Sophomore Slump - Breakout Rookies Who Could Bust in 2022

Antonio Losada looks at this year's sophomore class of NFL players and identifies which could be overvalued busts in 2022 fantasy football drafts based on regression.

This past NFL season, we saw a number of breakout rookies like Ja'Marr Chase, Najee Harris, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Kyle Pitts, Mac Jones, and Jaylen Waddle. While some of these players will maintain or exceed their fantasy production from year one, there are some others whose production will become stagnant or even take a step back.

Second-year players can have a wide range of outcomes because there's now a full year of film where NFL teams can look and better exploit the player's weaknesses. The players need to readjust and show they have improved.

In this space, we are going to talk about the players from the 2021 draft class that are due to hit the sophomore wall, and you should try to avoid them at their current draft prices.

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QB Davis Mills, Houston Texans

I was very close to choosing Mac Jones for the QB to feature in this column, but ultimately I opted for Davis Mills. It's a little bit harsh, I know, because pretty much everybody was counting on veteran Tyrod Taylor to cover for Deshaun Watson's absence, although that never truly came to happen. Taylor was as good as advertised when on the field, putting up 16+ FP in four of his six games played, but that was it. Houston was forced to rely on Davis Mills, handing him 11 starts over his 13 games played. And hey, if you're Houston's GM reading this, you probably are pretty happy with the results! Of course, the Texans sucked. That was always going to be the case, Mills or not. Mills, though, came a little bit out of left field after getting drafted with the third pick of the 2021 draft third round.

Mills' stats weren't mind-blowing and he only ranked at the 50th percentile or above in one statistically relevant category: 52nd Pctl. in Completed Air Yards per game (122.8). When it comes to rookies exclusively, Mills was great with the second-highest FPPG average (12.1), only behind Mac Jones. As you know because of a certain Tom Brady case, draft capital is not the be-all and end-all of what or what not to expect from a rookie, but no one in their sane mind expected Mills to play QB2 in last year's rookie class – let alone with the likes of Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields being part of it.

Mills' season doesn't rank even remotely close to the best among rookie QBs in the past 21 years, but it's not the worst either. In fact, of the 42 QBs with 200+ pass attempts as rookies from 2000 on, he is one of 27 to average 12+ FPPG as a freshman, while completing passes at the third-highest clip (66.8%) and having a top-15 TD: INT ratio. The fact that he is around the likes of Dak Prescott, Justin Herbert, or Joe Burrow sounds very promising, of course, but it also gives me pause and indicates he might have overachieved a bit, even more considering the offense he had to work with. Houston isn't going anywhere anytime soon as the rebuild keeps going, so I wouldn't advise believing this thing will continue in 2022.

RB Elijah Mitchell, San Francisco 49ers

You get an idea of how lucky Elijah Mitchell was in terms of opportunity when you look at San Francisco's leaders in rushing attempts: Mitchell 207, Jeff Wilson Jr. 79, WR Deebo Samuel 59, Trey Sermon 41, JaMycal Hasty 16, and four more players with between two and eight carries. In other words, injuries cut the Niners' RB depth super short and they had to find solutions wherever they could. Enter rookie running back Mitchell, who wasn't even part of PFF's last run of projections!

If you were drafting Mitchell at all last summer, congratulations. He wasn't an afterthought, of course, but he wasn't getting picked in every draft either and you could easily get him with a last-round flyer in most draft rooms – which is reasonable considering SF entered the year with Mostert, Sermon, Jeff Wilson, and even Trey Lance expected to get more than a fair share of carries themselves. Alas, Mitchell ran away (no pun intended) with the rushing-attempt title among fellow 49ers.

Historical raw data doesn't put Mitchell in a great position among rookies, but that's mostly because he missed a good chunk of games himself, only "starting" 10 over the 17-game season. On a per-game basis though, Mitchell's 15.0 FPPG in PPR leagues ranks 22nd-best among RBs with 200+ carries as rookies in the past 21 years. Not bad. The problem with Mitchell's production is that he kind of lucked into it last year. Jimmy Garoppolo stayed as QB1 and left a lot of carries open for the rushers; that won't be the case if Trey Lance starts in 2022. Mostert virtually missed the entire year, and although he's out to Miami, he will be replaced by the pair of Wilson/Sermon in terms of touches. There is not a clear path for Mitchell to put up a re-do, much less with a rushing QB and a third-round RB (Sermon) waiting to explode after also missing time last year.

WR K.J. Osborn, Minnesota Vikings

Whatever cheat code the Vikings are using to find receivers come draft week, it is truly working for Minny. The last four WR they drafted proceeded to log 80+ targets and all posted 9.3+ PPR points per game over their rookie seasons in a group comprised of Percy Harvin, Stefon Diggs, Justin Jefferson, and lastly K.J. Osborn (Osborn, by the way, finished as a top-40 WR, beating Diggs' top-47 rookie finish in 2015). Of course, it's still early to say Osborn will turn into a long-term bonafide WR2/fantasy-viable player but the signs are already there. Or are they?

Osborn's rookie campaign wasn't that of Ja'Marr Chase, don't get it wrong. It wasn't even close to teammate Jefferson's a couple of years ago, to be fair. Osborn had as many opportunities to thrive as he could handle and finished the year with more PPR points than the likes of Doug Baldwin, Mike Wallace, Diggs, Dez Bryant, or Marquise Brown back when they were doing it in the NFL for the first time. That's no joke, folks.

With the likes of Jefferson, Thielen, Dede Westbrook, Olabisi Johnson, etc... around, PFF didn't even project a single target to Osborn in their preseason projections. Uh oh, the audacity. Then, Osborn went on to catch 50 of his 82 targets for 655 yards and seven TDs. Those numbers are a little bit weird, I must say. The Catch% of 68% sucked, as simple as that, so the 13.1 YPR and seven touchdowns are shaky at best and most probably an outright outlier. Osborn benefited from Thielen's four games missed and even got to appear in more snaps than the veteran, which shouldn't be something to expect in 2022 if all goes right for the vet. This is a loaded offense featuring a middling QB and a top-tier RB, so I wouldn't get too high on Osborn's upside entering 2022 even though his rookie year was good enough to have him as a borderline WR3 in PPR leagues.

TE Pat Freiermuth, Pittsburgh Steelers

So high was the hype surrounding TE Kyle Pitts that nobody cared about any other tight end part of the 2021 class... well, nobody except Pittsburgh's front office, I guess. Even then, Pat dropped to the 55th overall pick compared to Pitts' ridiculous top-four selection (the first time a TE was picked inside the top-five). All things considered though, Pittsburgh could very well be labeled the winner of this two-TE race when it came to their rookie-year production levels.

Of course, Pitts had a legit TE1 campaign, the second-best since 2000 in PPR leagues, only behind Travis Kelce's 2014 season. Freiermuth's rookie year is the sixth-best in that 21-year span, though. That's an extraordinary production, even more if we consider the massive distance between draft positions in both real life (fourth to 55th overall) and fantasy leagues (ADP of 33rd to 80th overall). Freiermuth's 75.9% catch rate is the second-highest among rookie TEs targeted more than 50 times in the past 21 years. His 497 yards rank 18th, and he also entered a select four-TE club of 7+ TD-scoring rookies at the position.

All of Freiermuth's numbers look good, but I'm not 100% convinced he will be able to have another productive season come next year. Even through a rocky campaign, QB Ben Roethlisberger won't be around, and going from him to Mitchell Trubisky is a downgrade, whether we like it or not. JuJu Smith-Schuster missing 12 games last season helped Freiermuth's numbers and allowed him to rack up many more targets, as did the absence of Eric Ebron (only eight games played). The Steelers offense is truly barren of talent barring one player per skill position, so the opportunity will be there but the defensive schemes against those three WR/RB/TE leaders might be too much to overcome, not to mention Trubisky throwing the rock.

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