been that underwhelming. They’re putting Dobbs in the starting lineup for tonight’s game against the Cowboys.
The plan (I think) is to treat this as an exhibition game, giving Dobbs a chance to operate the offense before the winner-take-all matchup at Jacksonville next week.
Crazy as this may seem, I think it makes sense. We’ve seen Willis; he hasn’t passed for 100 yards in any of his three starts. He’s simply not ready to play.
Dobbs, on the other hand, at least has been around the pro game for the last seven years (albeit without actually ever starting a game).
I can remember being impressed enough by Dobbs in the preseason that I was wondering whether the Browns would elevate him above Jacoby Brissett. Dobbs in his first two preseason games completed 24 of 33 passes for 249 yards and a touchdown, with no interceptions. He’s go above-average scrambling ability – he ran for 56 yards and a touchdown in those two games.
Dobbs wasn’t as impressive in his preseason finale against the Bears, completing 11 of 20 passes for 89 yards, with a touchdown.
But to me, he looks a lot better than Willis as a passer. So with the quarterback change, it’s reasonable to re-visit the Week 17 grades for the other Tennessee players. With Willis, I thought that team would pass for about 120 yards. With Dobbs, I don’t think it would be crazy if they passed for 200. When I re-ran the numbers, I settled on 182 passing yards.
Previously, I had Treylon Burks about 90th among wide receivers. Now I think he can go in the top 60. And the tight end, Chigo Okonkwo, I previously had about 30th among tight ends. I see him as a top-20 guy now.
And now that Derrick Henry looks more certain to sit out, let’s re-visit Hassan Haskins. He’ll be their starter, and I think he’ll get a decent workload. I believe he’ll get 15-plus carries, and I expect he’ll probably also catch about 4 passes. He’s caught 2 passes in back-to-back games despite hardly playing. In general, Haskins looks like a top-20 back to me for Week 17.
On the Cowboys side, they have ruled out Tony Pollard. I think that elevates Ezekiel Elliott up to the top-10 level among running backs. I would not be crazy about trying to tap into Malik Davis (he’ll get some touches, I imagine, but they’re also pulling up Qadree Ollison off the practice squad).
I re-ran the projections for both of these teams. Those updated numbers have been put into our stat projection file, and they are posted to the website (allowing you to see exactly how the change the rankings).
I made other minor changes to the file, including Christian Watson, who did not practice again today. I have not, however, fully updated all of the projections for all of the teams. Those will be posted and e-mailed on Friday afternoon.
—Ian Allan