Monday Walkthrough Week 4: Double Trouble
Week 4 Monday Walkthrough.
In this article, I'll outline critical fantasy football context for the fourth glorious football Monday of 2025.
(The stats below are from PFF, NFLfastR, rbsdm.com, RotoViz, FantasyLabs, Fantasy Life, Fantasy Points, ESPN, FTN, and NFL Next Gen).
PROE data is available for subscribers at the bottom of the post.
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Jets at Dolphins, 7:15 PM
Jets
Implied Team Total: 21
With Justin Fields having cleared the concussion protocol, he's set to take back over as the Jets' starter.
Fields and Tyrod Taylor have produced similar efficiency this year, though it's fair to say that Fields provides the offense with a higher ceiling... and a lower floor.
From a fantasy perspective, Tyrod Taylor was a better bet to facilitate production because the Jets were far more willing to pass with him under center.
With Fields back under center, we can expect New York to stick with a run-heavy attack, even if the game gets away from them a bit.
And the Jets are taking on a Dolphins defense that has been very weak against the run this year.
Unfortunately, the Jets' backfield is still a split. Against the Bucs, Breece Hall's carry share dropped to just 39%, a season low. He spiked to an 18% target share, which is impressive. But that's very likely to drop with Fields back at QB.
Braelon Allen remains involved as a runner. With just a 21% success rate... it's hard to understand why, but he'll siphon off a chunk of carries again this week.
The silver lining is that Isaiah Davis was held without a touch last week and ran just one route. If this resolves to a two-man backfield, that would make things easier from a fantasy perspective.
Breece Hall's rushing profile no longer looks particularly strong. He still has a good success rate, but he's popping primarily as a receiving back, which was also the case last season.
However, the Dolphins are even worse against the run than the pass, and despite blitzing at the highest rate in the league, they are generating very little pass rush.
This looks like the type of matchup where Hall can turn in both rushing and receiving efficiency, even if his workload isn't ideal. He's a high-end RB2.
Garrett Wilson is also set up for a nice game here and continues to dominate targets, with an absurd 39% target share. With the Jets as 2.5-point road underdogs, they could be playing from behind here, which would likely boost dropback volume... to an extent.
With ESPN's open score now updated for 2025, we also know that Wilson is getting open at a high rate despite a high double coverage rate. Honestly, we kind of already knew that given his... 39% target share. But it's nice to have confirmation.
Wilson is a low-end WR1.
After Wilson... things have been rough.
Johs Reynolds practiced in full on Thursday and Friday and is off the injury report. He'll be back this week.
Reynolds is mostly empty routes by another name, but he was at least slightly more involved than Johnson and Arian Smith have been.
Allen Lazard scored a TD last week but barely played. He's an even weaker option.
If you're going to bet purely on routes, it might as well be on a guy with tight end eligibility.
Mason Taylor's route participation has dropped after a promising Week 1, but he looks to have stabilized above true part-time territory. Taylor is in the low-end TE2 mix.
Dolphins
Implied Team Total: 23.5
The Dolphins were somewhat competitive against the Bills in Week 3. But I might only think that because I expected them to get completely blown out.
Tua Tagovailoa was, in fact, pretty brutal.
Tagovailoa's efficiency has been genuinely bad this season.
In fantasy, this doesn't seem crazy. Tagovailoa is not a fun click, not someone we want to depend on. But... that's primarily been an availability concern. In 2024, not a particularly fun year for the Dolphins offense, he was one of the most efficient QBs in the NFL.
This year, Tua looks hampered by opponents taking away his first read. He's attempted a first-read throw on just 49% of his attempts, tied for the lowest rate in the league.
Tagovailoa has not handled this well. There isn't a great Plan B, as evidenced by his 7% turnover-worthy throw rate, the highest in the league.
Tagovailoa has also struggled against pressure and has had to deal with a high rate of quick pressure.
However, the Dolphins now face a Jets defense that has struggled to generate pressure and is one of the worst teams at taking away first-read throws. This matchup is tailor-made for the Dolphins.
Last week, the Jets were going against a Buccaneers offensive line that was missing three starters and had their remaining two starters playing out of position. It was the type of matchup where I'd typically be saying something like—the Jets' pressure rate is inflated from facing the Bucs' makeshift line last week. But, unbelievably, the Jets generated pressure at the sixth-lowest rate last week. And they ranked just 25th in quick pressure. And, honestly, those numbers are probably inflated from facing the Bucs' makeshift line last week.
With Tagovailoa likely to be protected and more likely to execute the primary read of the play than he has so far this season, both Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle should benefit. Both WRs have decent first-read target rates, but both likely would have much higher rates if Tagovailoa were attempting a first read on a higher percentage of his dropbacks.
Even with Tagovailoa playing poorly, Hill is managing an impressive 2.15 YPRR. He's also earning targets outside of his first-read looks. His 2023 ceiling is likely long gone. But it's hard to blame him for Miami's offensive struggles, given his strong efficiency and elite open score, despite facing a very high double-coverage rate.
In a great matchup, Hill is a borderline WR1.
Waddle's target profile isn't quite as strong as Hill's, but he's scoring even better in open score, and defenses are giving him just as much respect. If Tagovailoa is able to execute more plays as drawn up, we're likely to discover that a lot of them were drawn up with Waddle in mind. He's a low-end WR2.
It sounds like Darren Waller may make his 2025 debut this week, although he's expected to be limited. I'm skeptical that his role will be fantasy relevant, given how long it's taken him to get back in game shape.
So, like usual, targets should be concentrated. Malik Washington will also run some routes, but has yet to flash much in any game this year.
Instead, De'Von Achane rounds out the Dolphins' big three receivers. Achane is averaging a 31% target share over the last two weeks.
Achane also gets a Jets defense that opponents have been attacking on the ground.
Given their own run-heavy approach on offense, there's a good chance that the Jets end up being a run funnel this year.
And as we saw against the Bills, the Dolphins are willing to lean on the ground game when possible.
But Achane is the rare running back where a run-heavy script is not ideal. Ollie Gordon has begun stealing some carries, including some short-yardage work.
The good news is that the Jets' run defense isn't awful—they look considerably worse against the pass than the run. This looks like a spot where Achane can run efficiently, but also one where the Dolphins are unlikely to go full ground and pound, keeping their dual-threat RB involved as both a runner and receiver.
Achane's rushing efficiency hasn't been great this year, but he has a solid 43% success rate and has been a playmaker as a receiver with 1.58 YPRR. Given his elite receiving role, he's a high-end RB1.
Bengals at Broncos, 8:15 PM
Bengals
Implied Team Total: 18.5
The Bengals were able to dazzle and amaze the Jaguars' defense with Jake Browning's smoke-and-mirrors magic act. But the Vikings pulled back the curtain.
Browning now looks like one of the worst QBs starting a game this week... which he very likely is.
Zac Taylor is tasked with hiding Browning, who is operating behind one of the worst offensive lines in football. It's a brutal assignment regardless of the opponent. But the Bengals are about to take on a Broncos pass rush that leads the NFL in pressure rate and blitzes aggressively. Browning is about to have a bad time.
The Bengals have been very pass-heavy under Taylor, as you do with Burrow. But they shifted hard to the run last week.
Cincianniti posted a -9% PROE overall and was even more conservative on 1st-and-10.
The only issue with leaning on the run... is that Chase Brown has been terrible this year, turning in a very poor success rate with zero explosiveness and very little tackle-breaking.
The case for Brown was that he was basically just Bengals-backfield consolidated into one human man. And—outside of losing garbage-time work last week—that has proven true. It's just that without Burrow, Bengals-backfield isn't really a priority RB start. Still, Brown is a safe bet for work against a Broncos run defense that is good but not overly imposing. He's also decently involved as a receiver. Brown is an RB2.
At wide receiver, Ja'Marr Chase dropped from 17 targets in Week 2 to just six in Week 3. That's concerning enough. But that's not all. The targets that Chase did see were of the same shallow variety that he saw in Week 2. In fact, his aDOT dropped.
If the Bengals are going to feed Chase underneath targets, they damn well better feed him.
Hey Zac - would you mind not turning one of the best WRs on the planet into Greg Dortch? Thanks, bud.
Somehow, Chase is still at 2.39 YPRR, an elite mark. And with the Bronocs not double-covering at a high rate, he should see fewer double teams this week. He should also see plenty of Pat Surtain, so it's not all good news. Still, the Bengals are very likely to find ways to get Chase the ball, and he remains one of the game's biggest talents. He's a WR1.
Things are looking worse—borderline bleak—for Tee Higgins. Higgins has peaked at 1.32 YPRR this year, and he appears to be morphing into a clear-out WR in the Browning offense.
The Bengals will have to find ways to keep Higgins involved in the coming weeks; it can't be this bad for the rest of the year. But the QB downgrade looks to be a bigger deal for Higgins, which makes sense considering that he's very good but not the elite talent that Chase is.
At tight end, Noah Fant will miss this game with a concussion.
But Mike Gesicki might not be the next man up. That might actually be Drew Sample.
Gesicki is certainly the Bengals' next man up at tight end as a pass catcher, but even with Fant out, he could end up seeing fewer than half of routes, particularly if the Bengals are focused on the run game. A glorified slot WR doesn't help much there.
