AFC Target Analysis: 11 Predictions for Changing Siutations (2023 Fantasy Football)

There are various reasons for a team’s target share to divide differently from one season to the next: coaching change, quarterback change, other personnel change, etc.

Let’s take a deeper look into some of these cases for 2023, focusing on the AFC for the first half of this two-part series.

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AFC Target Analysis (2023 Fantasy Football)

NEW PLAYCALLER: Chargers, Kellen Moore (Offensive Coordinator)

Impacted Players: Keenan Allen, Mike Williams, Quentin Johnston, Austin Ekeler, Gerald Everett

After two seasons with Joe Lombardi as the play-caller, the Chargers poached Kellen Moore from the Cowboys to wear the headset on the other line of Justin Herbert‘s helmet. While it’s a near certainty that the Chargers’ offense will be stretched more verticality in 2023 – only the Colts had a lower aDOT than LAC’s 6.4 figure in 2022 – it remains to be seen how Moore will leverage his new group of weapons.

It’s a safe bet that the Chargers will run the ball more after nearly leading the league with a 67% pass rate in 2022, but Moore’s affinity for balance shouldn’t stop there. While Moore is adept at building around his team’s strengths, he still has a strong track record of relatively even target distribution in his offenses too. You shouldn’t expect one or two receivers to dominate target share in his offense.

Let’s look back to Dallas’ 2020 season when the Cowboys’ deep group of weapons all managed to remain healthy over the full season. Here was their target distribution:

Even with their backs against the wall with their salary cap situation, the Chargers managed to retain Keenan Allen, Austin Ekeler and Gerald Everett. Plus, they used their first-round pick on Quentin Johnston despite having more glaring holes than WR3 elsewhere on the roster. With those four, plus Mike Williams, it’s clear that the Chargers place an immense value on each of them for 2023. Stylistically, it’s easy and pretty fair to compare the role of 2020 Cooper to 2023 Allen in Moore’s offense, and so on for Gallup to Williams, Schultz to Everett, and Elliott + Pollard to Ekeler.

The most interesting comparison of the bunch is Lamb to Johnston, who have more in common than one might think. Johnston has the reputation of a deep threat from his TCU days and might dwarf Lamb regarding weight and length. However, he’s a YAC monster like CeeDee and might be best – especially early in his career – on schemed touches close to the line of scrimmage. I think it’s reasonable to project Johnston for similar rookie production to Lamb, and he finished as the WR20 that season. There’s some baked-in upside, too, should Mike Williams continue to miss games.

QUARTERBACK UPGRADES: Jets, Aaron Rodgers & Saints, Derek Carr

Impacted Players: Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave

Clearly, it’s a good thing when a top-10 overall pick and reigning Offensive Rookie of the Year has his quarterback change in the offseason from the combo of Zach Wilson and Mike White to Aaron Rodgers, right?

Or how about going from one offense with a cocktail of 35-year-old Andy Dalton, fractured-back Jameis Winston and Taysom Hill at QB instead to one led by Derek Carr?

Still, let’s look into recent examples. Returning to 2011, here are the other first-round receivers with 100+ targets as a rookie who experienced a clear QB upgrade in year No. 2:

Mike Evans: Josh McCown and Mike Glennon (2014) to Jameis Winston (2015)
Sammy Watkins: Kyle Orton (2014) to Tyrod Taylor (2015)
CeeDee Lamb: Andy Dalton (2020) to Dak Prescott (2021)
Jerry Jeudy: Drew Lock (2020) to Teddy Bridgewater (2021)

Now, here were those WRs’ yearly finishes (Half-PPR) in year No. 1 and year No. 2:

Mike Evans: WR12 to WR24
Sammy Watkins: WR27 to WR17
CeeDee Lamb: WR20 to WR18
Jerry Jeudy: WR44 to WR89
*Juedy was injured in 2021 and only played 10 games, though he averaged just 6.6 points per game in those 10 outings

Garrett Wilson and Chris Olave finished 2022 as the WR19 and WR25, respectively. Considering their roles and surroundings, it’s valid enough to compare Wilson to Lamb and Olave to Watkins. Both Lamb and Watkins had modest sophomore bumps, but neither of them blossomed into fantasy superstars in year No. 2, even with better quarterbacks. And Mike Evans’ descent from a borderline WR1 as a rookie to a low-end WR2 as a second-year player is a good reminder that team success (Tampa went from 30th in yards per game in 2014 to fourth in 2015) does not always translate to individual success, especially with significant year-over-year turnover in the offense.

NEW QUARTERBACK FOR A TARGET KING: Raiders, Jimmy Garoppolo

Impacted Players: Davante Adams

Davante Adams didn’t miss a beat wearing the silver-and-black in his first season outside of Green Bay, posting a career-high with 180 targets en route to a WR2 overall finish on the season. Adams had just the 21st season this century with at least 180 targets, which begs the question: What happens when a receiver with such enormous volume loses his quarterback?

Adams is alone in terms of that quarterback also being his college teammate, but there are four other examples of 180-target WRs who played the following season with a change of scenery at quarterback.

Here’s how each of them ranked across those two seasons in fantasy scoring:

2008-2009 Brandon Marshall: WR8 to WR6
2013-2014 Andre Johnson: WR11 to WR32
2013-2014 Pierre Garcon: WR13 to WR50
2015-2016 DeAndre Hopkins: WR4 to WR29

Adams is much better than Garcon was, and he doesn’t have a 6’5 frame like Marshall. For what it’s worth, Josh McDaniels was also Marshall’s head coach in 2009. Still, it’s scary to see how drastically two future Hall of Famers, Andre Johnson, and DeAndre Hopkins, had their stats fall off a cliff just because someone new was throwing them the ball. Johnson and Hopkins both stayed healthy in those follow-up seasons too! If the duo of Brock Osweiler and Bill O’Brien was poisonous enough to turn a 24-year-old Hopkins into a barely startable player, it’s at least plausible that Jimmy Garoppoloand McDaniels can cast a similar spell upon Adams.

ROOKIE QUARTERBACK FOR A WR1: Colts, Anthony Richardson

Impacted Players: Michael Pittman Jr.

Three quarterbacks were taken in round No. 1 of the 2023 NFL Draft, but only one of them is joining an offense with an incumbent alpha receiver. That’s Anthony Richardson in Indianapolis with Michael Pittman Jr., who finished 12th in the NFL with 141 targets in 2022.

It’s difficult to project volume for Pittman Jr. in 2023 with this limited context, so I searched for wideouts who had 110+ targets and then stuck around for the next season with a first-round rookie QB under center (minimum of 12 games started). Going back to 2011, here is the list with each rookie QB in parenthesis:

2011-2012 Colts: Reggie Wayne (Andrew Luck)
2011-2012 Browns: Greg Little (Brandon Weeden)
2013-2014 Jaguars: Cecil Shorts (Blaine Gabbert)
2014-2015 Buccaneers: Vincent Jackson (Jameis Winston)
2014-2015 Buccaneers: Mike Evans (Jameis Winston)
2015-2016 Eagles: Jordan Matthews (Carson Wentz)
2017-2018 Jets: Robby Anderson (Sam Darnold)
2017-2018 Cardinals: Larry Fitzgerald (Josh Rosen)
2018-2019 Cardinals: Larry Fitzgerald (Kyler Murray)
2019-2020 Chargers: Keenan Allen (Justin Herbert)
2021-2022 Steelers: Diontae Johnson (Kenny Pickett)

And with that same group, here is how they fared by fantasy scoring in Year 2 with those rookie QBs:

2012 Reggie Wayne: WR12
2012 Greg Little: WR51
2014 Cecil Shorts: WR67
2015 Vincent Jackson: WR61 (Injured, WR41 in PPG)
2015 Mike Evans: WR24
2016 Jordan Matthews: WR46
2018 Robby Anderson: WR36
2018 Larry Fitzgerald: WR27
2019 Larry Fitzgerald: WR37
2020 Keenan Allen: WR14
2022 Diontae Johnson: WR39

This is not the most inspiring group. The memory of Jordan Matthews’ dropoff once Carson Wentz took over Philadelphia’s offense should spook anyone considering Pittman Jr. early in drafts. He profiles similarly both in tools (6’3, 215lb) and production (152 receptions, 1,869 yards, 16 TDs from 2014-2015). Say what you want now about Wentz, but he was the second-overall pick and had legit size and mobility when he entered the league.

I love Pittman Jr. as a player and want him to statistically succeed, so perhaps Keenan Allen’s 2020 season might elicit some hope – especially since that was Colts HC Shane Steichen’s one season as the OC for the Chargers. But Allen’s production that season did require one of the greatest rookie seasons of all-time by a quarterback from Justin Herbert, so that might not be all that realistic for Richardson.

BARELY TARGETED ONE YEAR, FANTASY STARTER THE NEXT YEAR?

Impacted Players: Kadarius Toney, Skyy Moore

Wide receivers matter less to the modern Chiefs than just about any other team in recent NFL history. It helps to have Patrick Mahomes throwing the ball with an all-time cheat code in Travis Kelce, logging massive target shares at tight end. And it’s not like Kansas City needs to go back to the drawing board on their roster construction after winning the Super Bowl.

Still, JuJu Smith-Schuster did command 101 targets for the 2022 Chiefs, and he finished as WR29 on the season. It’s certainly possible that Smith-Schuster’s volume is mostly absorbed by the Chiefs’ third and fourth-highest-targeted players from last season: Marquez Valdes-Scantling (81) and Jerick McKinnon (71). Kansas City also used its second-round pick in the NFL Draft on Rashee Rice from SMU, who has NFL size and caught 96 balls for 1,355 yards as a college senior.

But the common sentiment heading into this draft season is that WR1 production on the Chiefs would come in the form of a breakout from Kadarius Toney and/or Skyy Moore; Toney is currently ranked as the WR39 and Moore as the WR62 in our Half-PPR Draft Rankings. And yet, both played minimal roles in the offense last season. In fact, Toney had 17 targets in seven games, and Moore had 33 targets in 16 games.

Over the last five seasons, only two wideouts finished within the top-20 WRs on the season with under 100 targets: Tyler Lockett in 2018 and AJ Brown in 2019 each finished as the WR15. Is it a waste of imagination to project 100 targets for either of two WRs who didn’t even average three targets per game in the same offense a year prior?

I ran the numbers. Going back to the consecutive seasons of 2017-2018, there were only two total cases of a wideout averaging less than three targets per game one season, then having 100 targets the following season: DJ Chark from 2018-2019 and Josh Palmer from 2021-2022. In those extremely unlikely scenarios, Chark finished 2019 as the WR16, and Palmer finished 2022 as the WR41. So even in one of those two seasons, the player wasn’t even startable in standard formats.

If you’d like to roll the dice on Toney or Moore, be my guest. Just know that you’re chasing that “legendary” 2019 DJ Chark season on the 6-10 Jaguars. Personally, I’d prefer MVS (ranked as WR77), Rashee Rice (WR92), Jerick McKinnon (RB43) and Noah Gray (TE48), all as sleeper values over Toney and Moore at their inflated values.

Fantasy Draft Advice NFL Keenan Allen Mike Williams Quentin Johnston Austin Ekeler Gerald Everett Justin Herbert Amari Cooper CeeDee Lamb Michael Gallup Dalton Schultz Ezekiel Elliott Tony Pollard Aaron Rodgers Derek Carr Garrett Wilson Chris Olave Zach Wilson Mike White Andy Dalton Jameis Winston Taysom Hill Mike Evans Mike Glennon Sammy Watkins Tyrod Taylor Dak Prescott Jerry Jeudy Drew Lock Teddy Bridgewater Jimmy Garoppolo Davante Adams DeAndre Hopkins Anthony Richardson Michael Pittman Jr. Blaine Gabbert Jordan Matthews Carson Wentz Robby Anderson Sam Darnold Larry Fitzgerald Josh Rosen Kyler Murray Diontae Johnson Kenny Pickett Kadarius Toney Skyy Moore Patrick Mahomes Travis Kelce JuJu Smith-Schuster Marquez Valdes-Scantling Jerick McKinnon Rashee Rice Tyler Lockett AJ Brown DJ Chark Josh Palmer Noah Gray