Running back handcuffs. A fantasy football tradition about as old as the game itself. The starter goes down, the backup goes in, the fantasy football rankings are flipped on their heads, and leagues are won. Handcuffs were originally used as cheap insurance for your own star first-round pick, but folks quickly learned that you could create even more leverage by picking OTHER people’s handcuffs in case their guy got hurt. Why settle for one star back when you could have two?

Running back handcuffs are a pretty well-known concept, but what has flown under the radar up until recently is the idea of contingent upside at other positions. It’s not just running backs who get hurt, yet we never really spent much time asking what happens if someone like Puka Nacua gets hurt or suspended, dumping 150+ targets back into the pool. But situations like this arise all the time and have just as much upside as running back handcuffs.

Take Michael Wilson last year, for instance. Marvin Harrison went down, and Wilson became a league winner virtually overnight. The reality, though, is that Michael Wilson might have had similar upside if it was Trey McBride or Marvin Harrison Jr that got hurt - possibly even more upside given McBride registered 169 targets. That effectively makes players like that handcuffs for TWO people.

So that’s what we are going to look at today. The top handcuffs and contingent upside plays for each position. If you like the thought process on these, the Fantasy Alarm Draft Guide has full breakdowns for each team’s Target Tree and Running Back Role Depth Charts so you know who the next man up is for any situation. And, if you use promo code COOP25 now to get a month of All Pro at 25% off, you get access to all the content on the site for all sports, including the Draft Guide, for the same price it costs to get the Draft Guide alone!

Tre' Harris, TE, Los Angeles Chargers

Kyle Shanahan’s scheme has become increasingly popular around the NFL. And we only expect that to grow after Klint Kubiak just used a variation of it to win the Super Bowl. That version, the same one that we see with the 49ers that is now traveling with Kubiak to the Raiders, heavily utilizes a fullback and multiple tight end sets. The Miami Dolphins will continue using it with Bobby Slowik as OC, and the Los Angeles Chargers are implementing it with Mike McDaniel taking over as their OC.

The reason the fullback and tight end usage is so great for fantasy is not necessarily just that it helps the run game, but the jumbo personnel also highly consolidates the snap and targets among other guys. Last year for Mike McDaniel, Alec Ingold and Julian Hill combined for 804 snaps but only 31 combined targets. Another notable example from this scheme was the 2023 49ers, where Kyle Juszczyk and Charlie Woerner in those same roles played over 800 snaps as well, with only 20 targets. The more guys taking up snaps but not getting the ball, the better for those other players.

The thing is, someone has to come out of the game to bring those players in. That limits teams using this scheme to a lot of two-WR sets. That is not great for the WR3. But, as we used to see with Jauan Jennings behind Brandon Aiyuk and Deebo Samuel, when you get elevated into that role, the upside can be just as big due to the consolidation. We are keeping an eye on that WR2 battle in San Francisco, but we do want to give a shoutout to Tre Harris as someone to watch on the wire if one of Ladd McConkey or Quentin Johnston goes down. Harris has played well in camp and has the contingent upside spot locked down behind both backs. For that reason, check out where we have him in the Fantasy Alarm Best Best Cheat Sheet - especially as a late stack with Justin Herbert. 

 

 

 

Blake Corum, RB, Los Angeles Rams

We actually don’t love handcuffing in the modern era. Especially our own running backs. We did in the early 2000s, but there are just very few instances where it’s worth it to dedicate two roster spots to “insurance”. Once a lot of the guys with standalone value are gone, however, we will look for contingent upside. And we are usually betting that someone else’s RB gets hurt.

Guys like TreVeyon Henderson and Bhayshul Tuten don’t count as they could take the job outright. We worry with Brian Robinson that the Falcons aren’t good enough to justify holding Bijan’s backup. The Bears' Kyle Monangai is banged up, as is Isiah Pacheco (plus we worry the Lions would sign/trade for someone if Jahmyr Gibbs goes down). Other situations like Buffalo aren’t as appealing because they already use Ty Johnson for some pass work and Josh Allen vultures TDs anyway.

The best combination of talent and potentially opportunity for us lands in Los Angeles with Blake Corum behind incumbent starter Kyren Williams. He has been getting a little more work lately, which speaks to how well he’s played. But Sean McVay still prefers one back that can operate in all phases to keep defenses honest. If anything were to happen to Kyren Williams, Blake Corum would likely default to a massive role in one of the league’s most potent offenses. That makes him as solid of a bench RB as you can get, as you can probably throw him in there as a bye week or injury fill-in while also getting access to the handcuff upside. If you’d like to see who we are prioritizing, we categorized and ranked all the Top Fantasy Football RB Handcuffs in the Fantasy Alarm Draft Guide. 

Terrance Ferguson, TE, Los Angeles Rams

Terrance Ferguson is one of the hottest names in the fantasy football community right now. And for good reason. Not only does he play with last year’s MVP, Matthew Stafford, but the scheme has shifted in recent years to favor his skill set. Sean McVay went from using the most 11 personnel of any coach only a few years ago to being one of the top teams in two- and three-tight-end sets. When you’re an athletic pseudo-WR running high-aDOT routes like Ferguson, being the pass-catching TE on a team using multiple tight ends is a good gig.

The issue with Ferguson is one that we see often - historically speaking, the vast majority of difference-making tight ends are top two targets on their team. With Puka Nacua and Davante Adams there, it’s hard to ask Ferguson to outright get more targets than one of them, making it a difficult path towards 100+ targets (which we also rarely see from three players on the same team). When we do see it, injuries are often the catalyst. Like last year with the Dallas Cowboys, where Jake Ferguson was the third fiddle behind George Pickens and CeeDee Lamb. In games when everyone was healthy, Ferguson was putting up TE20 PPR points per game numbers. In the five games Lamb was banged up, Ferguson put up TE2 PPR points-per-game numbers. 

We are hoping that Terrance Ferguson can still have some standalone weekly value even without an injury to one of the wide receivers. But the big upside likely comes if either Puka Nacua or Davante Adams goes down. When Adams missed Week 16 last year, Ferguson ran 37 routes, which was tied for second behind only Puka Nacua. We don’t necessarily trust him as our starting tight end Week One in fantasy, but check out our Yin & Yang Tight End Strategy in the Fantasy Alarm Draft Guide to see what type of two tight end build makes sense for stashing Ferguson.

 

 

 

Mac Jones, QB, San Francisco 49ers

There are a lot of dicey QB situations. And that has folks taking stabs at a lot of these situations where the starter could be benched for a backup. But just think about the conditions that would lead to Shedeur Sanders, Michael Penix, or JJ McCarthy taking over - does that really scream fantasy upside? Even with Fernando Mendoza, the team has to be losing games for him to overtake Kirk Cousins. It’s rare that we see QBs get benched for a backup that balls out for fantasy if the backup isn’t mobile.

An argument can then be made for Justin Fields or Anthony Richardson as the best contingent upside play (though we don’t even know if Richardson is the backup to Daniel Jones). Any QB willing to run ~5 times a game offers a solid floor and great upside. Plus Daniel Jones and Patrick Mahomes are both coming off serious injuries. In fact, Andy Reid was non-committal about Mahomes for Week One, which does give a little bump to Fields. But we really don’t trust Fields to actually run an NFL offense - in three of his nine games last year, he didn’t complete more than six passes. So we’ll side with the guy who actually plays for a good team AND looked good in his starts last season. 

And that was Mac Jones. Last year, Mac Jones actually looked pretty darn good when Brock Purdy went down, averaging 268.4 passing yards a game in his starts. That would have been good for third in the league behind Jared Goff (268.5) and Dak Prescott (267.8). He was also quietly on a pace that would equate to 75 rush attempts, easily the most of his short career. If you told me today that all 32 starting QBs were all hurt, Mac Jones is the guy I would trust most to lead my NFL offense. And Purdy has suffered some kind of injury that has caused him to at least leave a game early in all four years in the league now. Unlike a lot of other backups, if something were to happen to Brock Purdy, we are putting claims on Mac Jones. That goes double for superflex leagues.