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    FantasyPros Staff | Tue, Jul 30th 2024, 3:07am EDT

Fantasy Football Values: Deebo Samuel, Christian Kirk, Raheem Mostert, Tony Pollard

Like sand along a shoreline, players’ rankings will continue to ebb and flow throughout the summer. Training camp news, beat reporter tidbits, contract negotiations and the threat of holdouts will cause shifts towards viewpoints, causing some players to be a prospective value and others to be selected too early.

ESPN, one of the most popular hosts/providers within the fantasy landscape, also has its own default rankings that managers tend to gravitate towards, which has an obvious underlying effect on when players are selected.

As I mentioned in last month’s article (located here for those interested in comparing trends), ESPN has significantly devalued the quarterback position compared to our Expert Consensus Rankings on FantasyPros, which resulted in significant opportunities for savvy managers to capitalize on. Knowing that they could wait for a round (or, in some cases, several) before addressing quarterback presented the prospect of filling out the RB2 and WR2 slots instead.

Back in late June, running backs were the polar opposite. ESPN had 17 running backs ranked within its first 33 players, while our ECR formerly had just eight. A clear emphasis was placed upon loading up at running back to avoid the common pitfalls associated with the position-namely injuries and committee situations.

So, have things changed as training camps open and we are a month closer to the start of the season? Let’s check ESPN’s fantasy football draft values.

Fantasy Football Draft Values in ESPN Leagues for July

Wide Receiver

The wide receiver position as a collective group starts off mirroring each other in terms of ECR vs. ESPN rankings before becoming more sporadic within WR2-WR3 territory, where the players begin to show signs of separation. In this instance, Samuel and Kirk were the first two notable options that showed a significant divide between the two sites.

Samuel is currently our WR15 and ranked out as the overall WR12 last season despite playing in just 15 games. His dual-threat ability as a rusher and receiver allows San Francisco to frequently scheme him into advantageous situations that can capitalize on his unique ability to generate YAC, a trait common to the bevy of threats that the 49ers can throw at defenses. The team has a number of players that demand targets in the passing game, ranging from Brandon Aiyuk to George Kittle and Christian McCaffrey. Having a healthy level of skepticism towards Samuel’s ability to replicate a high points-per-touch is understandable given the recent emergence of Aiyuk, but we remain confident in his abilities. Currently, our projections show that Samuel will be eclipsing last season’s totals by a healthy margin and finishing with nearly 200 Fantasy Points.

Kirk is one of those Rodney Dangerfield players who seemingly never receives the respect that he deserves in Fantasy circles. His final statistics in 2023 weren’t particularly eye-popping (57/787/3), but managers should remember that those totals came in just 12 games, and Kirk stands to benefit this year following the departure of Calvin Ridley greatly. Kirk will remain as the alpha dog in the receiver room for Jacksonville, and I fully expect him to command the lion’s share of targets from Trevor Lawrence over newly acquired free agent Gabe Davis and rookie Brian Thomas Jr. Should he remain healthy for the entirety of 2024 (a feat he did in both 2021 and 2022), I feel confident in our current projections of nearly 170 Fantasy Points in a half-PPR format.

Running Back

I’ll fully admit that attempting to find running backs that provided actual value was akin to locating a needle in a haystack on ESPN. Consistently, their site had players ranked a half-round to a full-round higher than ECR, so someone searching for a bargain will need to be patient.

In the case of Mostert, one can understand why his rankings would be variable, given the committee situation that Miami currently faces. Mainly based upon his absurd 21 total touchdowns last season, Mostert finished as the RB2 in Fantasy circles and eclipsed the 1,000-yard rushing mark for the first time in his nine-year career. Penciling in a large amount of regression due to an expected diminished workload is perfectly reasonable, but one has to wonder if ESPN went a little extreme in this instance. The presence of De’Von Achane and rookie Jaylen Wright caps his value, but placing him below Austin Ekeler and the ghost of Ezekiel Elliott is a bit much. Mostert is the RB25 in ECR and ESPN’s RB35.

Like Mostert, Pollard finds himself amidst a committee situation that has left even the best analysts guessing. The biggest disappointment of the 2023 Fantasy season was that Pollard could not overcome a preseason injury as the three-down option for Dallas and finished as the RB18. Lacking his trademark explosiveness early on, Pollard struggled out of the gate, scoring just two rushing touchdowns through the first 10 weeks of the season. More notable was his inability to capitalize on heavy usage, ranking just 44th in yards per touch during that period. Finally able to shake off the rust later on, Pollard did perform better down the stretch, but it was too little, too late for many. The Cowboys unceremoniously refused to sign him to a new contract, and instead, he landed in Tennessee to fill the vacant spot Derrick Henry left alongside Tyjae Spears. Pollard and Spears have a comparable skillset and are being drafted almost interchangeably, with the former holding a slight ADP edge based upon the financial commitment the Titans signed him to. If money talks and Pollard is on the positive end of a 2:1 touch split, this ranking represents value. Fingers crossed.

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