Fantasy football NFL 2022 Week 7

Week 7 of the 2022 fantasy football season was highlighted by big games by Joe Burrow, Gus Edwards, Travis Etienne Jr. and Ja’Marr Chase. Which developments from the week are worth reading into? Matt Bowen and Tristan H. Cockcroft offer their analysis.

Burrow raises the bar

Joe Burrow might’ve started the season slow, relatively speaking, but has really turned things on the past three weeks, scoring a rushing touchdown in each, and posting his fourth career 30-point fantasy performance in Week 6 (32.50), followed by his fifth and a career-best 39.24 points on Sunday. Sure, the matchup against a Falcons team thin on depth and missing A.J. Terrell for a portion due to injury leaned extremely favorably, but so does all of Burrow’s schedule until the fantasy playoffs. Five of his next six opponents have seen quarterbacks exceed their seasonal averages by 1.88 fantasy points or more, so this is an ideal time to lock him in as at least a weekly top-six positional choice. Burrow has silenced any doubters who thought he couldn’t repeat last year’s magical run. — Cockcroft

CMC era starts in San Francisco

In his first game with the 49ers, Christian McCaffrey posted 62 total yards on 10 touches in the Week 7 loss to the Chiefs. But we know that role with CMC will develop quickly in Kyle Shanahan’s offense; more volume, creative deployment and receiving targets. McCaffrey is a difference-maker who can be set up with Shanahan in the route tree while producing on the ground in one of the league’s most heavily schemed run games. Given that expected bump in run/pass game touches for CMC, I expect George Kittle, Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk to all see a slight dip in overall usage. And the days…