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Antonio Losada looks at wide receiver groups expected to share the targets among their players, making the WR/TE involved bad assets to draft for the upcoming 2021 season.
We're talking about fantasy football here, and in fantasy, football volume is the key to rostering and fielding a winning team. While everything boils down to that concept, seeking volume calls for looking deeper than just the name and reputation of players. Put a wide receiver or tight end in a stacked offense (one featuring multiple top-tier pass-catchers and one or two great rushers) and his volume--and thus his fantasy outcome--will drop without question. The opportunities will go down and with them the chances of scoring fantasy points.
With that in mind, it makes sense to pursue WRs/TEs with clear and very well-defined no. 1 roles without other players threatening their targets. Even if the players in those offenses are not top-tier options, they will get all of the opportunities they can handle, which will ultimately benefit them. Those players might not be that good, but they will compensate for it just on pure volume. And the exact opposite is also true: great pass-catchers can rack up points even on low volume, separating themselves from the pack.
Today, I will explore some offenses that enter the 2021 season with a lot of players to throw passes to, making them dubious draft picks for the upcoming year. Let's get to it!
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Miami Dolphins
I definitely love what Miami has done this offseason. The Fins have added two studs to their offense and are counting on an improved second-year QB in Tua Tagovailoa--who should also play the full 17-game season now that Ryan Fitzpatrick is out of town. The Dolphins signed Will Fuller (will miss Week 1) and rookie Jaylen Waddle at the wide receiver position, retained TE Mike Gesicki, and opted not to improve the backfield with Myles Gaskin already there. Quite a packed offense, this one.
Is that good for fantasy purposes, though? That, I'm not so convinced about. Only Will Fuller has a 100+ target projection (PFF numbers) and even then, he isn't topping an 18% target share. That's because four other Dolphins (including RB Myles Gaskin) project to get at least 10% of the total passes thrown by Tua. Four of the five players with a projection of 50+ targets are in the 86-to-103 clip, which is a tight window to operate.
While you should never pass on drafting studs because of a single data point and value, there is a serious risk of getting the wrong Dolphin among all available. Who knows if it will be Fuller, Waddle, or Parker getting the WR1/2/3 role at the end of the season? What if TE Mike Gesicki turns into the most reliable pass catcher for Tua? With such tight target projections, no Dolphin is expected to cross the 200-FP mark while all five of them are in the 152-to-199 PPR points clip. And that is without even mentioning RB Malcolm Brown, definitely not a threat in the passing game, but another player projected to 93 FP and 118 opportunities throughout the 2021 season.
New England Patriots
It's going to be hard to find a lot of fantasy GMs excited about the possibility of drafting anything remotely close to a Patriots pass-catcher, but you can find yourself in that position depending on how your league draft develops. If that's the case, though, don't give it more than two seconds of thought and straight fade all men from New England.
Not only do the Patriots enter 2021 with Cam Newton as their starting QB (assume it, folks), but they also have pretty much all of their receivers crammed into a 30-target span--even worse, other than Agholor and his 95-target projection (a low one in and of itself, if we're honest), there are four players in a ridiculous 11-target gap. That can drive any and every fantasy GM out there crazy, to say the least.
There is a 27-target separation between the most-targeted (as per the projections) and fifth most-targeted player of the Pats, and also a 26-target distance between the no. 2 and the no. 6 pass-catchers. Agholor should clearly be the leading man in passing plays, but even other than him (and his bouncy game, which cranks up the risk levels), no player in this offense is safe when it comes to racking up receiving points. No, not even flashy tight-end signings Hunter Henry and Jonnu Smith, who are probably the most headache-inducing players of the upcoming season--and I haven't mentioned how PFF has James White projected to the same 68 targets as Jonnu coming out of the backfield. Ugh.
New York Giants
The Giants find themselves in a very similar position to that of the Dolphins (read above). They have gone berserk and decided to pack the offense at the wideout position knowing that they will also have a top-tier, healthy RB back in Saquon Barkley this season, and also a good-not-great TE in Evan Engram playing for them.
So they added the brightest of free agents in Kenny Golladay and also drafted a rookie WR in Kadarius Toney. Golladay should definitely be the go-to option for QB Daniel Jones. Sterling Shepard, though, has everything to outproduce Golladay and flip the script when it comes to finishing with the most targets when all is said and done. There is a sizable gap between those two and the rest of the pass-catchers, but even then, there are six players projected to 50+ targets in this offense, with Kyle Rudolph ranking seventh at a healthy 33 targets himself.
That shows a closer-to-New-England profile of pass-catcher crops. Choosing between Golladay and Shepard is going to be a coin flip, and the same will happen when picking between the likes of Engram, Slayton, Toney, and even Kyle Rudolph. Five players with target shares above 10% are going to be a massive upgrade for Jones to take advantage of, but a season-killer and source of frustration for all fantasy GMs out there getting shares of this Giants offense.
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