Geoff Lambert gives his bold predictions for next season.

This piece is part of our article program that features quality content from experts exclusively at FantasyPros. For more insight from Geoff, head over to GoingFor2.com.

We are barely into the new year and hardcore fantasy owners are already looking at next season. Dynasty owners are looking at the new rookie crop coming into the league, redraft players are watching the NFL playoffs thinking about who will be the No. 1 player off the board next season, and every fantasy writer is salivating at all the brilliant predictions we get to make that no one will remember come the new season — unless, of course, our predictions are right and we take it upon ourselves to remind everyone. Welcome to my first such article this year, my early bold predictions for the 2019 fantasy football season.

Josh Allen finishes as a top-10 QB next season
Allen ended the regular season on a torrid pace. During one particularly impressive streak, he was one yard short of having three straight games with 100 or more rushing yards, while also making names like Zay Jones and Robert Foster fantasy relevant players with his passing ability. Over that three-game period (Weeks 12-14), he had the second-most rushing yards in the league. Not the second-most rushing yards for a QB, the second most for any player — only Saquon Barkley had more.

The Bills will be big players in free agency this offseason and they have the No. 9 overall pick in this year’s draft. They are projected to have nearly $90 million in cap space (per Spotrac.com) and could be involved in the Le’Veon Bell sweepstakes. Whether they land Bell or not, they will be adding some talent to this offense to build around their young QB, which will only help his fantasy outlook. His legs will be his biggest asset and will go a long way towards him finishing as a top-10 fantasy QB in 2019.

Tevin Coleman lands in Philly as an Eagles and continues to be part of a committee, limiting his fantasy value
Coleman came into the 2018 season with a lot of hype surrounding his pending free agency for 2019. He was a popular dynasty player as many expected him to be one of the top RBs to hit the market and everyone thought he’d land somewhere to be the bell cow. All of that could have happened had he not been forced into a starting role after the Devonta Freeman injury. After taking over as the lead back in Atlanta, Coleman failed to live up to the expectations of his fantasy owners. Sure, he had a few good games here or there, but everyone thought he would be a stud and that only playing behind Freeman was holding him back — that wasn’t the case.

Now we are entering 2019 and he is set to become a free agent, but that large contract he could have received as the next stud RB for an NFL team isn’t likely to happen. Instead, I think he ends up in Philly as a pseudo-replacement for Jay Ajayi who will be a free agent this offseason and is coming off a major knee injury that ended his season. Unfortunately for Coleman, and for fantasy owners, he won’t be brought on to be the de facto No. 1 RB for the Eagles, but will instead share the backfield with Josh Adams, Darren Sproles, and either Corey Clement or Wendall Smallwood. He will get the larger piece of the pie, but a pie split four ways is nothing you want to be a part of in fantasy football. Coleman may go on to have a good NFL career, but his fantasy career takes a major hit in 2019 and beyond.

Mark Ingram lands with the Raiders and becomes a top-10 RB
Alvin Kamara may be the best fantasy backfield tandem in the league, but that could all come to an end after this season with Ingram set to become a free agent and command a big payday on the open market. The Raiders are the perfect landing spot for Ingram as he fits with what John Gruden wants to do on offense — run the ball. Ingram will be what the Raiders hoped Marshawn Lynch was going to be — a bruising, between the tackles runner.

Ingram fits the “John Gruden” mold as an older player but with a lot still left in the tank. Gruden will run Ingram into the ground, giving him a 1990s-type workload with 24-plus carries a game, and despite not being very efficient with those carries, Ingram will still finish as a op 10 RB based on volume alone.

The Raiders move on from Derek Carr and he ends up replacing Andy Dalton in Cincy, but still finishes outside the top-15 despite the better talent around him
We will stick with the Raiders theme and move onto Carr. Gruden will get “his” QB for 2019, and that’s not going to be Carr, especially at the price he is costing them. If Carr stays with the Raiders he will count $22.5m towards the cap, but if they cut him they only have $7.5m in dead money. It was a built-in “out” for the Raiders in case Carr didn’t perform up to his contract, which he hasn’t.

He finished as QB18 this year in fantasy, and a lot of Carr truthers claim it was due to his lack of weapons. I disagree, and when he lands with the Bengals as a Dalton replacement, despite the plethora of talent in Cincy with A.J. Green, Joe Mixon, and Tyler Boyd, Carr will continue to be a mediocre NFL QB and a non-starter in fantasy. He has become a QB that is very conservative, doesn’t ever seem to push the ball down the field and misses wide opened receivers on a regular basis. That trend continues for him in Cincy and he again finishes outside the top 15 among QBs.

Antonio Brown is not a Steeler next season and never again finishes in the top five among fantasy WRs again
Okay, the first part of that prediction isn’t that bold with all that is happening in Pittsburgh, but the second part is a doozy! Brown is a perennial top-two WR in fantasy and this year, despite all the Le’Veon Bell turmoil and then his own late-season drama, he was again one of the best fantasy WRs in the NFL.

So why do I think he falls off? First, let me set the record straight, I don’t think he falls far out of the top five, maybe even as high as sixth, but there are a couple of factors to consider if Brown were to be traded.

1) The team he goes to will not pass the ball as much as the Steelers, who led the league with 689 pass attempts in 2018. The second place team was 45 pass attempts behind the Steelers who averaged 43 attempts per game — in other words, they were a full game’s worth of pass attempts ahead of the second place team, the Colts.

2) His new QB isn’t likely to be as good as Ben Roethlisberger. Say what you will about Big Ben, but he is a good QB who has put up a lot of gaudy passing stats over his career and Brown has benefited. If you were to ask the casual fan, “Who led the league in passing yards in 2018,” you would likely get Patrick Mahomes, Andrew Luck, or Matt Ryan, but Roethlisberger actually led the league with 5,129 yards, which is the seventh-most single-season mark in NFL history.

3) There are a lot of other good WRs in the league that could push him out of the top five. Guys like DeAndre Hopkins, Tyreek Hill, Michael Thomas, Davante Adams, Brown’s current teammate JuJu Smith-Schuster, and a few others could finish ahead of him in 2019 — unless the Steelers find a way to keep him in Pittsburgh.

Carlos Hyde signs with the Bills and finishes as a top-20 RB
When I first wrote this prediction down on paper, it was before the Week 17 game in which Hyde and the Jags threw up a huge dud, but I will stick with my conviction despite the optics of how bad Hyde looked in that game. I also didn’t expect this Leonard Fournette drama to happen either and assumed that there was no chance the Jags bring Hyde back next year, but even that looks murky now. But, again, I will stick to my conviction.

The Buffalo Bills have a complete lack of talent on the offense side of the ball, especially at the RB position. LeSean McCoy is past his prime and will likely be a cap casualty, Chris Ivory has never proven he can stay healthy enough to be a lead RB in this league, and the Bills have too many needs at other positions to waste a high draft pick on an RB in a weak RB class. Hyde fits in perfectly in Buffalo as he won’t cost the Bills much to bring him in, and up until being traded to the Jags, was having a really good season with the Browns. He started the season with five TDs in the first four weeks and it looked like he would be the bell cow for the Browns all season. Then he was traded to the Jags and his season went downhill from there.

If Hyde were to land in Buffalo, I think QB Josh Allen, with his running ability, helps Hyde tremendously. We have seen in the past when a QB is a threat to run, it helps the RB because the defense doesn’t know which player has the ball on RPO (run-pass option) plays. That allows the RB an extra split second to find the hole to run through and gain positive yards. Top 20 would be a tall task for Hyde, but one that I think is possible on a team like Buffalo with their young inaccurate QB. They will want to run the ball and play good defense and that volume will push Hyde into the top 20.

Tyrell Williams lands in Indy and becomes a WR2, finishing in the top 24 for WRs
Williams has had some fantasy value over the last couple years, but, outside of his 2016 season when Keenan Allen was out for the year, he hasn’t been a consistent week-in and week-out starter for fantasy owners. That will change in 2019. Williams is a free agent this year and, with a very weak free agent class at WR, he will be one of the top prizes at the position. I expect multiple teams to be interested in him, among them the Colts, who are in desperate need of a No. 2 WR opposite of T.Y. Hilton.

Williams would come to Indy and immediately become the most talented WR on the roster not named Hilton. He’d have no trouble gaining fantasy relevance fairly quickly as the Colts were the second pass-happiest teams in the league — only the Steelers threw more than did the Colts. The three WRs opposite Hilton this year combined for 116 receptions, 819 yards, and six TDs. Obviously, you can’t expect Williams to take that complete workload away from these receivers, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that T.Y Hilton and Tyrell Williams form a poor man’s Antonio Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster.

I can see a scenario where Williams has 75-plus receptions, 850 yards, and seven TDs on a team like the Colts. Those numbers are in the range of a low-end WR2 with upside.

Le’Veon Bell signs with the Jets, but finishes outside the top 10 among RBs
This one is my boldest call in this article, but I think it has a good possibility to come true. There are only a few teams in the league that could afford to pay the salary that Bell is looking for and the Jets are one of them. New York will first have to find their coach, which could play a role in whether or not Bell would want to come to New York. If we assume that the Jets sign an offensive-minded head coach to help develop Sam Darnold, that might be enough (along with the money) to put Bell in a Jets uniform for 2019.

Now, to tackle the second part of that prediction. In Pittsburgh, Bell had the benefit of playing behind one of the best offensive lines in football, playing with one of the best wide receivers in the league and playing with a QB that orchestrated some of the best offensives ever. He won’t have any of that in New York, not even close. Don’t get me wrong, I think Bell is still a very good back and will be productive where ever he lands, but with all the good RBs that we have in this league, Bell will have a hard time cracking the top 10.

Here is a quick list of players that I think could finish ahead of Bell in 2019: Saquon Barkley, Christian McCaffery, Todd Gurley, James Conner, Alvin Kamara, Ezekiel Elliott, Joe Mixon, Melvin Gordon, David Johnson…and with full seasons under their belts — Nick Chubb, Marlon Mack, Philip Lindsay, Devonta Freeman, and Jerrick McKinnon could all find themselves pushing for a top-10 spot. I just named 14 RBs that could be in the top 10 next season and with Bell having sat out a year, playing for a new team, with fewer weapons, a less dominant offensive line, and an entirely new offensive system, I just don’t see how he finishes in the top 10.

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