NFC Target Analysis: 6 Predictions for Changing Siutations (2023 Fantasy Football)

As the second half of this two-part series focusing on teams around the league where target share is bound to change — read the AFC version — we are breaking down certain situations in the NFC here.

(Note: Chris Olave was included in the AFC article linked above because his situation resembles that of Garrett Wilson.)

High-Volume WR + Unproven QB

Impacted Player: Terry McLaurin (WR – WAS)

I wrote two variations of this section in the AFC piece: one centered on Davante Adams with Jimmy Garoppolo, and one centered on Michael Pittman Jr. with Anthony Richardson. Those were a bit unique though in the sense that Adams has been targeted at a truly all-time clip, and Pittman is about to catch passes from a rookie.

Here though, I’m splitting the difference with a focus on a wideout who’s seen his fair share of targets early into his career — though not quite at Adams’ rate — who’s also about to play with a quarterback who’s new under center — but not quite as green as Richardson. I already gave it away atop this section that this player is Terry McLaurin, who had the 11th most targets over the first four seasons of his career (477) among all WRs who have debuted since 2010. With Sam Howell currently in line to start Week 1 for Washington, it’s basically impossible to find a precise comparison to a fifth-round QB with one career start under his belt going into his Year 2 season. Still, there are a few recent pairings of young, backup-type QBs and Year 5 WRs with huge target counts.

On the 2016 Bears, Alshon Jeffrey played a couple of games with Matt Barkley and finished as the WR11 during that brief moment in time. On the 2017 Texans, DeAndre Hopkins endured a five-week span with Tom Savage as the starting QB, during which he also ranked as the WR11 by PPG. And then on the 2019 Bears — the season where it became clear that Mitchell Trubisky wasn’t going to be the future for Chicago — Allen Robinson also finished as the WR11 in his fifth full NFL season.

As I see it, there are three realistic outcomes for McLaurin:

1. Washington is committed enough to the future to grant Howell a long audition as the starter, so he plays the whole season. The results are mostly bad, the Commanders often play from behind and Howell throws a ton of balls and frequently locks onto McLaurin. Scary Terry records an elite target share en route to a low-end WR1 finish; this is the Jeffrey/Hopkins/Robinson outcome reference above.

2. Either because the roster is good enough elsewhere or Ron Rivera’s seat is hot enough, Howell gets rotated or flat-out benched for Jacoby Brissett, who’s a solid floor-raiser but would likely lead a mediocre offense. All McLaurin knows with this franchise is a revolving door at QB, and he’s finished as the WR27, WR21, WR25 and WR14 across his four NFL seasons. Even if he is coming off his best fantasy year in another season where his QBs stunk, it’s definitely possible for McLaurin to revert back to that WR2/WR3 fringe. Just look back to DJ Moore last year, who had to deal with five starts each by Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnold and PJ Walker; Moore finished as the WR34 by PPG on the season. Jahan Dotson could potentially command closer to a 50/50 target share with McLaurin in the outcome of a mediocre offense too, whether it’s anchored by Brissett or a mix of Brissett and Howell. This happened in Odell Beckham Jr.’s fifth full season, his first in Cleveland. Despite lofty preseason expectations, Baker Mayfield took a huge step back, the Browns offense finished 22nd in scoring and OBJ split target share with Jarvis Landry and finished as the WR26 on the season.

3. The final outcome is the most optimistic one — Howell is good! In a well-designed offense by Eric Bieniemy with an improved offensive line and above-average receiving corps in McLaurin, Dotson and Curtis Samuel, Howell is able to post the most promising season by a Washington QB since Kirk Cousins. In a scenario where Sam Howell becomes a quality real-life QB, it’s hard to envision McLaurin not being a high-quality fantasy asset. Looking into other cases where similarly productive WRs played with good-not-great young QBs at similar points in their careers, Year 5 Brandin Cooks finished as the WR13 in 2018 with Jared Goff, and Year 5 Amari Cooper finished as the WR9 in his first full season with Dak Prescott in 2019. And in both of those seasons, neither Cooks nor Cooper dominated target share — Cooks didn’t even lead the Rams — so a potential breakout by Jahan Dotson wouldn’t even threaten McLaurin’s bottom line too much if Howell plays well.

Personally, I’d actually lean towards Outcome #3 as the most likely. First, I’ll hold off on doubting Bieniemy until I have tangible proof of him calling plays for a non-elite offense. And second, while the QB class of the 2022 NFL Draft was generally regarded as one of the weakest in years — and this is just one NFL Draft analyst’s opinion — Sam Howell was my clear QB1 in that class. He has real tools and I think he’s a gamer, and his fall to Round 5 was far more of an indictment of the NFL’s perception of rookie-deal backup QBs than it was of Howell’s talent. Beyond my opinion on him, Howell played pretty well in his one start in 2022! That performance came against the elite Cowboys defense too, and Howell finished as the QB7 on the week.

At the end of the day though, given everything I just wrote on the matter, Howell’s level of play might not even correlate much to Terry McLaurin’s fantasy performance SO LONG as Howell remains the starter. If Howell is the guy for the entirety or vast majority of the season for the Commanders, then I’d contend that McLaurin could have a low-end WR1 season ahead of him. If the above Outcome #2 comes true though, where Howell loses snaps to Jacoby Brissett and Jahan Dotson is actively fed the ball more to ignite a subpar offense — and this option might receive the most votes if I were to poll the masses — then McLaurin’s current ADP as the WR21 probably isn’t good value.

Team Change for a Top Tight End

Impacted Player: Darren Waller (TE – NYG)

Darren Waller was traded to the Giants this offseason for a third-round pick after five seasons with the Raiders. Waller blossomed into one of the league’s most unique pass-catchers during his time across Oakland and Las Vegas, culminating in a massively productive two-season span from 2019-2020 that resulted in TE3 and TE2 finishes. In the two seasons since then, Waller has been hampered by injuries and organizational turnover, and he dropped to a TE7 finish by PPG in 2021 and a TE10 finish by the same metric in 2022. Not bad, but no longer elite.

Across 2021-2022, Waller had 136 targets in 20 total games — good for 6.8 targets per game. That average extrapolated across a full season would put Waller over 100 total targets and — while that’s not exactly how it works in a sport where age and injuries play a huge factor — Waller deserves some benefit of the doubt after seeing 145 targets in 2020 alone. Only a handful of tight ends have 3+ seasons of 100+ targets on their resume, and even fewer of them changed teams during their theoretical primes (under Age 32).

Three recent tight ends meet those criteria, though two of the three were circumstantially different from Waller. Rob Gronkowski was obviously a high-volume weapon with the Patriots, but he sat out a year before joining the Bucs and still managed to finish as the TE8. The following year, Zach Ertz was traded midseason to the Cardinals after logging five straight seasons with over 100 targets for the Eagles. A player who’s traded during the season doesn’t get the luxury of OTAs and training camp and has to adjust to his new offense on the fly, and yet Ertz was the TE4 over his 11 weeks with Arizona in 2021. Good tight ends typically don’t stop being good tight ends.

The most straightforward example also comes from a player who’s more stylistically comparable to Waller: Jimmy Graham, who was traded from the Saints to the Seahawks ahead of the 2015 season. Graham struggled to assimilate in his first year in Seattle, finishing as the TE18 overall and TE12 by PPG. That could scare off anyone planning to draft Waller near his current ADP of TE6, especially since Graham was younger, healthier and flat-out better at the time. On the other hand, Graham did eventually settle into his new digs, finishing as the TE4 in both 2016 and 2017. Graham’s debut season with the Seahawks is an important reminder that Darren Waller’s 2023 floor could be fairly low, even if he does stay healthy. But if you have faith that Brian Daboll can incorporate a weapon like Waller into his offense with a few months of prep in a way that Darrell Bevell wasn’t able to with Graham, then recent history otherwise tells us that Waller doesn’t join Big Blue with all that much fantasy downside.

WR1 on a Run-Heavy Team

Impacted Players: CeeDee Lamb (WR – DAL), Brandon Aiyuk (WR – SF), Drake London (WR – ATL), DJ Moore (WR – CHI)

Since 2016, only 21 single-season offenses had team rush rates of 45% or higher, including the 2022 Falcons tied for the top rate with the 2019 Ravens at 51%. Listed in order of positional ranking, here is how the top wide receiver by fantasy scoring on each of those teams finished that season:

2021 49ers: Deebo Samuel, WR2
2022 Cowboys: CeeDee Lamb, WR6
2020 Titans: AJ Brown, WR11
2018 Seahawks: Tyler Lockett, WR15
2022 49ers: Brandon Aiyuk, WR15
2019 Vikings: Stefon Diggs, WR21
2022 Panthers: DJ Moore, WR22
2019 49ers: Deebo Samuel, WR29
2021 Eagles: DeVonta Smith, WR29
2016 Cowboys: Dez Bryant, WR32
2021 Titans: AJ Brown, WR32
2020 Ravens: Marquise Brown, WR34
2020 Browns: Jarvis Landry, WR36
2022 Falcons: Drake London, WR36
2017 Jaguars: Marqise Lee, WR41
2018 Ravens: John Brown, WR43
2019 Ravens: Marquise Brown, WR46
2022 Ravens: Devin Duvernay, WR56
2020 Patriots: Jakobi Meyers, WR57
2022 Titans: Robert Woods, WR64
2022 Bears: Darnell Mooney, WR74

When two-thirds of those players finished outside of the WR2 range, that’s not great! And only three of those wideouts put up WR1 seasons, and one of them was Deebo Samuel’s cheat code season in 2021 when he rushed for eight touchdowns.

If you are looking for a silver lining here, well, there are a few. An obvious one at the top: two of the top five performances by WRs in these run-dominant offenses happened just last year. The proof that offenses can have it both ways is as recent as it gets. In Brandon Aiyuk’s case, that WR15 range might represent his ceiling for 2023 since the 49ers figure to keep the status quo on offense. For CeeDee Lamb, however, they are shifting from a Kellen Moore offense to a Brian Schottenheimer offense. It remains to be seen how that impacts the Cowboys in the win and loss columns, but for Lamb’s upcoming fantasy production, it could be a boon. The 2020 Seahawks, Schottenheimer’s last season as an offensive coordinator, was one of only 30 teams since 2016 with a pass rate of 66% or higher.

There’s another silver lining and common thread between the WRs atop this list: they played in good offenses. If the WR plays in a sound offensive scheme, it can work out for him even if the ball is kept on the ground a ton. Each of the WRs between 1-6 played in an offense that had a positive Offense DVOA on the season. Drake London didn’t crack that top six, but the Falcons had a sneaky efficient offense in 2022 despite abysmal quarterback play from Marcus Mariota. Arthur Smith knows what he’s doing, and even if London’s stats weren’t jaw-dropping, he’s the real deal. 2023 will be his age-22 season, and wideouts with his combination of size, physicality and route-running prowess are rare. The bar is low for Desmond Ridder to be a step up from Mariota — even if Ridder wasn’t all that sharp in his 2022 games either — and London’s stock could skyrocket if/when that happens.

Looking up and down this list, there’s obviously some boom-or-bust to London as a fantasy player in 2023, even if he’s a massive talent ready to make the leap. Just look at 2019 Stefon Diggs and 2021 DeVonta Smith, two superstars in waiting who were held in check by their offenses those seasons. But honestly, I do think a 2020 AJ Brown type of season is possible for London. It certainly helps that Arthur Smith was Brown’s play caller that season too.

As for WRs 7-21 on the list, that’s more of a mixed bag in terms of how those offenses fared in overall efficiency. The best fantasy performance by a wideout in a subpar offense by DVOA was actually DJ Moore just last year, and his reward was a trade to the Bears — another team on that undesired list. I think we’re collectively underrating just how far away Justin Fields remains from being a quality passer by NFL standards, and his struggles in that department to date have certainly translated to the fantasy performances of his wideouts. It’s hard to even wrap your head around Darnell Mooney at WR74 being the Bears’ top fantasy wideout in 2022, but it’s true. The more I consider this and other related factors, the more I’m out on DJ Moore in 2023.

It’s fair to fantasize about him in a new setting with a massively talented QB like Stefon Diggs with Josh Allen in 2020, but it’s also fair to completely doubt that Chicago can make the significant year-over-year jump in the passing game that it’ll take to vault its WRs into fantasy relevancy. Chicago’s offense should take steps in the right direction in 2023, but it’s hard not to look at the WR finishes on the 2018-2020 Ravens — who were tremendous offensively — and fade DJ Moore and this WR corps altogether.

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