Fantasy Football Draft Outlook: Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Rachaad White

Preseason is fun, but we’re ready for the good stuff. Another week or so of fantasy drafts, and then we’ll be watching NFL games that count.

As we enter the home stretch of fantasy draft season, FantasyPros analysts Derek Brown, Andrew Erickson and Pat Fitzmaurice continue a series of preseason roundtables by discussing players in whom they’ve gained or lost confidence over the last month, how to handle the Buccaneers’ top fantasy performers, favorite late-round targets and more. Here’s the full article, and below we dive into one of the sections.

Let’s drill down on the fantasy prospects for some of the Buccaneers. How willing are you to draft Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Rachaad White now that it will be Baker Mayfield quarterbacking the Bucs instead of Tom Brady?

Andrew Erickson: I’ve been drafting Chris Godwin and Rachaad White ad nauseam all offseason. Godwin is so clearly the only reliable receiving option from the slot, and we saw Baker Mayfield pepper him with targets in the final preseason game. Godwin earned four targets (66% target share) on six Mayfield pass attempts. The Bucs’ slot WR was targeted on all but one of his routes. I have Godwin ranked inside my top 20 when he routinely is drafted outside the top 30 WRs. As for White, the dude is one of the cheapest three-down workhorses available in fantasy football. White played 100% of the snaps with the team’s starting offense, and he was the RB1 for the team last year after he took Leonard Fournette‘s job. In his one spot start without Fournette in the lineup last season (Week 12 versus Cleveland), White went 14 for 64 rushing and 9 for 45 (on 9 targets) receiving. He totaled a 90% snap share. The list of rookie RBs to earn a 90% snap share in a game in 2022: Rachaad White. But because I have been higher on consensus on those two, naturally, I am out on Mike Evans. Mayfield can only do so much, and Evans’ age has me hands-off after Evans’ down year with Tom Brady. Evans is also dealing with an injury.

Pat Fitzmaurice: Simple math is the reason I’m out on Godwin and Evans. Tom Brady led all NFL quarterbacks in pass attempts in two of his three seasons with the Bucs, and in one of those years, he finished second. In 2019, Jameis Winston led all QBs in pass attempts. So, for the last four years, the Buccaneers’ starting quarterback has ranked either first or second in pass attempts. I’m confident that Baker Mayfield won’t be anywhere close to the league lead in pass attempts this year. The target spigot is being shut off. Evans and Godwin are fine players, but the reduction in pass volume is going to damage their fantasy value. I’m more enthusiastic about White, who had 50 catches as a rookie and has a three-down skill set. That pass-catching ability should help keep White somewhat immune to negative game scripts if the Bucs’ season turns into a dumpster fire.

Derek Brown: I’m avoiding the Bucs’ offense like the plague. Baker Mayfield winning the starting quarterback job broke the final straw of hope I had for this offense. Mayfield’s play has been putrid recently. If I had any remaining belief that this offense could surpass expectations, it was tied to the theory that Kyle Trask could be better than we think. With Trask losing out to Mayfield, that snuffed out the final candle. Godwin and Evans are low-end WR3s at best. Where they go in drafts, I can name a laundry list of players I would rather invest in. Rachaad White is a poster boy for dead-zone running backs. The dead-zone siren song is the allure of opportunity. We should be investing in talented players over seemingly juicy volume theories. White is a replacement-level talent, ranking 34th in explosive run rate and 40th in missed tackles forced per attempt among 42 qualifying running backs last year (per Fantasy Points Data).