If the question before the season was, "Which Patriots running back do I want to rely on?" the answer through four games has been an emphatic, "Neither." The team's moribund offense has affect everyone involved, and Shane Vereen and Stevan Ridley have been hit as hard as anyone.
Last season, the Patriots had one of the best running games in the league, and they augmented it with Vereen's pass-catching skills to create a tandem that was consistently useful for Fantasy owners. So far, however, Vereen and Ridley have just two double-digit Fantasy games between them, one each. And things aren't much better for Vereen in PPR leagues, where he has just one additional 10-plus-point effort.
The Patriots have one of the league's five-least productive offenses, as they are averaged just 298.5 yards per game, while scoring just 20.0 points per game. At this point, Fantasy owners probably cannot rely on either member of the Patriots backfield on a weekly basis, especially as long as they continue splitting time and work.