One of the biggest and most pleasant surprises of the first half of the fantasy football season was Jaguars RB Travis Etienne. Since the draft and throughout the offseason, there was speculation about what Etienne’s true workload would be in 2023 given the team’s acquisition of Tank Bigsby via the draft in the third round - however, through the first eight weeks of the season, Etienne laid that speculation to rest with an 80% snap share and 20.4 PPR points per game on average. As of late, though, Etienne has struggled a bit to return to his pre-bye week form.
Over the past three weeks, Etienne is averaging just a 55% snap share and 9.3 PPR fantasy points per game - a very significant downgrade in utilization compared to his first eight games of the year. He’s also failed to reach the end zone in any of his three games post-bye after scoring at least one touchdown in each of the four games before the bye.
It’s worth noting that Etienne was dealing with a chest injury during the game this past week against the Texans, which led to D’Ernest Johnson getting some additional run in the ground game compared to usual. But Etienne’s overall usage remains down over the past three games, and with tough matchups on tap against Cleveland and Baltimore in Weeks 14 and 15 (the Jags take on the Bengals in Week 13), fantasy managers might be forced to eat their vegetables with Travis Etienne in their starting lineups a la Josh Jacobs earlier in the season
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