The Week 8 matchup between the Arizona Cardinals and the Cleveland Browns features two teams with strong defenses, meaning that fantasy points may be hard to come by. We’ve got the fantasy projections courtesy of numberFire.
Fantasy football projections, Week 8: Cardinals-Browns featuring Carson Palmer, Chris Johnson and Gary Barnidge
We break down the Week 8 matchup between the Arizona Cardinals and the Cleveland Browns.
Arizona Cardinals
The advanced analytics community in football currently pegs Carson Palmer as the best quarterback in the game. Those advanced stats geeks may be onto something because he also happens to be one of the best in fantasy football. Last week against the Baltimore Ravens, Palmer threw for 275 yards and two touchdowns. He also walked away from the game without throwing an interception for the third time this season. Doing that against Cleveland is going to be tough, but these days the Cardinals are looking like Super Bowl contenders in the NFC West. Palmer has proved pretty matchup proof this season.
If Palmer does indeed struggle against the Browns, running back Chris Johnson might provide some help. He’s only seen more than 20 carries in a game twice this season, but Johnson is still proving a valuable fantasy producer. Last week against the Ravens, he managed to rush for 122 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries. The Cardinals do kind of sort of run a committee in the backfield, but lately it’s looking like Johnson has the most upside. He will never regain the status he had in his earlier days with the Tennessee Titans, but Johnson might prove effective this week, even against a good defense.
Cleveland Browns
No one in Cleveland has more fantasy value than tight end Gary Barnidge. He just won’t stop putting up the numbers. He caught six passes for 101 yards against the St. Louis Rams last week and although he didn’t find the end zone, Barnidge had been doing touchdown dances for the previous four weeks, including two scores last week. There is no doubt the Cardinals will do what they can to lock him down, but so far no other team has been able to do that effectively. He should be a big time player this week as he’s been all year.
Teammate Travis Benjamin should also be busy. The Browns struggle with the running game, so a high volume of passes is likely for both Barnidge and Benjamin. Prior to being targeted just eight times last week, Benjamin saw at least 10 passes thrown his way in each of the previous four games. It will be a challenging task to put up numbers against Arizona no doubt, but somebody has to do it in order to keep the game respectable.
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