Welcome to the grand unveiling of the 2024 Fantasy Football Forecast, a critical juncture for fantasy football fans, marking the end of 2023 with our sights set on next season!
This guide is your key to navigating the endgame of fantasy leagues, offering vital insights for managers and enthusiasts alike, especially those looking to get ahead of the game for 2024 fantasy football drafts.
We will hit on all the usual suspects that make up the weekly forecast articles – air yards, target share, snaps, route participation, red-zone usage, etc. – but this time it will highlight how players/teams did from a season-long perspective (along with overlooked Week 18 contests) as we craft our rankings, takes and strategies for the 2024 fantasy football season. Because YOU can already draft fantasy football best ball teams for the 2024 season. What a world to be part of. Here’s the full 2024 Fantasy Football Forecast. Below we dive into a few notable names.
2024 Fantasy Football Forecast
New York Giants
Saquon Barkley tallied 18 carries for 46 yards, averaging 2.6 yards per carry, with 2 touchdowns and a long of 11 yards. 70% snap share as one of the true bell cows RBs remaining in the NFL. 3rd-highest snap rate in the NFL at 80% behind only Kyren Williams and Christian McCaffrey. Missed only 3 games due to injury.
Rookie Eric Gray played ahead of Matt Breida, perhaps an indication that Gray would see a larger role in his second season. Breida is a free agent.
Tyrod Taylor completed 23 of 32 attempts for 297 yards, 1 touchdown, 1 interception, with a long pass of 46 yards, and a quarterback rating of 98.0.
Receiver target details:
- Wan’Dale Robinson: 6 targets, 5 receptions for 85 yards, with a long of 33 yards. Finished the season as the WR61 in points per game leading Big Blue in catches. Don’t be too quick to forget that Robinson came off a devasting injury last season, but only missed 2 games in 2023. He’s a fine slot receiver with a decently high target rate (21%), but he will only go as far as the Giants offense will go in 2024. Still, I’d expect him to improve in 2024 another year removed from injury as the forecasted catches leader for New York. 20% target share over the final 6 games of the season
- Darius Slayton: 7 targets, 5 receptions for 62 yards, 1 touchdown, with a long of 19 yards. 2 red-zone targets. Finished the season as the WR55 in points per game leading the Giants in receiving yards with nearly 1,000 air yards with a 31% air yards share. It’s the same old song and dance for Slayton. WR4 finish with some spiked weeks trickled in due to his big-play ability. Steady late-round target for leagues that require a lot of WR starting spots.
- Saquon Barkley: 2 targets, 2 receptions for 51 yards, with a long of 46 yards.
- Darren Waller: 6 targets, 5 receptions for 45 yards, with a long of 23 yards.
- Isaiah Hodgins: 3 targets, 3 receptions for 36 yards, with a long of 15 yards. He led the Giants in WR snaps played.
- Sterling Shepard: 5 targets, 3 receptions for 18 yards, with a long of 10 yards.
- Jalin Hyatt: 2 targets, 1 reception for 5 yards, with a long of 5 yards. Logged a 13% snap share in the final game of the season is not encouraging for his career outlook. But it appeared he hurt his hamstring which limited his final weekly output.
Daniel Bellinger out-snapped Waller 81% vs 51%.
I was high on Waller entering 2023, claiming if he could stay healthy he would be very productive. Well, guess what didn’t happen. He missed 5 games. Waller has missed an average of six games over the last 3 seasons. And because the Giants’ offense was so bad due to more injuries, that also held back his overall production. He scored once the entire season. Although, I was correct about was that Waller was the clear alpha in the passing game. 21% target share and 30% air yards share. Among tight ends, he ranked first in weighted opportunity.
Before his injury Weeks 1-7, he was 5th in routes run (74% route participation) ranking 3rd in receiving yards and 4th in expected fantasy points per game. With Waller likely falling more in drafts after another injury-ridden season – even though he still finished TE14 points per game – he’s all reward with the same low risk as all other late-round tight ends. But I get if you want to avoid an extremely injury-prone player at an injury-prone position entering his age-32 season. Not hard to paint a picture of him failing to fire, yet again.
Denver Broncos
Javonte Williams totaled just 9 carries for 32 yards, averaging 3.6 yards per carry, with 1 touchdown and a long run of 11 yards in Week 18. Samaje Perine added 3 carries for 7 yards, averaging 2.3 yards per carry, with a long run of 5 yards.
Jaleel McLaughlin also had 4 carries for 6 yards, averaging 1.5 yards per carry, with a long run of 6 yards. He suffered a head injury and did not finish the game.
This backfield was a three-headed mess all season, with Williams leading the way especially after he looked FULLY back from his devasting knee injury suffered in 2023.
After Week 7, Williams was consistently playing above 50% of the team’s offensive snaps (53%). RB22 overall averaging 11.3 points per game (RB24).
But the issue is Sean Payton’s sheer commitment to using more than just Williams, who has never been a clear-cut bellcow at any point in his NFL or even collegiate career.
He ran fewer routes than Perine, who led the team in routes run out of the backfield. He does have an “out” in his 2024 contract, which does suggest the team might opt away from him next season. Also, his dead cap hit is low at $1.5 million. Williams desperately needs to increase his routes and third-down role to get to the next level for fantasy.
Because this offense features RBs in the passing game heavily. Williams posted a target rate per route of 37% in 2023. The only players that were higher were teammate McLaughlin (44%) and Chase Brown (43%). But considering Williams did it on 151 routes (more than the other two combined) it should be sticky yearly based on the sample size.
Williams also seems to have the stranglehold on the red-zone role, if we see an offensive boost from the Broncos offense. 8th in red zone carries in 2023.
So don’t write off Williams quite yet should this backfield go from 3 to 2. Because McLaughlin made a case to be the No. 2 RB in Mile High. Super-efficient as a rookie finishing second in the NFL in yards per carry at 5.4. He’s the handcuff to target behind Williams, not Perine.
Williams also tallied 264 total touches – 15th-most in the NFL even after a sluggish start. He only scored 5 times so he is a candidate for positive TD regression.
Jarrett Stidham completed 20 of 34 attempts for 272 yards, 1 touchdown, and 1 interception, with a long pass of 47 yards, and a quarterback rating of 82.0.
Broncos Week 18 targets:
- Brandon Johnson: 5 targets, 4 receptions for 88 yards, with a long of 36 yards.
- Jerry Jeudy: 6 targets, 3 receptions for 79 yards, 1 touchdown, with a long of 47 yards. 116 air yards. Was featured more than normal, leading the team in routes run.
- Javonte Williams: 9 targets (28% target share), 7 receptions for 43 yards, with a long of 12 yards.
- Samaje Perine: 4 targets, 3 receptions for 23 yards, with a long of 11 yards.
- Adam Trautman: 1 target, 1 reception for 21 yards, with a long of 21 yards.
- Denzel Mims: 1 target, 1 reception for 16 yards, with a long of 16 yards.
- Courtland Sutton: 4 targets, 1 reception for 2 yards.
- Lil’Jordan Humphrey: 1 target.
- Lucas Krull: 1 target.
Without any ideas about who the Broncos QB will be in 2024, it’s hard to make firm stances about Sutton, Jeudy and Mims. Also, can’t forget that Tim Patrick will return.
But to keep things brief, Sutton likely won’t benefit from the same TD production for 2 years in a row. This past season made a mend for 2022 when he was so horrible at scoring. But now that things have leveled out, after a back-to-back 2-TD season with 10 scores, we are looking more at him in the 4-6 TD range for 2024.
And that’s going to make things tougher for him because aside from TDs, Sutton’s usage wasn’t as great as the WR35 overall. In fact, it looks pretty similar to Jeudy’s aside from the TDs (10 vs 2). Both guys had 1,000-plus air yards (36% vs 37%), around 90 targets (21% vs 20%), 750-plus receiving yards and just under 60 receptions. Hard to see either breaking the WR3 mold unless we get elite QB play in Denver.
Sutton pulled in 59 receptions on 90 targets, amassing 772 receiving yards, with an impressive average of 13.1 yards per reception. His ability to make big plays was evident by his 23 receptions of 20+ yards, and he was a red-zone threat with 10 touchdown grabs.
Jeudy, on the other hand, showcased his route running finesse and quickness, turning his 54 receptions on 87 targets into 758 receiving yards, averaging 14 yards per catch. He had a knack for significant gains with 21 receptions going for over 20 yards. However, finding the end zone was less frequent for Jeudy, with only 2 touchdowns to his name. Over the season, he accumulated 114.8 fantasy points, coming out to an average of 7.2 points per game to a WR50 overall finish.
Mims is the wildcard because his rookie year was tough due to lack of opportunity. He ran a route on 41% of the dropbacks – outside the top 100. And we did see flashes with a 100-yard effort in his second game, along with another 73-yard game when he earned a season-high 5 targets back in Week 3. Was also named Second-Team All-Pro as a returner. Leave the light on for Mims to take off in Year 2 should he play starting snaps…
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