Fantasy Football Targets: Jaylen Warren, Jordan Love, Rashee Rice

When preparing for your fantasy football drafts, knowing which players to target and others to avoid is important. The amount of information available can be overwhelming, so a great way to condense the data and determine players to draft and others to leave for your leaguemates is to use our expert consensus fantasy football rankings compared to fantasy football average draft position (ADP). In this way, you can identify players the experts are willing to reach for at ADP and others they are not drafting until much later than average. Let’s dive into some of Derek Brown’s favorite middle-round fantasy football draft picks to target.

2024 Fantasy Football Draft Advice

Jordan Love (QB – GB): Love completed his first full season as the Packer’s starter and surpassed every expectation that I had for him. Love was the QB5 in fantasy points per game, ranking seventh in passing yards and second in passing touchdowns. After he had somewhat of a slow start to the season, Love caught fire after Week 9. For the rest of the season among 36 qualifying quarterbacks, he was fourth in passer rating and CPOE and sixth in fantasy points per dropback. During that stretch, he was also sixth in clean pocket passer rating. Love is a wonderful value in drafts if you want to wait on quarterback some and still have access to top 3-5 upside at the position.

Rashee Rice (WR – KC): Every year, we have to navigate these suspension waters for some players. Rice’s ADP could vary widely from league to league. With that in mind, I’m more likely to take the leap and select Rice in leagues where he slips down the board, or I’m looking to “play catch up some” at wide receiver, depending on how my draft has unfolded. The additions of Xavier Worthy and Hollywood Brown to this passing attack have also muddied the waters for Rice. All of this uncertainty will make drafters wary of pressing the button, but the risk will be built into his ADP. While we can debate all of those factors, we can’t debate that Rice is a supremely talented player catching passes from one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL. In Weeks 12-18, Rice ranked 12th in target share (25.2%), 10th in YPRR (2.77) and FD/RR (0.123), and ninth in fantasy points per route run (0.60). With every passing day, it looks like Rice won’t be suspended for this season. Buy the dip.

Jaylen Warren (RB – PIT): Jaylen Warren was one of the most explosive and elusive backs in the NFL. This sounds like a hyperbolic statement I know, but it really isn’t. Last season, he finished third in explosive run rate, first in missed tackles forced per attempt, and second in yards after contact per attempt (per Fantasy Points Data). If these numbers don’t jump off the page, then I don’t know what else to tell you. Oh wait, he was also 12th in yards per route run and fifth in targets per route run. Warren is a stud and outperformed Najee Harris in nearly every metric. While he finished as the RB29 in fantasy points per game, that doesn’t tell the entire story. Warren was an RB2 or better in weekly scoring in 50% of his games. Warren will still have to split a backfield this season with Harris, but if you’re betting on talent (which you should be), there aren’t many better options to grab in drafts that have his type of upside if anything were to happen to Harris.