NFL Week 10 Recap: Immediate fantasy football takeaways from Panthers-Bears Thursday Night Football

• A battle of the revenge games: Former Chicago Bear Ihmir Smith-Marsette scored the first touchdown of the game for the Carolina Panthers on a punt return before former Carolina Panther D’Onta Foreman scored the second touchdown to give Chicago a lead.

• One Bear returns: WR Equanimeous St. Brown returned from injured reserve for Chicago. QB Justin Fields and RB Khalil Herbert seemed close and will likely play in Week 11.

• A game of kicks: Twelve drives ended with a punt, and five ended with a field goal. Foreman's touchdown was the only drive that didn’t end in a kick.

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Carolina Panthers @ Chicago Bears

• D’Onta Foreman: 21 carries, 80 yards, 1 touchdown, 2 receptions, 12 receiving yards
• D.J. Moore: 5 receptions, 58 yards

D’Onta Foreman leads the Bears one more time: The Bears used a relatively traditional running back rotation for the second straight week.

• The Bears rotated by drive early in the game and then went with a hot hand rather than using running backs by rotation.
• Foreman has been the early-down back for the past two weeks, with Roschon Johnson serving as the late-down back and Darrynton Evans factoring in.
• Foreman left with a foot injury for part of the second quarter but returned for the second half.
• Khalil Herbert’s 21-day practice window was opened up early in the week, and he was a full participant in practice, but the Bears opted to sit him one more week.
• We will likely see Herbert and Foreman splitting time on early downs and Herbert and Johnson splitting time on third downs starting next week, making this the three-man rotation fantasy managers feared at the start of the season.
• It would be okay to drop Johnson, considering his lack of touches over the past two weeks and that Herbert will also prevent Johnson from having standalone value.

Equanimeous St. Brown returns to Chicago: The veteran wide receiver missed the last four weeks while on injured reserve with a hamstring injury.

• St. Brown was a starter for most of last season but slipped down the pecking order and began the 2023 season as a healthy inactive for the first three weeks.
• He served as the Bears' third wide receiver for two weeks as the team weighed their options with Chase Claypool.
• Rookie fourth-round pick Tyler Scott took over the last four weeks. He was the third wide receiver on the first drive before he and St. Brown started rotating. Both players caught one pass.
• In order to keep Scott on the field more often, Darnell Mooney was rotated out more than usual.
• Mooney only has two games as a top-40 wide receiver this season and caught two passes for 14 yards tonight.
• The lack of production and a smaller role make Mooney droppable from fantasy leagues.

Drop Miles Sanders: Chuba Hubbard continued to lead the Panthers' three-man rotation at running back.

• The Panthers were constantly rotating running backs and tight ends on and off the field, with no clear pattern of which running back would be used in what situation.
• The only clear trend was that they were likelier to run the ball if Hubbard was on the field.
• Sanders ended the day with two carries for -5 yards and two receptions for 15 yards.
• This is the third straight game in which Sanders has played a limited role, mostly running target-less routes.
• There is a chance Sanders can overtake Hubbard as the top running back again at some point, but it will still probably be a rotation rather than Sanders clearly holding the backfield.
• Even then, the Panthers offense hasn’t played well all season, so Sanders still might not be a fantasy starter. Coming into this week, the Panthers had a bottom-five team run-block grade and were bottom-five in points scored.
• He not only needs more playing time, but he also needs to start playing better, and he needs his team to start playing better — a huge problem for his fantasy outlook. Add a running back off the waiver wire who needs only one or two of those changes.

D.J. Chark Jr. sits for Carolina: Chark missed practice all week with an elbow injury and was inactive.

• Chark appeared on the injury report last week with the same elbow injury. He was able to play last week but was rotated out more than usual.
• Laviska Shenault Jr. also missed his third straight game with an ankle injury.
• In past weeks, if one of the Panthers' top three wide receivers missed time, Terrace Marshall Jr. would slip into the third wide receiver role.
• This week, he split the third receiver role with Mike Strachan. Strachan is a former undrafted free agent who spent 2021 and 2022 on the Colts roster. He started the season on the Colts' practice squad but joined the Panthers' practice squad early in the season. He made his season debut tonight.
• Sratchan caught a 45-yard pass early in the game, the Panthers' biggest offensive play of the night. That was enough to lead the Panthers in receiving yards.
• Marshall held a slight lead over Strachan in snaps at 14-10 in the first half, but then Marshall took nearly all of the snaps in the second half.
• The fact that Marshall was rotating with someone who came off the practice squad is not a great sign for his future with the Panthers, even though he was consistently on the field while the Panthers played from behind.

Miscellaneous Notes

• Carolina stuck with a two-man rotation at tight end between Hayden Hurst and Tommy Tremble. Ian Thomas and Giovanni Ricci are both on injured reserve, and Stephen Sullivan was out with a shoulder injury.
• Former wide receiver Jordan Matthews signed to the Panthers' practice squad a few weeks ago and was activated for this game to serve as the Panthers' third tight end, but he didn’t play on offense.
• D.J. Moore has gained at least 40 receiving yards in nine straight games, tying his longest streak of 40-plus-yard games dating back to his time with the Panthers.

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.