Players to Drop for Week 9 Waiver Wire Pickups in Fantasy Football

Eight weeks of the 2021 campaign are already in the books. The fantasy football playoff picture is starting to shape up, and bye weeks are here. You can't afford to waste any roster space.

Every waiver wire pickup is crucial at this stage, and knowing how to make roster space for those adds is key.

Week 9 Waiver Wire

You don't want to cut ties with high-upside players, but you also don't want duds hanging around taking up valuable bench space.

Fantasy Football Players to Drop

With that in mind, here are three players, all rostered in at least 50 percent of Yahoo! fantasy football leagues, that you can drop to make space for Week 9 wavier wire pickups.

3. Hunter Henry, New England Patriots

The answer to the preseason question of "Jonnu Smith or Hunter Henry?" appears to be "neither." Between the two of them, there is only one week with a New England Patriots' tight end seeing over 6 targets. Smith has already been dropped in most fantasy leagues, but Henry should join him. He has seen a total of just 9 targets across the last three weeks. A touchdown streak buoyed his value for a while, but over the last three weeks he is tied for just fourth on the team with 9 targets, accounting for a lowly 9.5% of the team's total in that stretch.

2. Matt Ryan, Atlanta Falcons

Matt Ryan is occasionally a viable streaming QB option, but with a matchup against the New Orleans Saints you're not starting him in Week 9. He then also gets a Week 11 matchup against a New England Patriots team that is holding opposing QBs to bottom-10 fantasy production. A fringe streaming option just isn't worth clogging up a bench space on the off chance that you get a couple starts out of him over the next month.

1. D'Ernest Johnson, Cleveland Browns

Even without Kareem Hunt back, D'Ernest Johnson's fantasy value completely tanked with Nick Chubb back in Week 8. Johnson had just 5 touches while playing18 snaps against the Pittsburgh Steelers, while Chubb played his usual 56% snap share. Johnson's value is only going to drop further when Hunt returns, and even any handcuff value he has is crushed by the fact that both starters need to go down for him to be a worthwhile option.

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Jason Schandl is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Jason Schandl also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username Jaymun. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.