Featured Articles

The New England Patriots’ offense is one of the most prolific we have ever seen. Tom Brady has led this team to a multitude of playoff appearances, conference championships and Super Bowls. He is discussed as one of the greatest — if not the greatest — NFL players of all time. But does his greatness translate to fantasy points for his receivers?

Jordan Matthews’ Speed Score, Catch Radius, SPARQ-x Score, and Breakout Age point to a successful NFL career. Matthews also has been efficient when called upon. He has had a positive Production Premium in three of his four seasons and a positive Target Premium in all four seasons. Matthews is, in the simplest of terms, good at football. He consistently shows it when he’s on the field.

Kenny Golladay was off to a hot start in 2017 before being injured, now its time for him to reassert his dominance in the Detroit Lions offense. Golladay’s advanced stats, metrics, and analytics profiles suggests he should succeed in all quadrants of the football field, especially the red zone. 

In the final six weeks upon Kenny Golladay’s return, Marvin Jones posted only two finishes in the top 20. Golladay is commanding targets away from Jones, which is noticeably affecting Jones’s offensive consistency. Jones will still be able to put up numbers, but to a lesser extent when Golladay is healthy and on the field.

The ability to convert targets into receptions matters, and Davante Adams has been a prolific pass dropper since entering the league. How inefficient has Davante Adams been through four seasons in Green Bay? His 7.08 yards per target is less than Jarvis Landry’s 7.12 yards per target over the same period. Let that sink in. 

In redraft leagues on myfantasyleague.com, Davante Adams is going near the end of the second round with an average draft position of 22. In dynasty league startups, Adams is going even higher: in the first round. Dynasty owners everywhere seems to be frantically trying to obtain Adams as an ascending, back-to-back WR1 that is still only 25.5 years old.

It’s time for the Los Angeles Chargers to convert Dylan Cantrell into a tight end for 2018. Dylan Cantrell is far and away more athletic than Hunter Henry. He’s faster, has more burst, is much more agile and has a better catch radius. If Henry can do what he does with what he has, imagine how much of an impact Cantrell could have? Cantrell is even more athletic than Rob Gronkowski and Travis Kelce.

With Hunter Henry out for the year, it would only make sense for Cantrell to switch to tight end and show the league how talented he is and how dominant he could be. As a tight end on a prolific offense, he could be the rookie that tears it up on fantasy teams in 2018.

The Tennessee front office cleared out the old “Exotic Smashmouth” regime, and brought in the defensive-minded Matt Vrabel for a fresh start. No one should benefit more from this turnover than Rishard Matthews. After a promising 2016 season where he hauled in nine scores on 105 targets, his 2017 season was a letdown.

With target hog Jarvis Landry gone to the Cleveland Browns, Kenny Stills could easily push for around 115 targets this season. Of the 263 wide receivers that were targeted 115 or times or more in the last decade, only 6.5-percent of them scored below 180 PPR points, per Pro Football Reference

Kirk Cousins represents a massive quarterback upgrade for the Minnesota Vikings, but will improved QB play be nullified by a run-oriented game plan this season?

The Vikings were one of the rare NFL teams to devote more than 45-percent of team targets to the top-2 wide receivers on the depth chart in 2017, and the passing offense will likely run through Thielen and Diggs again in 2018.

Roethlisberger and Rivers are two experienced and proven QB1s that are very undervalued. Both were in the top seven last year and in the top ten the year before and now are suddenly being viewed as low-end QB2s. Roethlisberger’s 561 Attempts was fifth in the league last year. He was fifth in passing yards (4,251), third in Air Yards (2,451), third in Money Throws (24) and fifth in passing touchdowns (28).

Philip Rivers was third in Red Zone Attempts (102), seventh in Deep Ball Attempts (67), second in Passing Yards (4,495), and fifth in passing touchdowns (28). At 36 years old, neither Roethlisberger nor Rivers are not showing signs of age. Target one of these two veterans in 2018, and you will not regret it.

Patrick Mahomes will have to be fantastic to just match the deep-ball efficiency the Chiefs displayed as a team last year, and even if that materializes there is the matter of Watkins’ skill set overlapping with Hill’s in that area, and it is also hard to imagine Watkins seamlessly transitioning to his role in Kansas City.

Tyreek Hill was integral in Chiefs’ receivers leading the league in average target separation (1.95), a big reason Alex Smith enjoyed the second-highest deep ball completion percentage among starters. With substantially stronger-armed Mahomes taking over for Smith, the sky appears the limit, but there’s no doubt Hill experienced an efficiency boom on downfield targets in 2017.

Many will note Alvin Kamara is due for efficiency regression this offseason, but it’s easier to overlook how his end-of-season opportunity numbers were stunted a bit both due to under-utilization in the first quarter of the season and a concussion on the first drive of New Orleans’ Week 14 game that was killer for fantasy owners.

The Saints’180 RB targets from 2017 are right in line with a more-than-decade-long positional average, and since the Saints have an established baseline is in that range, a strong argument could be made that we see them eclipse that number in 2018. With Ingram out for the first four weeks, Kamara is in a great position to actually build on his 100-target rookie season.

It intuitively makes sense that rookie quarterbacks should be cheaper to acquire going into their sophomore seasons after struggling as rookies. In spite of these struggles, the majority of recent first round QBs have actually gained value heading into their second seasons.

In order to accrue dynasty value year-over-year, it would be wise to spend second and third round picks on highly drafted rookie quarterbacks.