Fantasy Football Breakouts: Kyle Pitts, Drake London, Tyjae Spears

A look at a few players who could break out in 2024 fantasy football you need to target in drafts. Here are some of our favorite fantasy football breakouts to draft ahead of the 2024 season.

Breakout Players

Tyjae Spears (RB – TEN)

The second year running back out of Tulane is a popular sleeper/breakout pick this year, and for good reason. While the arrival of Tony Pollard has watered down the firestorm of hype Spears was set to receive after Derrick Henry‘s departure, there’s still plenty of flames burning in Spears’ outlook.

He was extremely efficient last season on limited volume behind King Henry, tallying the sixth-most yards per touch at 5.5 and the fifth-most yards created per touch at 4.58. He notched the fifth-best breakaway run rate and was especially effective as a pass catcher, finishing 11th in yards per route run. All indications are Tennessee wants to sling it this year, which benefits Spears and his pass-catching chops. New head coach Brian Callahan made it clear, stating “the teams that win the most games are generally the teams that pass the ball the best.” Adding Calvin Ridley and Tyler Boyd also signaled a shift in philosophy.

The Titans targeted their running backs 106 times last year with Spears seeing 70 of them. That’s right around the average for the Bengals over the past five seasons, where Callahan was the offensive coordinator, but in 2022 they tossed it to the running backs 130 times. There’s a strong likelihood we see a bevy of running back targets in Tennessee this season. Of course, Henry’s departure also unlocks tons of rushing attempts. It’s unlikely they hit 383 rushing attempts again this season, but with Spears accounting for just 100 carries last season, there’s plenty of room for an uptick. Last season was the first year Pollard cleared 200 carries, and his efficiency took a major hit. I would expect this to be a pretty clean split between the two, with Spears being the preferred pass-catcher. If we project him for 150 rushing attempts at the same efficiency, he’s closing in on 700-800 rushing yards. Add in his receiving work, and he’s well over the 1,000-yard mark. These projections are optimistic, but you can see the upside for a solid RB2 campaign from Spears.

Drake London (WR – ATL) & Kyle Pitts (TE – ATL)

Perhaps the most obvious breakout candidates of all time, both Drake London and Kyle Pitts are on a collision course of talent and timing. Drake London finished last season with the fourth-best average cushion among wide receivers at 6.79, but his catchable target rate was all the way down at 36th with a mark of 73.4%. He was 35th in target quality rating and 36th in unrealized air yards. Pitts landed the second-best average cushion among tight ends with 5.88, while suffering the 37th-highest catchable target rate and target quality rating. He was number one in unrealized air yards with 479.

The Falcons finished last season with the fourth-lowest pass rate, but we should see a dramatic shift there with the arrival of offensive coordinator Zac Robinson and quarterback Kirk Cousins. The Rams were consistently in the middle or slightly above league average in pass rate, and Cousins has always preferred to sling it. Prior to last season, Cousins was consistently rated one of the best deep ball passers in the game. In 2021, he registered the third-best PFF grade on deep passes with a score of 96.2. In 2022 he was ninth at 91.5.

This is the perfect marriage between quarterback, pass-catchers and new offensive coordinator. After all, Cousins chose the Falcons for a reason.