Welcome to another season of NFL and Fantasy Football! Big announcement: All of my fantasy content this season will be carried right here at Big Blue View, on the SBNation family of sites. I’m thrilled to join the team here, and in addition to fantasy content, I’ll be helping out with some Giants news coverage. For those who’ve been reading my work on the Pigskin Papers website during the past three seasons, welcome back. For those who are new to my columns, welcome aboard. I hope you’ve all had a great offseason so far.
July is here, and that means it’s time to kick off our 2024 fantasy coverage. Fantasy football exploded in the 2000s and now comes in a variety of flavors like dynasty and best ball, but for me, the OG version of the game–season-long redraft–is what’s up, and that’ll continue to be the main focus of my content. So if you’re in a bread-and-butter home league with your buddies, or a work or family league, I’m your guy. Your fantasy drafts will be here before you know it, and it’s not too early to start preparing, or at least to start thinking about your strategy.
I’ll hit on some big-picture thoughts in a second, but before we get started, a quick note on my content for this upcoming season. I’ll once again have plenty of preseason strategy articles to help you with your draft, and weekly Waiver Wire (Monday) and Fantasy Preview (Thursday) columns in-season to help you manage your lineups and rosters. And you’ll be able to find it all right here on Big Blue View.
OK, that’s it for the preliminaries. On to the main event. I’ll kick off the preseason discussion with three random thoughts about 2024 fantasy drafts. Ready? OK, we’re off!
Random thought #1: Tight end is back!
Welcome back to fantasy relevance, NFL tight ends. We’re witnessing a full-on resurrection, as the position was essentially read its last rites by the fantasy community during the last decade. It got to where it was Travis Kelce as the one true stud, then a big dropoff to a few other decent options, and then…a whole lot of hot garbage. In 2022, Kelce’s average of 15.4 points per game (Half PPR) was a full 4 points better than the No. 2 at the position (George Kittle), and he outscored all other tight ends by 90+ points for the full season. It got so bad in recent years that some leagues dropped the position altogether, lumping tight ends in with the wide receiver group, while others added “TE Premium” scoring to get the position back on the map.
And then a funny thing happened in 2023. Tight ends made a big comeback, led by a few precocious rookies and some vets who took a step up. And I believe it’s here to stay. Yes, Kelce is going to turn 35 in October. Yes, T.J. Hockenson (No. 1 in TE scoring last season before he suffered a season-ending injury) may not be ready to start the season. No matter. We’ve got other options for you. Rookie tight ends rarely produce TE1 numbers, but Lions’ sensation Sam LaPorta sure did, while fellow rookies Dalton Kincaid and Luke Musgrave both showed promise and should see nice bumps in Year 2. Musgrave projects more as a TE2 with upside in 2024, but Kincaid is on pretty much any breakout list you can find. It doesn’t stop there. Trey McBride was a monster down the stretch in his second season, which coincided with Kyler Murray’s return, Kyle Pitts (remember him?) is free of Arthur Smith and finally has a real quarterback, Jake Ferguson has emerged as the No. 2 option in a pass-happy offense, Mark Andrews is healthy, Evan Engram has become Trevor Lawrence’s favorite target, Kittle can still produce, David Njoku went nuclear down the stretch (albeit with Joe Flacco under center), and Dallas Goedert is a solid cog in a great offense.
Tight end now runs about 12 deep with quality “starter” options, and there’s some interesting depth at the position behind that, with guys like Tyler Conklin, Cole Kmet, Dalton Schultz, Pat Freiermuth, Musgrave, and others. But wait, there’s more! Raiders’ rookie Brock Bowers is one of the top pass-catching tight-end prospects of the last two decades. So what does this mean for draft strategy? Well, if you want LaPorta, Kelce, McBride, Andrews, or Kincaid you’ll have to strike fairly early, but if you miss on those guys, there will still be plenty of solid options a few rounds later. That was not true in recent seasons.
Random thought #2: Be a little careful with the RB carousel
Check your programs, folks. Saquon Barkley is an Eagle? Derrick Henry a Raven? Josh Jacobs a Packer? Aaron Jones a Viking? Joe Mixon a Texan? Tony Pollard a Titan? There are more, but you get the picture. Many starting running backs relocated this offseason, which is further evidence of how the position and its relative value have evolved (more like, devolved) in the salary cap era. A whopping 13 of 32 teams will feature a new “RB1” this season. What does it mean for fantasy?
Each of the six RBs listed above has been worthy of at least a late first/early second-round pick in fantasy at some point. Each has a good-to-great opportunity with his new team. Several of them–most notably Barkley, Henry, and Jacobs–are going from a scoring-challenged offense to one of the best overall units in the NFL. Sounds great, right? Not so fast. I plan to proceed cautiously with just about all of them. All are between 26 and 30 years old, which is risky territory for backs. Each one has likely already had his best season, and each former team let its former RB1 go for a reason. In addition to the age factor, they’re all going from a specific system, personnel situation, and role that’s going to change in one way or another. In some cases that’s a positive but I think we need to kick the tires carefully before clicking on most of them at the current average draft position (ADP).
Generally, I’m not looking at stats from the last two to three seasons as overly predictive. Let’s take Barkley as an example. Yes, he’s a rare talent and is jumping to a prolific offense. But he joins a team with a quarterback who’s scored 28 rushing TDs in the last two seasons. That’s not a misprint, and getting short-yardage TDs will matter a lot for Barkley’s production. Beyond that, Eagles’ coach Nick Sirianni has shown a penchant for deploying multiple RBs, although he’s never had a player like Barkley. Right now Barkley’s ADP is early Round 2, and I’m probably not jumping on that. I’ll draft every guy I mentioned above if the price is right, but in cases of ties, I’m going to lean on slightly safer situations with more same-team history to go on.
Random thought #3: Wait on QB! But you’ll also be fine if you don’t.
I was always a “wait on QB” guy, but last offseason, coming off a year (2022) where the top four quarterbacks outscored the rest of the position by a decent margin, I started to rethink that. The emergence of a few elite dual-threat QBs (Allen, Hurts, and Jackson), plus Patrick Mahomes, gives us a few fantasy monsters at the top of the position, with a couple of other exciting young players perhaps ready to join them at the top. But as prolific as the “big 4” are for fantasy, the position is strong and deep overall, which begs the question: Is it worth grabbing one of them with a pick somewhere in the range of overall pick 20-40 in a one-QB-league? My preference is still to wait.
Quick tangent–If you’re in a 10- or 12-team league, you should be playing Superflex (where you can start two QBs). I’ll have more to say on that in a later piece. But if your league only allows you to start one QB, deciding when to pounce isn’t so straightforward. On the one hand, quarterbacks are the biggest stars in the game AND the highest scorers in fantasy. Last season, 12 of the top 15-point scorers in Half PPR were QBs. On the flip side, you need to load up on quality starters at running back, wide receiver, and tight end in the first half of your draft, and compared to each of those positions, QB is much deeper with quality options, and if you need just one quarterback to start, grabbing one after you’ve addressed other needs that have less abundance of quality is a logical approach. Does it make sense to burn a late second or early third-round pick on one of the Big 4, when you can get someone like Purdy, Tua, or Goff six or seven rounds later (or if you don’t want to drop that far, someone like Kyler, Dak, or Love three rounds later)?
QB is probably as deep as it’s ever been. Right now, the quarterbacks ranked 11-18 in Expert Consensus Rankings (ECR) are Brock Purdy, Tua Tagovailoa, Jayden Daniels, Goff, Caleb Williams, Justin Herbert, Lawrence, and Kirk Cousins. The next two are the game’s old men–Matt Stafford and Aaron Rodgers. Every one of those 10 players has a legitimate shot to finish as a top-12 QB (a QB1). How did we get so much quality depth? The answer is a massive infusion of young quarterback talent over the last seven years, with way fewer top-end fantasy QBs aging out on the other end. Last year, three quarterbacks who were first-year starters (Love, Stroud, and Richardson) all made a case for being a top 10 option this season, and are ranked accordingly. Other QBs like Tagovailoa, Goff, and Purdy solidified a “just outside the top 10” fantasy stock. Big stars Burrow, Murray, Herbert, and Lawrence return from injury-plagued seasons and have huge upside. This is economics 101: In one-QB leagues, supply greatly outweighs demand, meaning buyers can and should get a great bargain if they want. Thank you, Adam Smith.
The bottom line for me is that in one-QB leagues I’ll probably wait and grab someone in the 11-15 range. But I like a lot of the quarterbacks ranked in the top 10, and I’ll strongly consider them if they slip a little past their ADP. Allen in particular is intriguing. He’s finished as the overall No. 1 or No. 2 scorer in fantasy four years running and is as durable as they come. I think the best strategy with quarterback, since there is so much supply, is to be flexible, and to pounce on the guys you like best when the value is there. I also strongly recommend getting two of the guys in the top 20 or so. Quarterback injuries have been ugly the past few years, and more than 60 QBs have gotten starts in each of the last two seasons. If my QB1 gets hurt, I’d rather have a viable option on my bench as opposed to fighting it out on the waiver wire.
That’s it for now. Check back soon for more preseason content.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Please welcome David Hartman to the BBV staff. We hope you enjoy the consistent Fantasy Football coverage].