Far be it to me to pile on when a guy is having a horrible fantasy season, but if you’ll just indulge me for a minute I’m going to pile on cardboard standup of a TE, the Tampa Buccaneers’ OJ Howard. There may have been some concerns earlier in the year about the Bucs’ offense being inconsistent, but in Week 4 they lit up the Rams’ defense for 55 points! When a team puts up almost 500 yards of total offense, everyone gets a taste… right? Well, almost. As it turns out, if your team puts up 55 points everyone gets a taste except OJ Howard.
Chris Godwin, Mike Evans, the corpses of Ronald Jones and Peyton Barber, and even fellow TE Cameron Brate ALL scored touchdowns. Brate managed to score despite playing 47 less snaps than Howard! For the record, Howard’s stat line was 3 catches for 33 yards. His fantasy season has been an absolute disaster.
If Howard’s freight train of a season continues at its current pace, he will catch 40 balls for a little over 500 yards and no scores. In half PPR, that amounts to about 70 fantasy points for a 16 game season (a little over 4 points a game).
More and more it seems evident that OJ Howard is not a significant part of this offense. If you’re holding onto him as this point it’s just because you love Howard personally, not because there’s anything good to go on. My advice is to drop him, pick up anyone with a pulse, and cross your fingers. (If you can’t get anyone with a pulse to replace him, that’s OK too. You probably won’t be a able to tell the difference).
