Fantasy football waiver wire week 3: Adrian Peterson injured; should you add Jerick McKinnon or Matt Asiata?

Adrian Peterson suffered a torn meniscus in the Vikings Sunday night win over the Packers. Mike Zimmer didn't rule Peterson out yesterday, and judging by Peterson's history of playing through things I wouldn't be surprised if he does end up playing, but odds are he will be out this week. That makes whoever fills in for Peterson an interesting add for this week.

That brings us to the question posed in the headline; Should we add Jerick McKinnon or Matt Asiata. Conventional wisdom says add McKinnon. He is the better player, and Vikings' beat reporter, Matt Vensel, says that McKinnon will get 65% of the carries when/if Peterson is out. However, as that tweet mentions, Asiata will get the goal line work. That is very important for fantasy football. A lot of times it is about opportunity, not necessarily talent, when it comes to points scored in fantasy.

When Peterson was suspended in 2014, McKinnon had 113 carries for 538 yards but didn't score a touchdown. Asiata had 164 carries for 570 yards and 9(!) touchdowns. Some of the difference in carries that year came because McKinnon was injured and only played in 11 games.

The takeaway there is the 9 touchdowns for Asiata. Six of those did come in 2 games, but he is going to be the one that gets the goal line work. For those of you who are old enough to remember the days where the Buccaneers had Warrick Dunn and Mike Alstott, it will be a split much like that. Dunn would get all of the carries until the Bucs got inside the 5. Then they would bring in Alstott, every single time, to vulture the TD.

So while McKinnon will see more volume, I lean toward adding Asiata, especially in a standard scoring league.