Dynasty Analysis
Mike Davis was nothing short of exceptional in 2021 completing the year with 642 yards on 165 rushing attempts along with securing 59 of 70 targets for 373 yards and eight total touchdowns. He showed great contact balance and elusiveness all year and proved his worth and upside as a borderline elite pass-catcher. The 28-year-old career backup finished last season as the fantasy RB11 in PPR formats with the third-highest catch rate among running backs (84%) and the second-most games with five or more receptions among running backs (7).
As the first week in NFL Free Agency has come and gone, dynasty owners can now sit back and take in all that transpired. In general, the highly anticipated free agency period did not quite live up to the hype. There were not as many big splash landings as the dynasty community had hoped for. The reduced salary cap played a significant role in the lack of major long-term contracts we have come to expect when big names hit the open market. With that said, some moves do spark some excitement in terms of fantasy football.
Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah was a two-sport star at Bethel High School in Hampton, Virginia. The stud defender came to Notre Dame as a three-star prospect and the 17th rated overall player coming out of Virginia in 2017. (247sports.com) Once he cracked the Notre Dame starting lineup, Owusu-Koramoah made national headlines with his play, winning the Butkus Award as the country’s top linebacker. He was also named first-team Associated Press All-American, ACC Defensive Player of the Year, a finalist for the Bednarik Award, and a finalist for the Nagurski Trophy. In 2020, Owusu-Koramoah led the Irish to an NCAA playoff birth and the Rose Bowl.
With Russell Wilson trade rumors swirling around the league, Seattle decided to bring back the starting running back that has lined up next to him the past four seasons. Last week, Chris Carson agreed to a two-year deal worth up to $14.6M, per reports from NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero. The deal also includes a third voidable year that makes the contract cap-friendly.
As the great movie “Talladega Nights” informed us all, America is all about speed. Hot, nasty, bad-ass speed. Washington has taken that to heart and signed arguably the most competent and fastest wideout on the free agency market. Curtis Samuel. His signing now makes the college dream of his and Terry McLaurin into reality and nightmares for NFC East defensive coordinators. This one, two, punch is now in my mind, one of the best in the NFC, if not the NFL.
Before everyone goes out and gets Fitzmagic Washington jerseys, everyone needs to take a step back and take a deep breath. Washington is bringing back their entire quarterback room minus Dwayne Haskins, to whom I say good riddance, and is a story for another day. The contract is also another possible indicator of what Washington is planning to do with the quarterback position. Signing him for only a year and $10 million means they aren’t entirely assured of him being the starter the whole year let alone in the future. While I forecast Ryan as the opening day starter, the odds of him finishing up the year as the starting quarterback are slim.
Over the past two years, players that have been drafted after the second round of the rookie draft picks have not had a high success rate. For this exercise, we are going to view success as defined as holding a current ADP in Superflex startup drafts inside the top 200. Within the top 200 feels like a solid spot for an arbitrary cut-off because that can include players who may not have had a successful fantasy finish, yet but they still hold value since their rookie draft took place.
Hotly debated heading into rookie drafts last season and now again this season is the potential of Eagles wide receiver, Jalen Reagor. Is he good? Do you want him on your fantasy team? Are the Eagles bad at developing wide receiver talent? All of these are valid questions that we honestly don’t have a definite answer to. I’m going to try to provide those answers today.
After recent free agent signings, some have cooled on running backs entering their 2nd season. Jonathan Tayor, D’Andre Swift, and James Robinson have seen their value dip with the worry of a veteran backup coming in to take some of the workloads. I firmly believe there is nothing to worry about with these three backs, but I wanted to see if the numbers back me up. Here’s what I found.
Day one of the NFL’s free agency period only had a few big-name offensive skill players find teams. But there was one extremely active team…the New England Patriots. The Patriots made roughly 99% of the signings on Monday and each one came with criticism. On the offensive side of the ball, they added Jonnu Smith at the tight end position and the wide receiver duo of Agholor and Bourne. Agholor signs a two-year $26 million dollar deal while Bourne signed a three-year deal, worth $22.5 million.
Joe Douglas gets his first free agent of 2021 as the Jets finally look to rebuild their organization after two years of tearing it down. The Twitter analysts are on both sides of the good and the bad for his fantasy value, but the one thing everyone agrees on is the value of the contract. The Jets didn’t blow the bank open for the biggest name (yet) but instead charged along “Joe Douglas” way by finding the value in the market. Davis didn’t start to show signs of being worth his first-round pick until last year which was his fourth year in the league.
In college Jonnu Smith broke out as a true freshman for FIU with 388 yards and two TDs, earning a dominator rating of 23.8%. A 710 yard and eight TD sophomore season was Smith’s most productive, as he earned a 42.6% dominator rating. However, injuries slowed down Smith in the latter half of his collegiate career. Smith was a piece of the 2016 Jared Goff trade that landed the Titans a litany of draft capital. Smith was selected in the third round of the 2017 NFL Draft by the Tennessee Titans at the 100th overall pick. In his four seasons with the Titans, Smith amassed 114 catches for 1,302 yards and 16 TDs. He is coming off his most productive season in which he turned 65 targets into 41 catches, 448 yards, and eight TDs along with one rushing TD. He finished as the TE20 in fantasy football, underperforming based on his TE16 dynasty ADP.
As the start of NFL free agency inches closer, now is an excellent time to explore some landing spots that could boost Will Fuller’s outlook. The speedy wideout will be entering his sixth season and is coming off a year cut short due to a six-game PED suspension after Week 12. Fuller was on pace for a monster season, posting career-highs in receptions, yards, and TDs to the tune of 53/879/8 in 11 games played. He was the WR8 in PPR scoring during that stretch. The suspension came at a crucial time in the fantasy season as those who owned him had to find a way to replace that production heading into the fantasy playoffs.
Harris found more success in his sophomore season. In ten games, he carried the ball 137 times for 691 yards and 2 TDs. However, with just 7 targets in that span, he failed to make a real impact in the receiving game. During that stretch of ten games–Weeks 4 through 14–Harris was the RB29. His 9.1 PPR points per game placed him between Devin Singletary and Jamaal Williams for the season.
The year was 2014, amongst many other discrepancies in the world, Jimmy Graham changed his Twitter bio to inform the world that he was a wide receiver, not a tight end. An NFL arbitrator had to step in and rule on this case. Why is this important? Because Jimmy Graham was franchised tagged by the New Orleans Saints and wanted to be designated as a wide receiver rather than a tight end. Graham lined up split out on 67% of the Saints snaps the previous season. If Graham had been designated as a wide receiver, he would have made 71% more money on his franchise tender than as a tight end. The NFL arbitrator ruled that Graham was a tight end, saving Mickey Loomis millions of dollars.
Today is March 11, 2021, this is important because we are less than a week away from Free Agency. On March 17th we will likely find out where players such as JuJu Smith-Schuster, Kenny Golladay, Aaron Jones, Will Fuller, Curtis Samuel, Corey Davis, Todd Gurley, Marvin Jones Jr., Kenyan Drake, T.Y. Hilton, A.J. Green, and Hunter Henry will land. There are 43 days until the NFL Draft, and in most years we would have the NFL Combine to overreact to, however, as you know the NFL Combine was canceled due to the pandemic. Although we do not get to see all of the relevant players get their testing measurables in the same conditions, we still will get good data from the school’s Pro-Days.
On the surface, this feels like a signing that should mean nothing, however, this could be the best news David Johnson managers received since he signed his own extension nine days ago! David Johnson is most likely nearing the end of his fantasy relevance, but with an extension and the chance of Mark Ingram being his top competition for touches this year, he may just go out with a BANG! His health is a concern, but in the 12 games that Johnson was on the field in 2020, he scored double-digit points. Those numbers are golden for a player with an expert consensus ranking of RB27 on FantasyPros.
Heady Mafia, the franchise tag option deadline for NFL teams has come and past and you know what that means. Chaos and bedlam all over the place! Now, most people will just give you a list of teams that this player might sign with and others give teams that can offer the most money but let’s be honest. Only one thing matters to us. Fantasy production. In particular, fantasy production for the hottest running back on the market and the one I own in most of my dynasty leagues, Aaron Jones (AJ33).
Every season teams lose valuable receiving options from the prior year, and every season fantasy managers daydream about the possibility of a random bench piece inheriting all that volume. While this narrative has played about favorably for a handful of players, in the grand scheme of the NFL, it is actually very rare. “Vacated Targets” is the snake oil of fantasy football. Don’t let yourself get duped.
Every year in fantasy football, there are players who take the next step towards becoming “must-own” dynasty assets. Finding who these players are is one of the many things that make fantasy football such a challenging and rewarding game. The purpose of this article is to discuss a few of those targets who could be on the cusp of entering top-12 first-round dynasty status.
Kwity Paye came out of Bishop Hendricken high school as a three-star defensive lineman with plenty of accolades to his name. Coming out of Rhode Island, Paye was at a camp where he clocked a spectacular 4.5 40-yard dash, vaulting him to the top-ranked player in his state for the 2017 recruiting class. A high 3-star recruit, Paye was a First-Team All-State pick. Off the field, Paye won the Rhode Island State Championship in Long Jump with a mark of 21 feet and 5 inches. The stud defender had his choice of multiple offers but ultimately decided that Ann Arbor was the right place for him. While at Michigan, Paye carved out a solid career for the Wolverines.
Last year I looked into the Restricted Free Agent (RFA) market in search of sleepers we may be able to dig up. Unfortunately, it wasn’t that exciting. The likes of Kendrick Bourne, Isaiah McKenzie, David Moore, and others ended up resigning and had limited impact throughout the year. The best of that group last year was Keelan Cole who ended up with 55/642/5. We as dynasty owners are always trying to find value or that next guy that could take a leap. The free-agent class this season is much deeper and more exciting. However, for fantasy, we are always looking for that throw-in piece into a trade or a player forgotten as an afterthought. I am hoping to give you some names to grab before the beginning of free agency to acquire cheaply or for nothing at all.
Around this time each season, the dynasty community seems to grow a little bit bigger. There is a resurgence of enquiring social media posts along the lines of “Has anyone played dynasty fantasy football? It looks really fun but I’m not sure where or how to begin”. Every time I see one of these, I get excited. So excited in fact I have decided to write an article, for you – the enquiring mind. Here at Dynasty Football Factory, we want to ensure that all levels of dynasty players are catered for – from the beginner who has never been in a league, to the most seasoned of players.
The best way to play fantasy football is to not care about the rules of the game at all. My home league had one flaw that kept hassling us as the years went by. We completely forgot that fantasy football is a game. It’s a game about a game and you make the rules. Why not play around with them? Keep you and your friends on their toes! Give no one an edge by mixing it up with your redraft leagues every year.
The Rayne Dakota Prescott contract saga in Dallas is finally over. After months of “will they, won’t they?”, sanity has prevailed and Prescott has signed a four-year contract to remain the franchise quarterback of America’s Team. Adam Schefter announced the details of the contract which includes $126million in guaranteed money and Dak will earn an eye-watering $75M in his first year which includes a record-breaking $66M (!) signing bonus.