He did some work in practice this week, but Ryan Mathews has been officially ruled out by the Chargers’ coaching staff for their Monday Night game against the Oakland Raiders. Mathews said of the situation “the next game, that’s what I’m looking for now. I don’t know about the team, but me personally, now I’m looking for that game against Tennessee.” Since he did some practice this week, it sounds like he’ll be able to go next week, which would be right in the middle of the 4-6 week prognosis he was given after the August 9^th injury.

In his absence, the Chargers will use a trio of Ronnie Brown, Curtis Brinkley, and Le’Ron McClain and though none of those backs stand out and it initially sounded like they would split carries and cancel each other out in fantasy, it now sounds like Brown will be the lead back. Norv Turner loves using feature backs and he seems to like Brown, saying of him that he will be “very involved.” Brown isn’t a very talented back, heading into his age 31 season after averaging just 3.2 YPC last season, but he’ll get volume yardage and the Raiders had the league’s worst run defense last year, so he’s startable in fantasy.

He’s obviously a downgrade from Mathews though and for a Chargers’ offense missing left tackle Jared Gaither and wide receiver Vincent Brown already, Philip Rivers has his work cut out for him, even against the Raiders’ terrible defense. The Raiders have enough offensive firepower and the crowd will be crazy in Oakland for a rare Monday night home game so the Chargers will need to avoid their annual early season funk or they could lose. More likely, I think the Chargers beat the Raiders in unimpressive fashion the way they beat teams similar caliber teams like Minnesota, Kansas City, Miami, and Denver last year, to start 4-1.

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