Rico Dowdle News: Poised to take over as lead option

Head coach Dave Canales hinted Monday that he's inclined to give Dowdle the bulk of the Panthers' carries moving forward rather than splitting the work evenly between Dowdle and Chuba Hubbard, Steve Reed of the Associated Press reports. "Chuba has meant a lot to this organization and certainly to the identity that we want to build and we wanted to give him the opportunity to go out there and to continue to impact our team in a positive way," Canales said. "But we cannot ignore the fact that Rico has been exceptional. ... We love tempo and violence that he is running with. These are things we are looking back on the last four games and really taking a snapshot of what has been successful for us."

While Hubbard was sidelined with a calf injury in Weeks 5 and 6, Dowdle took full advantage of his opportunity to serve as Carolina's lead back, amassing 473 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns in wins over the Dolphins and Cowboys. In the two games since he returned from the injury, Hubbard stepped back in as the Panthers' starter but has alternated series with Dowdle. During that two-game stretch, Dowdle has handily outperformed Hubbard, averaging 5.3 yards on 25 carries compared to Hubbard's 2.5-yard average on 26 carries. Though Hubbard may be on the field for the first snap of this coming Sunday's game in Green Bay, Canales' comments point to the touches out of the Carolina backfield tilting more dramatically into Dowdle's favor. Assuming that's the case, fantasy managers would be able to deploy Dowdle will more confidence in Week 9, after the timeshare arrangement in the previous two games made it more difficult to project him taking on a larger workload.