An MRI Monday should confirm what most of the football world already knows. Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver A.J. Green suffered a significant tear in his hamstring Sunday against the Buffalo Bills and will miss the remainder of the season.
At 3-6-1, the Bengals are pretty much out of the playoff race altogether. But from a fantasy perspective, this changes the fake football world a great deal. It really does. Green is currently the fourth-ranked fantasy receiver heading into Week 12. He ranks fourth among receivers in receptions, sixth in targets, second in receiving yards and first in target distribution.
Needless to say, the Bengals must find other players to step up on his stead.
On Sunday against the Buffalo Bills, that came in the form of rookie second-round pick Tyler Boyd, who caught 6-of-8 targets for 54 yards and a score. Thus far this season, Boyd has put up a solid 66 percent catch rate. Now expected to start opposite Brandon LaFell, look for Boyd's target numbers to jump dramatically.
If that's the case, there's no reason to believe Boyd can't put up WR2 production moving forward this season. That's only magnified by the ACL tear running back Giovani Bernard suffered Sunday.
That's a whole heck of a lot of targets missing for Andy Dalton and Co. as the Bengals look to close out the season on high note. Expecting Boyd to receive double-digit targets on a consistent basis isn't necessarily out of the equation here. Even then, there's targets to go around.
This brings us to often-injured tight end Tyler Eifert, who should himself see a nice uptick in production moving forward. Eifert has been targeted five-plus times in each of the past three games after seeing the ball thrown his way just twice in his season debut back in Week 7.
Remember, Eifert saw 74 targets in 13 games back in 2015. This enabled him to finish with 52 receptions and 13 touchdowns en route to placing eighth among tight ends in fantasy points. Continued TE1 production from him wouldn't necessarily be a far-fetched scenario. In fact, we could easily see Eifert targeted more than last season as a way for the Bengals to make up for the loss of Bernard.
As it relates to the running back position, Jeremy Hill will now take over full-time duties. He was handcuffed a great deal by Bernard during the first 11 weeks of the season. In fact, Bernard averaged 14.2 touches per game compared to 14.4 for Hill. If the latter is able to get his touch number up to 20 per game, a likely scenario with Bernard out, Hill will automatically become a RB1 option this season.