Christian McCaffrey as clearly the right choice at #1
There was a massive decision to be made at the 1.01 in 2022 and if you asked me at the time I told you to take CMC. Yes, he has an history of injuries that had derailed his previous two seasons, but they were different issues and didn’t lay out a recurring issue like Juju Smith-Schuster and his knee. When he is on the field, CMC is the most dangerous fantasy weapon available.
Your choice between the two probably sealed your fate in at the very outset of the fantasy season. Twenty seconds into the fantasy season, with only one player on your team so far and all the hope in the world and your year was likely already done. CMC finished 6th overall in PPR points despite a midseason trade. Jonathan Taylor who was the other option for the first overall pick finished 117th and that even makes it look better than it was. He put up 861 yards on the ground in his 11 games and 161 of that came in Week 1. CMC on the other hand would play in every game for the first time since 2019 and dominate for fantasy managers who had trusted the risk or had the risk thrust upon them at the #2 overall.
This year CMC is alone at the top with the only other real contenders for that spot being Justin Jefferson and Austin Ekeler, but I doubt many people move away from CMC at the 1.01 this year.
Old Faces in New Places Were Trustworthy
One of the things that worries me a lot is big name players moving teams and still costing extremely high draft capital. Going into last year there were a few huge names on the back of different jerseys in Tyreek Hill, AJ Brown, Davante Adams, and Amari Cooper.
Hill and Adams were coming off the board in the first two rounds while Brown was in the 3rd or 4th and Cooper was late 4th to 5th. There were legit concerns are around all of their abilites to pay off that capital on their new teams and looking back now it seems silly considering their finishes with Hill (WR2), Adams (WR3), Brown (WR6), and Cooper (WR10). With Hill there were concerns going from Patrick Mahomes to Tua Tagovailoa and competing for targets with Jaylen Waddle.
For Adams, while Carr was his college QB, that was almost a decade ago at that point and he was leaving possibly the best arm in the history of the NFL in Aaron Rodgers. Adams was also alone in Green Bay, but in Las Vegas he would be competing with Darren Waller, Hunter Renfrow, and who knows if this offense was even going to work?
Brown was moving to Jalen Hurts who was still facing real questions about his passing much less ability to get enough volume going to keep afloat both AJ Brown and Devonta Smith.
Finally, Amari Cooper was facing most of the season without Deshaun Watson and historically been very feast or famine for home and away games.
This year those questions follow the likes of DeAndre Swift, Miles Sanders, DeAndre Hopkins, and Odell Beckham Jr (again).
It’s Still Travis Kelce or Bust at TE
Travis Kelce has been the obvious first choice at tight end for about seven years now. He has finished as the TE1 or TE2 in every year since 2016. That’s an insane streak. In 2016 there were only two tight ends to break 1,000 receiving yards. One was Kelce and the other one was Greg Olsen. Last season we had some intriguing options available which made taking Kelce less appealing than previous years in Kyle Pitts, Mark Andrews, and George Kittle. In the end though there was no touching Kittle and Pitts would go on to utterly destroy fantasy dreams in the worst possible way; not for lack of talent, but for lack of opportunity and horrendous quarterback play.
We aren’t going to play the game of highlight reels, but it’s very clear from all hose targets that they weren’t on the same page ever and who knows if Pitts/Ridder will be any better, but it can’t possibly be worse right? But, you know who is on the same page on every play? Kelce and Mahomes. Yes, Kelce is getting older, he will be 34 in October, but he is still amazing and is tied to the best coach/qb combo in the NFL and should be a lock inside the first round this season.
The Broncos Hype Train
As we start to see the Broncos Hype Train start chugging along again, I think it is important to get into the Wayback Machine and examine the 2022 Denver Broncos hype. Going into last season there was a ton of excitement around Russell Wilson finally being free of the run first approach that the Seahawks love and “letting Russ cook” so to speak. He was going to have receivers just as good as Metcalf and Lockett in Denver with Jeudy and Sutton. He had Javonte Williams who is primed for a breakout seasons. Nathaniel Hackett was going to have all the success from his time with Aaron Rodgers. The Broncos were all getting drafted with the expectation that this was going to mesh and the offense was going to explode. Then they played…and Russell Wilson and the offense imploded. It got so bad that the home crowd was actually chanting out the play clock and on Monday Night Football, former Bronco Quarterback Peyton Manning called for timeout 62 times before Russell Wilson did.
Maybe Sean Payton comes in and fixes everything and they turn things around, but I’ll be okay missing out on the Broncos if that happens this season.
We were right to be concerned about Najee Harris
The main concern for me around Najee Harris going into last season was his touch count from my 2022 where he had 381 touches. 381 was the most in the league by 9 over Jonathan Taylor, and 47 more than 3rd place Joe Mixon. I had major concerns he was going to be able to both stay on the field and improve on his metrics enough to pay off his draft day price of late first to second round pick.
He did manage to stay on the field for the whole season, so all the credit to him for that, but he destroyed any chance of winning for those that drafted him. He finished as the RB12 and literally every metric that ProFootballRefrence.com tracks dropped, but you know what actually went up? His yards before contact on average went from 1.7 to 2.2 which means he was getting better blocking and still:
- YPC dropped from 3.9 to 3.8
- Yards Per Game dropped from 70.6 to 60.8
- YPC dropped from 6.3 to 5.6
- His long run was 36 yards down from 37
- Targets down from 94 to 53
- Receptions down from 74 to 41
- First downs down from 62 on the ground and 22 through the air to 45 and 16
Harris was rough all season and if you had him on your roster it was a very long season unless you were able to move off him on the hope that he was still getting enough volume to be valuable to someone in a trade. I share a lot of the same concerns this year about him as his ADP on Fantasy Football Calculator is currently 2.08 which is way too high for someone who finished below that last season while performing worse than the year before in every way. He now has just shy of 700 touches in two NFL seasons and the offense is not going to be all that much better unless you believe Kenny Pickett is going to take a huge step forward and I don’t.