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Alfred Morris has fallen way off in recent weeks, thanks to a Washington Redskins organization in a complete state of disarray. He was running hard and producing solid numbers mid-season but with the team a huge mess lately, there haven’t been many opportunities for him to succeed. Head coach Mike Shanahan is almost certainly on his way out of Washington, due to the growing discord between him and his quarterback, but in the meantime he’s been free to run the team into the ground as he sees fit.
In terms of how that whole mess has affected Morris, the play-calling has been awful and he’s carried the ball just 37 times in his last three games combined. The Redskins haven’t won in over a month so there haven’t been any opportunities for him to take over at the end of games either. His lack of involvement is almost criminal, as he’s proven himself to be one of the more powerful running backs in the game. He’s averaged 4.7 YPC this season and he’d be sitting on much bigger yardage and touchdown totals if the team wasn’t so terrible.
Despite letting fantasy owners down recently, Morris now has an excellent chance to bounce back and turn in a big semi-final performance. The Redskins take on the Atlanta Falcons this week, who’ve been shredded by the run all season long. They have one of the worst defensive lines in the league so whoever plays them is almost guaranteed to have success running the ball. Oddly also working in his favour is the fact that Robert Griffin has been benched this week as Shanahan continues to beg for the axe. Kirk Cousins will be under center for Washington so Morris should be the focal point for the offense early on. I get the feeling Shanahan badly wants to win this one in order to make some sort of statement about how the team is better off without RG3. That bodes well for Morris, since they’ll have to get the ground game going first if they want to make life easier for Cousins.
Morris is a prime bounce-back candidate as he gets set to run all over the Falcons this week, and a great bet to help propel fantasy owners one step closer to a championship.
Dan Freeman is a Fantasy football writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanFreeman88.
