Our analysts have put together fantasy football outlooks for all fantasy-relevant players. You can find them on our player pages and via our Expert Consensus Rankings (ECR). These will be updated throughout the preseason to help you navigate your fantasy football drafts utilizing our bevy of tools, including our FREE draft simulator and cheat sheet creator. We’ll cover players in different groups to help you identify those to target and others to avoid. Let’s take a look at our predictions for third-year players.
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Fantasy Football Third-Year Player Predictions
Here are 2023 fantasy football outlooks for third-year players.
Damien Harris has been officially replaced by Ezekiel Elliott, who signed a one-year contract worth up to $6 million ($3 million base contract) with the Patriots this offseason. The incentives-based contract suggests that Zeke will be nothing more than a breather back for New England coming to take the load off Rhamondre Stevenson, while also seeing an opportunity for goal-line usage. The red-zone opportunities are the only legitimate downside to Elliott signing with the Patriots from the Stevenson perspective. But in every other capacity, Stevenson should remain the team’s featured back because Elliott is way best his prime.
Therefore, Stevenson’s role in 2023 will be more of what we saw from Weeks 5-16 of 2022 when he was the RB13 in points per game as the Patriots’ lead back. And recall that even when Harris played alongside Stevenson, the big running back STILL finished third in route participation (58%) and targets (82) among running backs.
Also remember that Stevenson’s strong campaign en route to an RB10 finish was not fueled by touchdowns. Stevenson was one of the worst RBs converting from inside the 10-yard line as he scored just thrice despite 19 goal-line carries. His teammate Harris scored thrice from inside the 10, on just 6 carries. In yet, Stevenson still finished as backend fantasy RB because he’s a super-efficient running back – PFF’s 11th highest graded rusher – with pass-game chops. Stevenson finished as RB1 in 44% of his games last season, which tied Chubb for 6th-highest at the position.
If Stevenson experiences positive TD regression, it’s just gravy on top of his fantasy projection. It’s not like Elliott bogarting goal-line usage in Dallas stopped Tony Pollard from being a fantasy football stud. Buy the ADP dip on Stevenson that Zeke’s signing will undoubtedly cause.
-Andrew Erickson
The Pittsburgh Steelers running back took a slight step backward in his second season, falling to RB14 in points per game after a top-5 fantasy season as a rookie. However, his usage metrics were still very strong across the board. Harris still operated as a pseudo-workhorse ranking 6th in opportunity share (70%) and 8th in total touches through the first 17 weeks of the season. Harris also improved drastically after the team’s bye week operating as the RB7 in points per game over the last 9 weeks of the season. After tallying zero games with 20 carries through the first 8 weeks, Harris totaled 5 games with 20-plus carries during the second half of 2022. Should the Steelers undergo an offensive surge in Kenny Pickett‘s second season with a drastically improved offensive line, Harris could easily get back into the top-tier fantasy RB tier.
-Andrew Erickson
From Weeks 7-17 – removing the game versus Baltimore when Travis Etienne left with an injury – the Jaguars running back averaged 15 fantasy points per game (RB8 in points per game) and was the standing RB10 in total half-points scored. ETN would proceed to finish the 2022 fantasy regular season tied for 5th in carries inside the 10-yard line (23), but he only scored four touchdowns on those carries. He’s primed to see his TD numbers climb with the backfield all but his from the get-go in 2023 in ascending offense. Etienne also just scratched the surface of how he can contribute in the passing game. The receiving “role” has been his in terms of routes run most weeks in 2022, but targets did not always follow with Trevor Lawrence preferring Christian Kirk, Zay Jones and Evan Engram – who all stayed healthy in 2022. If one of those guys goes down in 2023 we will probably see ETN see a boosted receiving role. The second-year rusher averaged a 22% target rate per route in 3 of his last four games played. No. 2 running back/pass-catcher JaMycal Hasty, former Cleveland Brown D’Ernest Johnson and 2023 third-rounder Tank Bigsby are behind him on the current depth chart.
-Andrew Erickson
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