Fantasy Football Draft Busts to Avoid: George Pickens, Terry McLaurin, DeVonta Smith

It all comes down to this. All of the offseason fantasy football draft prep. All of the mock drafts. All of the time you’ve spent preparing for your 2023 fantasy football drafts will come down to the next few weeks. Are you ready? As always, we’re here to help. Our analysts have put in the work to identify players they are avoiding in drafts that could sink your season before it even begins. You can find a few of their least favorite fantasy football draft picks below. And for all of their targets and avoids, check out our articles from each analyst.

Pat Fitzmaurice: (Targets | Avoids) (Premium)
Andrew Erickson: (Targets | Avoids) (Premium)
Derek Brown: (Targets | Avoids) (Premium)

Fantasy Football Busts to Avoid

George Pickens (WR – PIT)

Pickens made some splashy plays as a rookie. He’s an acrobat on contested catches, a darling of the highlight reels. He averaged 9.5 yards per target last season, which is a really good number. Undoubtedly you sense there’s a “but” coming. (You’re not wrong.)

Pickens’ inability to earn targets last year is concerning. He had a 15.3% target share as a rookie. Pickens didn’t have more than eight targets in any game all season. He didn’t have more than six targets in any game from Week 6 on.

Pickens was near the bottom of the wide receiver rankings in separation last year, according to Next Gen Stats. He only averaged 2.0 yards after the catch, which was also near the bottom of the WR rankings.

The contested catches are fun, but when you’re making a lot of contested catches, it’s a symptom of not getting a lot of separation with your routes. That appears to be the case with Pickens.

-Pat Fitzmaurice

Terry McLaurin (WR – WAS)

Terry McLaurin’s 2022 season was a tale of two halves. With Carson Wentz under center, McLaurin’s role withered, as he had a 16.3% target share, a 26.4% air yard share, and 1.52 yards per route run. McLaurin’s season would have been sunk if Wentz had kept ignoring him all season. Once Wentz was sidelined by injury, McLaurin exploded with Taylor Heinicke under center. With Heinicke, McLaurin had a 29.8% target share, a 44% air yard share, and 2.73 yards per route run (28% target per route run rate). McLaurin’s skills haven’t diminished one bit. The problem has been the quarterbacks tossing him the ball. At the moment, Washington is entertaining the Sam Howell experience under center in 2023 (it could easily be Jacoby Brissett). With Howell and new offensive coordinator Eric Bienemy, we have no clue about the possible offensive scheme in Washington in 2023. Will they play slow? Will they be run-centric? You can’t just cut and paste previous seasons of the Chiefs’ offensive output and transpose them to Washington. Andy Reid had a hand in playcalling. How much is debatable, but we don’t know. With a new offensive system, quarterback questions, and play volume worries, I’m out on McLaurin.

-Derek Brown

DeVonta Smith (WR – PHI)

Devonta Smith was the WR28 in expected fantasy points per game last season. He finished ninth in total points scored above expectation. Overall, he ended the year as the WR16 in points per game. So why is he drafted as the WR11/12 overall?

Before Dallas Goedert’s injury in Week 10, Smith was averaging fewer than 10 fantasy points per game (9.7). He was the WR29 overall. But after Goedert was sidelined from Weeks 11-15, Smith went en fuego finishing the season (Weeks 11 through 18) as the WR5. The Slim Reaper was averaging 15 points per game in half-point scoring.

His current ranking is too heavily weighing his production when Goedert missed time in the second half of the season. Before his injury, the two were posting a nearly identical target rate per route run (20.3 percent vs. 19.4 percent).

In the season’s totality, Smith was a fantasy WR1 (top-12) in just 19 percent of his games last season (27^th). Three top-12 threshold finishes. That’s it. Fewer than Christian Watson, Mike Williams, and Zay Jones.

Per the FantasyPros consensus projections, Smith is WR16 in half-PPR. For Week 1 only, Smith is WR25.

-Andrew Erickson