The Patriots have made some big signings this season, making them very difficult to project for season-long purposes. How will that backfield shape up? Is Brady about to have a career year or even a record-breaking one? Or maybe they’ll run the ball another 300 times and rely on efficiency in the passing game rather than volume.
We assume Gronk is going to be Gronk. Edelman will likely stay in the slot with Brandin Cooks operating on the outside, and Malcolm Mitchell and Chris Hogan will rotate in throughout the game. But what if we’re looking at this the wrong way?
Fantasy analysts try their hardest to make the best possible educational guesses, but unfortunately, no one is right all the time. The Patriots stood out to me because of their abundance of riches, and how most predictions about their passing offense involve only a few players. I agree with those predictions, but I’d like to propose an alternative possibility: Chris Hogan could be a fantasy WR1.
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Not Just Another Hot Take
Seriously, I’m not trying to throw out another hot take. What I am trying to do is answer the question, “If we’re wrong with our projections and predictions, what would that look like?” To me, a big Chris Hogan season stood out as the most likely alternative to how analysts are currently projecting the Patriots receivers.
In his first year with the Patriots, Hogan finished with 38 receptions for 680 yards and four touchdowns. It wasn’t an amazing season, but it did involve some great fantasy weeks (as well as some total duds).
Hogan was also very involved in the Patriots’ championship run. His stat lines for the three playoff games were impressive: 4/95/0, 9/180/2, 4/57/0. Brady targeted Hogan twice during their game-tying drive in their historic Super Bowl comeback.
Hogan led the Patriots receivers, and tight ends in percentage of offensive snaps played with 80% (Edelman played 78%). Edelman appeared to miss a step this season, either due to injury or due to age, and at one point the Patriots were desperate enough at the position that they claimed Michael Floyd off of waivers. Hogan’s steady presence was critical to their success in 2016, and it isn’t inconceivable to think that he could be in for solid production this season.
Why Hogan?
Hogan didn’t have the typical career trajectory of an NFL receiver. After playing lacrosse in college, Hogan went undrafted and bounced around between a few teams before eventually landing on the Bills.
When his contract with the Bills ended, the Patriots snagged him up. Bill Belichick obviously saw something he liked in Hogan when the Bills played the Patriots in 2015 (signing him to a three-year contract), and his athletic profile should jump out to fantasy players.
At 6’1” and 220 lbs, Hogan possesses a 76th percentile size-adjusted speed score, an above average burst score, an 82nd percentile agility score and a 99th percentile SPARQ-x score per PlayerProfiler.com. Hogan’s combination of size and athleticism provides the Patriots with a dynamic weapon on the outside, and his 26.6% snap share playing in the slot is evidence that he is capable of flexibility on the field. While it’s hard to predict what Belichick will do each game, he certainly likes flexibility in his players.
It’s that flexibility that leads me to believe that if someone other than Edelman, Cooks or Gronk succeeds in that passing offense, it would be Hogan over Mitchell. Mitchell had a solid rookie season, but watching him made it clear that his talent is still very raw. He seemed to run a limited route tree compared to the other receivers on the team and earned only a 62.5% snap share during the year.
I expect Mitchell to develop into a solid role with the team, but I do not expect that to happen this year. If anyone other than Cooks, Gronk or Edelman is catching perfectly thrown passes from TB12 in 2017, I think it would be the athletic Hogan.
Conclusion
The point of this article is not to say, “Chris Hogan is a fantasy stud that everyone is sleeping on.” The point is to recognize that we can always be wrong in our analysis and that in knowing and accepting that we can be wrong, exploring how that could happen can be beneficial.
We spend so much time in the offseason thinking about the most likely outcomes for the upcoming season that if those predictions fail, we become slow to react or stubborn to change our outlooks. Analyzing alternative outcomes now can help us to recognize those outcomes should they surface later and check the inherent subjectivity of our predictions and the unpredictable nature of the NFL.
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Aidan Mcgrath is a correspondent at FantasyPros. For more from Aidan, check out his archive and follow him @ffaidanmcgrath.
