NFL Week 4 Recap: Immediate 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 over the rest of the season.

• Wan’Dale Robinson becomes a top waiver option: The Giants slot receiver was already a top-36 wide receiver heading into the week and posted double-digit receptions.

• Unlock your edge with a PFF+ subscription: Get full access to all of our in-season fantasy tools, including weekly rankings, WR/CB matchup charts, weekly projections, the Start-Sit Optimizer and more. Sign up now!

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

PFF’s fantasy football recap focuses on player usage and stats, breaking down all the vital 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 came into the week as the WR36 on the season. He had caught 15 passes, which was tied for 16th-most, but he’s averaged a low 8.2 yards per reception. In this game, he continued his high volume of short catches, making 11 receptions for 71 yards.

There was a slight change in his role this week. During 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 in 12 personnel. While it was still Malik Nabers and Darius Slayton more often than not, when Robinson was on the field, it was more likely to be a pass play, and with Slayton, it was more likely to be a run. If Robinson continues to take some snaps in two-receiver sets each week, that will raise his ceiling.

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

Jake Ferguson is a potential top-five tight end for the rest of the season: Ferguson finally started seeing the playing time he received late last season.

Ferguson was consistently playing less than 70% of Dallas’ offensive snaps last September and early October and at least 79% in most games in December and January. He posted the best game of his career to end 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, leading him to only play 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 eased him back with 66% of their offensive snaps last week. However, they fed him the ball a lot, leading to six receptions for 95 yards.

This week, he was again playing over 80% of the Cowboys’ offensive snaps for most of the game 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 performance was still good enough to be a top-13 fantasy tight end in every other week this season. He is the only tight end in the NFL who is healthy, playing a high percentage of offensive snaps and has a high target share this season. A top-five season is well within his reach if he remains healthy.

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

The Cowboys continued to have Rico Dowdle as the starting running back, but Ezekiel Elliott continued to take some drives. Hunter Luepke remained the third-down back, Deuce Vaughn played a few snaps again, and CeeDee Lamb continued to take a few snaps out of the backfield. At halftime, Lamb was leading the team in rushing yards.

Dowdle had some fantasy value this week thanks to his receiving touchdown, but this is a game where the Cowboys were leading for most of the time and could have established the run if they wanted to. There is a chance the Cowboys start using fewer running backs at some point, but until then, none should be trusted in fantasy starting lineups. Dowdle is the only one of the group that should currently be on fantasy rosters, as he has the best chance to see a larger role.

Miscellaneous Notes

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

Table Notes

• Snaps include plays called back due to penalties, including offensive holding or defensive pass interference. The other three stats have these plays removed.
• Targets may differ from official NFL sources. The most likely discrepancy would be from a clear thrown-away pass, where the NFL may give the target to the nearest receiver, while this data will not.
• Carries are only on designed plays. Quarterback scrambles won’t count for the total number of carries in the game.