Welcome to a good football show. My name is Pat Crane and I am joined by John Dagle, NBC Sports Edge to go over week 13 waiver wire editions.

Dagle, how's it going? Everything going well. We are coming off one of the most injury riddle weeks. I'd say we've had maybe not all season long, but at least in some time. And so really this show is about ranking the replacements for those players we just lost most of them for the fantasy playoffs.

Yes, so let's get right into it. I think the biggest injury, I mean, there was a ton of injuries. So in a way, this, you know, you could debate this, but Christian McCaffer, you going down, going to IR now season ending IR. His replacements are obviously not going to be nearly to the level of talent, but there's now a ton of opportunity available in Carolina. And we have some sense about how this is going to go since he missed a big chunk of the season already. So how are you viewing the Panthers backfield?

For starters, we will rank them at the end, but we won't be talking about Alexander Madison and Knai Wangu beyond this little segment right here, because Madison should be rostered everywhere. Very obviously the clear cut option and the top pick up wherever is available.

Cook reportedly missed the next two games, and we saw Madison's usage in two starts without cook this year, 51 57 RB of the running back carriers from Minnesota, and then 100% off 15 of the running back targets in that time.

Elite top end RB one usage you want to chase, Knai Wangu would be the guy as a contingency stash to have behind him, just in case Madison gets injured in this next upcoming game. But for the Panthers, obviously comes down to two players now.

Chuba Hubbard and Amir Abdullah, and it's a finicky situation because the Panthers have a buy. So we're already bidding on a player that's useless for this next upcoming week.

And then they returned in a favorable spot against the Falcons where Abdullah, or I'm sorry, where Hubbard, in my opinion, would be the better player just because GameScript meshes more importantly for him rather than the past catching back in that game.

But after that, we get into the next three games for the Panthers against the Bills, Bucks, and Saints. None of those mesh well for Hubbard. And so honestly, it's like you are bidding on hills.

We expect like Abdullah to be the less important player after the buy, and then Abdullah to become the more important player after the next game, like two weeks from now.

So it's really a situation like everyone's getting excited about to get the backup. I personally am not just because I feel like we lose some importance here for both players.

We've also seen since week eight, when Abdullah was truly implementing to the offense, he's run 37 more routes and has seen 13 more targets than Hubbard in that time.

And so while I think Abdullah is still the preferred option, in particular in PPR leagues, I don't want to like overblow the situation and say like, well, he's a plug-in RB2.

I think it's actually like a lot of hills to navigate here.

Yeah, that all makes sense to me. Abdullah is more interesting personally because he did have a pretty significant target.

I believe he had six targets just this past week. You mentioned that he wasn't fully integrated when McCaffrey went down. I don't even think he was on the team when McCaffrey first went down.

So, you know, his role has kind of grown a little bit over the course of the year. And I mean, that's an imposing schedule, right?

Yeah.

The Buccaneers, the Saints, I mean, two great run defenses, the Bills, probably losing, at least two or three of those games.

The Panthers also struggling a ton offensively. They're not like they're going to be putting up points to the defense, which has also been very good.

Now, starting to show some cracks. So, I agree. I think Abdullah is more interesting, but it's like one of those things where, you know, playoff depth.

A lot of waiver wire, they're closing soon. So, actually, would go fairly aggressively, you know, we'll talk about the other guys.

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