Fantasy Football Draft Takeaways: Marquise Brown, Derrick Henry, Kyler Murray (2024)

With the 2023 fantasy football season disappearing into the rearview mirror, let’s take a look back at some of the weird and quirky choices or stats and facts that shaped how it played out. Below are 10 fun facts from 2023. If you have more suggestions, tag me and FantasyPros on Twitter with them. Here are 10 Fun Facts from the 2023 fantasy football season. Below we dive into a few notable names.

2023 Fantasy Football Fun Facts

Texans’ Run Defense Finally Got the Best of Derrick Henry

When the 2023 NFL schedule was released much was made of Derrick Henry facing the Texans twice during the fantasy playoffs in Weeks 15 and 17. Henry had regularly torched the Texans’ run defense before this season, averaging 203.6 yards and 2.0 touchdowns per game over their previous five meetings. Many assumed Henry would fair similarly this season. This Texans defense, however, is different under DeMeco Ryans. They held Henry to 52 scoreless yards and 9.2 PPR points across two meetings on 32 touches. Projecting defense from one year to another is always tricky; this was perhaps the biggest miss of the offseason.

Marquise Brown Was Better Without Kyler Murray on the Field

There were plenty of factors that went into this, including the health of both players and those surrounding them, but the undeniable fact is that Marquise Brown averaged 4.76 PPG with Kyler Murray at quarterback and 12.99 in those without him. Brown sustained volume during the first half of the season, making up in some ways for the lack of quality quarterback play — five 15+ point games compared to four below 15 in games without Murray. Brown’s air yards per target jumped from 10.5 to 13.8 upon Murray’s return. Brown also saw eight deep targets in three games compared to nine total without Murray. Unfortunately, the production just wasn’t there in year one of this new offense.