1. Who is going to be the leading receiver for Patrick Mahomes?
Patrick Mahomes enters this season “cheaper” in drafts than he has been since his first season as the starter in 2018. He is somewhat down in drafts right now because of the questions surrounding who exactly is going to be out there catching passes from him and after a year in which the Chiefs seemed to coast at times, how seriously are they going to take the regular season this year?
To jog your memory on the offense for Mahomes; he dropped 2018-2022 averages of 4,791.4 yards and 38.4 passing touchdowns to 2023 totals of 4,183 and 27. Year over year he dropped more than 1,000 yards and 14 passing touchdowns. Travis Kelce is now a year older after dropping a sub 1,000 yard campaign for the first time since 2015. Rashee Rice is in trouble with the law and is facing a significant suspension to start the season. Hollywood Brown was signed to bolster the WR corps and there will be a significant amount of hype around him, but I am hesitant to invest too heavily in a guy who was moved from not one, but two WR needy teams. The Chiefs also drafted Xavier Worthy in the first round and while he is on the small side at just 5’11, he has three inches on Brown.
The receivers are all going to be decent values in drafts because of the uncertainty and if you can nail which one leads this group it could be league winning upside.
2. Have we finally left the Kelce alone era of the Tight End?
For the first time in years Travis Kelce is not the first TE off the board in every draft and dare I say we will probably rarely see him be the first TE taken in any league that doesn’t include a Swifty. Kelce is still a top tier talent with the best QB in the league and unstoppable in the endzone, but he will be 35 in October and between his dating life and his podcast and rumors of retirement he has one foot out the door no matter what he says about wanting to carry the load.
There are multiple candidates to take his place as TE1 in drafts including Sam LaPorta, Trey McBride, and Mark Andrews.
Sam LaPorta is going to be the guy most drafted as the TE1 ahead of Kelce with his performance last season and draft pedigree. He was a monster out of the gate and one of the most valuable fantasy players in the league last season because is most leagues he was either a late round flyer or completely undrafted.
Trey McBride is probably a name a lot of more causal players will have forgotten about and be surprised to see ranked so highly, but he had a very strong end to the season with multiple games finishing as a TE1 and eclipsing 100 yards twice and 10 receptions twice.
Mark Andrews missed the last six games of the season but was on solid pace prior to that with 8 of 10 games finishing inside the top 14 TEs. He had multiple 2 TD games and started his season with 8 straight games of at least 4 receptions. Andrews should be back to full health to start the season after returning for the playoffs in January. Zay Flowers will almost certainly lead this Ravens team in yards, but Andrews shouldn’t be far behind and should outpace him in TDs.
All this to say we are going to see an era of drafting guys above and around Kelce the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Patriots days of Gronk, but will they outshine Kelce on the field or will we have one last great season from perhaps the best to ever do it at the position?
3. Who do you draft as the WR1?
I am not sure we have ever seen a larger group of WRs who could be argued as deserving of the first WR off the board than this year.
Want Justin Jefferson who just got PAID? No one gonna argue that despite a rookie now under center.
How about CeeDee Lamb who has a much better QB and is coming off a 2023 campaign where he finished as the WR1? Go for it.
Tyreek Hill? Who at his best looks like the most unstoppable player in NFL history? There’s few players that strike more terror into your opponents than Hill, who can close any point gap.
Ja’Marr Chase who let down a lot of drafters last season which is going to keep him off the board as the first WR taken in most leagues because there appears to be more risk there than you want with these other names on the list, but if Burrow can stay on the field this season he will be a lock as a top 5 WR? No one is arguing with that.
Don’t forget about Amon-Ra St. Brown. He also got a big payday and is peppered with more targets on a per game basis than anyone not named CeeDee Lamb. He topped 1,500 yards and hit 10 TDs and should exceed that in 2024.
They aren’t going ahead of the above often, but Puka Nacua, AJ Brown, and Garrett Wilson are all in position to finish the season as the WR1 with strong QB play and elite skillset.
It is going to come down to a lot of personal preference with who comes off the board first, but I think a lot of it will just be determined by who the draft client has listed first.
4. Which old face in a new place will work out?
There are quite a few high profile running backs who have moved to a new team this off-season and with high expectations still on them who will produce?
Derrick Henry after domination in Tennessee moves to Baltimore where expectations are sky high in a friendly scheme, but Henry is over 30 and while he broke 1,100 rushing yards, his YPC was at a career low and very few RBs are worthy of high draft capital beyond age 30.
Saquon Barkley is now in Philly after their one season with D’Andre Swift (who we will get to shortly). Barkley is quickly becoming one of the biggest “what ifs” of all time. He started his career with a 2,000 scrimmage yard campaign and in 2022 he finally stayed on the field for 16 games again and he went for 1,650 scrimmage yards. The Eagles offense will hopefully be more potent after apparently giving something away and just getting smoked over the second half of the season losing 6 of their final 7 games. The concerns for Barkley are the poaching of rushing TDs by the tush push and the loss of a vital piece of the offensive line in Jason Kelce.
Joe Mixon moved from Cincy to Houston to give the Texans a real threat on the ground. Mixon inherits the bellcow workload in Houston this offseason and will look to build off the momentum of just his second 1,000 rushing yard campaign in the last four years. Mixon is still just 27 years old, but he is getting way up there in touches as he has already amassed 1,854 which is 74th all time which maybe doesn’t sound like a lot, but this season he should easily pass the likes of Melvin Gordon, DeMarco Murray, DeAngelo Williams, Le’Veon Bell, Priest Holmes, and Mark Ingram. Passing those types of names on the all time touch list puts a lot of doubt into how much tread is left on the tires with the ceiling having been as low as it has been. The Texans offense should be great this season, but I am signing up for it through the air.
Josh Jacobs is now a Green Bay Packer and while he ha a big name and this offense should improve even more in year 2 of Jordan Love and another a more experienced group of pass catchers I would steer clear of a player who the Raiders are extremely familiar with and let walk to start Zamir White apparently.
D’Andre Swift finds himself on his third team in three seasons after just one year in Philly. Now with the Bears he is coming in as an afterthought to the QB and WR situations in this offense, but he should come cheap in drafts and could explode in this offense with little competition for touches if Caleb Williams can break the Bears’ QB curse and get the offense humming.
5. Will the Falcons work?
The Falcons are one of the most intriguing teams this season and their draft prices already reflect the insane optimism. RB Bijan Robinson is coming off the board as the 2nd RB in consensus ADP and 7th overall, Drake London is the current WR10 and 14th overall, Kyle Pitts is TE6 and 62nd overall, and Kirk Cousins is the QB18, which doesn’t sound high, but he is coming off a torn Achilles, is 36 years old, and the Falcons took Michael Penix 8th overall as his eventual replacement.
The Falcons have been building a super offense for four years now with the top ten selection of four consecutive skill position players and it has been wildly disappointing every year.
As good as his numbers were last season Bijan Robinson was weighed down heavily by offensive play-calling incompetence where we saw Tyler Allgeier and Cordarelle Patterson combine for MORE RUSHING ATTEMPTS than him. He was routinely removed from the field in key situations and no fantasy owner will soon forget when he got exactly one carry because he was sick and had told HC Arthur Smith who failed to list him on the injury report despite knowing it would affect his availability.
Drake London and Kyle Pitts have both flashed their elite level, but with continuous inept quarterbacking they have both been extremely mid to downright droppable at times over the last two seasons.
Arthur Smith has thankfully been fired and the Falcons brought in Kirk Cousins on a huge deal to run this offense. Will they get it going? They better because if you take Bijan, London, and Pitts you are doing so at all of their ceilings.