Is Keenan Allen Losing Playing Time?

2025 Fantasy Football Impact

A few factors impacted Allen's playing time in this one:

1. The Chargers were playing with a big lead throughout the second half and were clearly getting guys like Allen and Ladd McConkey (58% snap rate) some rest.
2. The team deployed '22' personnel (2 RBs, 2 TEs) on 27 plays vs. the Vikings, according to NFL Next Gen Stats. That's tied for the third most by any team since 2016. That meant a bunch of plays with only 1-WR on the field -- a situation Allen has not played in all season.
3. Allen also seemed to lose snaps to WR Tre Harris in three-WR sets, though. We don't have those specific numbers, but we noticed Harris on the field in place of Allen on multiple occasions on the the Amazon Prime Vision all-22 broadcast. Harris wound up running 10 total routes to Allen's 17.

This will be a situation to track closely going forward. We don't expect the '22' usage to become a trend for the Chargers. It was likely matchup-based -- and further boosted by the team playing with a big lead for most of the night.

It's also possible that the Chargers wanted to scale back the 33-year-old Allen's snaps on a short week.

But it's also possible that the team wants to get its second-round rookie more playing time. Harris has flashed in recent weeks and drawn praise from the team's coaching staff.

Allen still drew five targets on his 17 routes vs. Minnesota and is a good bet to continue drawing targets at a high rate. But he'll be hard-pressed to produce as more than a fantasy WR3 if he's only playing in 3-WR sets and losing some of those 3-WR snaps to Harris.

We'll see how the playing time shakes out in Week 9 vs. the Steelers.