Instant fantasy football takeaways from Cowboys-Giants Thursday Night Football

• Battle of the Elite Wide Receivers: Both CeeDee Lamb And Malik Nabers led the Dallas Cowboys And New York Giants Offenses with over 95 receiving yards each. They are both top 10 options in comparison Rest of the season.

• Wan’Dale Robinson becomes a top waiver option: The Giants slot receiver was already a top-36 receiver entering the week and had double-digit earnings.

• Unlock your benefit with a PFF+ subscription: Get full access to all of our seasonal fantasy tools including weekly rankings, WR/CB matchup charts, weekly forecastsThe Start seat optimizer and more. Register now!

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

PFF’s fantasy football roundup focuses on player usage and stats, breaking down all the key information you need to achieve fantasy success in 2024.

Dallas Cowboys @ New York Giants

• CeeDee Lamb: 7 receptions, 98 yards, 1 touchdown, 3 carries, 8 rushing yards
• Malik Nabers: 12 receptions, 115 yards

Add Wan’Dale Robinson: Robinson is the clear second receiving option in the Giants’ offense.

Robinson entered the week as the WR36 for the season. He caught 15 passes, tied for 16th most, but his average was just 8.2 yards per reception. In this game, he continued his high level of short catches, catching 11 balls for 71 yards.

There was a slight change in his role this week. In the first three weeks, he played all 120 snaps when the Giants used three or more wide receivers, but only four of 76 snaps when two or fewer wide receivers were on the field. This week he played five snaps on 12 personnel. While it was quiet Malik Nabers And Darius Slaytonne When Robinson was on the field it was more of a pass play in most cases, and with Slayton it was more of a run play. If Robinson continues to take a few snaps each week in two-receiver sets, that will increase his ceiling.

Robinson is the perfect wide receiver during bye weeks as a high-floor, low-ceiling option to set up imaginative starting lineups when you need a safe play.

Jake Ferguson is a potential top-5 tight end for the remainder of the season: Ferguson was finally starting to see the playing time he received at the end of last season.

Ferguson consistently played less than 70% of Dallas’ offensive shots last September and early October and at least 79% in most games in December and January. He had the best game of his career at the end of last season – 10 receptions for 93 yards and three touchdowns in the playoff loss to the Green Bay Packers.

Ferguson suffered a knee injury in Week 1, which led to him playing just four snaps in the second half. He had played 82% of Dallas’ offensive snaps in the first half, which is great for a tight end in 2024. He missed Week 2 and the Cowboys brought him back on 66% of their offensive snaps last week. However, they gave him the ball frequently, resulting in six receptions for 95 yards.

He also played 80% of the Cowboys’ offensive snaps for most of the game this week until they focused on the run in the fourth quarter. He caught seven passes for 49 yards. Ideally, he would have broken a catch for more than nine yards, but his production was still good enough to be a top-13 fantasy tight end every other week this season. He is the only tight end in the NFL who is healthy, plays a high percentage of offensive snaps and has a high target percentage this season. A top-five season is certainly within his reach if he stays healthy.

The Cowboys’ backfield remains unchanged: The Cowboys’ backfield rotation was very similar to last week, once again resulting in minimal fantasy production.

The Cowboys continued to have success Rico Dowdle as a starting running back, but Ezekiel Elliott continued to make a few trips. Hunter Lüpke the third remained behind, Deuce Vaughn played a few snapshots again and CeeDee Lamb continued to take a few snaps out of the backfield. At halftime, Lamb led the team in rushing yards.

Dowdle had some fantasy value this week thanks to his touchdown, but in this game the Cowboys were in the lead for most of the game and could have established the run if they wanted to. There’s a chance the Cowboys will start using fewer running backs at some point, but until then, no one should rely on fantasy starting lineups. Dowdle is the only one of the group who should be on fantasy rosters right now as he has the best chance of seeing a bigger role.

Various notes

• The Giants’ running back rotation was very similar to last week – Devin Singletary took the most work and Tyrone Tracy played some snaps on both early and third downs.
• Giants rookie tight end Theo Johnson led the league with 24 pass blocks by a tight end in the first three weeks. He wasn’t called on to pass block as much in this game, but on five third downs the Giants opted to use 10 people on the field instead with Johnson on the field. The Giants used 10 people only once in the first three games.
• Malik Nabers Was I was diagnosed with a concussion after attempting a sideline catch late in the game. If he misses next week’s game, that’s to be expected Jalin Hyatt to take over as outside wide receiver opposite Darius Slaytonne.

Table notes

• Snaps include plays that are called back due to penalties, including offensive holding or defensive pass interference. These plays have been removed from the other three statistics.
• Goals may vary from official NFL sources. The most likely discrepancy would be a clearly thrown away pass, where the NFL might pass the target to the closest receiver, whereas this data does not.
• Carries only occur on designed plays. Quarterback scrambles do not count toward the total number of carries in the game.