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Last season, Davante Adams finished as the overall WR2 in full PPR fantasy football leagues. The year before that, he was the overall WR1 in PPR.
This year, Adams is in a new spot as he heads to the Raiders. Leaving Aaron Rodgers behind seems bad for his fantasy value, which is why his early ADP is as the WR4.
However, Adams has a path to be the overall WR1 again, and it's not really that tough of a path. Let's look at what has to happen for Adams to finish as the top dog.
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What Davante Adams Needs To Do To Be The WR1
Look, I get it. Any time that an elite wide receiver who has played his whole career with an elite quarterback changes teams, there's going to be concern about if he can replicate his success. Adams isn't the only player in that situation this year. We'll see Tyreek Hill catching passes from Tua Tagovailoa. A.J. Brown from Jalen Hurts. Amari Cooper from whoever is under center for Cleveland.
While changing teams is definitely an unknown, I think the situation that Adams finds himself in for 2022 is a good one, even if he won't have Aaron Rodgers slinging him the rock anymore. We'll get into talking about Derek Carr and that 2013 season at Fresno State when Adams caught 24 touchdowns, but first I just want to compare his situations in Green Bay and Las Vegas with some numbers.
Per Add More Funds, Adams was second among receivers in target rate last year at 31.65%. A big part of that was because the Packers just didn't really have much going on at receiver behind him. Adams had over 100 more targets than Allen Lazard, the No. 2 receiver on the team in targets. Aaron Jones was second on the team in targets with 65, which was also 100 fewer than Adams.
He was getting the ball so much because...well, who else was going to get the ball?
His situation in Vegas won't be quite the same. Hunter Renfrow had 128 targets last year, while Darren Waller saw 93 while playing just 11 games. Both of those guys are still on the team, but there's still a pretty clear path to big targets for Adams because of who the next of the receiving corps is. Keelan Cole has bounced around for years. Demarcus Robinson and Mack Hollins are depth guys. There's more competition for Adams in Vegas, but there are still really just three guys who are going to factor into this passing game, not counting the running back duo of Josh Jacobs and Kenyan Drake. Neither of them were really more than dump-off options last year, with Jacobs finishing with negative air yards and Drake with 71 air yards.
As for opportunities to get targets, Derek Carr was fifth in the NFL in pass attempts last year at 626. Aaron Rodgers had 531 attempts. While Rodgers did play one less game, simple math would show that one game didn't make the difference there.
Adams should see a little drop in his target share, but I think the raw numbers will be made up for by playing in an offense that will throw more. The Packers haven't ranked in the top-10 in pass attempts in any of Matt LaFleur's three seasons as head coach. Meanwhile, Josh McDaniels has had a top-10 offense in pass attempts in nine of his seasons as Patriots OC. And yes, he had Tom Brady for those, but LaFleur had Aaron Rodgers. And yes, the Patriots' pass attempts plummeted the final two years with McDaniels, but one of those seasons featured Cam Newton starting games and the other featured a rookie QB. Derek Carr is a better passer than those guys.
We can't finish this without mentioning Fresno State. Carr and Adams were teammates there. In Adams' second season, he caught 131 passes for 1,719 yards and 24 touchdowns. It's been nine years since then, but the duo had much electric chemistry in college that I'm sure a good portion of that chemistry is still there.
Another factor: what Carr did the last time he had a true No. 1 receiver for a full season. In 2015 and 2016, Amari Cooper averaged 82 catches for 1,1181 yards and six touchdowns per 17 games as the top option for Carr, and that was when Cooper was in his first two NFL seasons. Adams is better than Cooper, but the Carr/Cooper connection shows that when Carr has a true top guy at the position, he knows how to get him the football.
What Has To Happen With Other Players
Of course, one guy's production alone doesn't guarantee he finishes as the overall WR1. He also needs no one else to do better than he does. Adams is usually going fourth out of wide receivers, so let's examine what needs to happen for him to finish above the guys who are currently ahead of him:
Cooper Kupp - Los Angeles Rams
Kupp will be the toughest player to dethrone. Last season, he averaged 25.8 PPR points per game, while Adams was second in the league at 22.2 per game. That's a pretty big gap. Kupp also saw a huge increase in usage last year. His 191 targets were 57 more than his career-high. He led the NFL in catches at 145 and yards at 1,947.
Could he see that level of usage again this year? Sure, but with the Rams adding Allen Robinson II to the team, I think Kupp's going to see a reduction in his usage. The path to Adams finishing ahead of him just requires Robinson to siphon off enough targets for Kupp to lose two or three fantasy points per game over what he did last year.
Justin Jefferson - Minnesota Vikings
The Vikings made a coaching change, bringing in Kevin O'Connell. While he has a lot of experience with the passing game, you just never know what things will look like until the football starts. The offensive coordinator was the tight ends coach for the Rams, so could we see a lot of Irv Smith Jr. If the Vikings spread the ball out a little more, Jefferson could drop a few spots.
Ja'Marr Chase - Cincinnati Bengals
Chase should get even better this season, but you never really know with second-year players and he could see regression in the touchdown department. With the addition of Hayden Hurst, there are a lot of mouths to feed in Cincy: Chase, Hurst, Tee Higgins, Tyler Boyd.
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