Fantasy Football Hits From 2023. Players Who Surprised Last Year.
A win is a win. That’s how the saying goes, right?
It doesn’t quite matter how we got to the result. What matters is the outcome. And that feels especially true in fantasy football.
Think about the many decisions you made last season between the draft, countless waiver wire transactions, and of course, the calculated (read: less than 10 seconds before kickoff lock) lineup choices. Celebrating a droplet of victory in a sea of Ls is okay in my book.
But I’ll go a step further.
Understanding why and how something worked is intrinsic to my process. It’s how I learn to make adjustments or make similar choices in the future. With that said, let’s dig into a few of my fantasy football hits from last offseason and find a way to apply those lessons toward 2024.
Jordan Love, QB - Packers
I believed in the Packers’ succession plan for life after Aaron Rodgers. Even with just one start back in 2021, Jordan Love gave me all the analytical ammo I needed to make him a late-round target heading into last season. Against Kansas City in Week 9 of 2021, I saw:
- A QB with mobility (10.3% scrambling rate)
- An intermediate thrower who took what was there (7.8 aDOT)
- An efficient thrower on a low-volume offense with the potential for spike weeks due to a good surrounding cast (ranked 18th in EPA per play)
In short, Love had the makings of a solid streaming QB option. Whether it was via his legs or a multi-TD game from Christian Watson, Green Bay’s new triggerman could be a star. And as the QB5 in fantasy points per game (min. 320 dropbacks), he was. But Love did it in his own way.
The Packers’ QB ran the ball 50 times (designed rushes and scrambles) during the regular season. Putting that in context, Daniel Jones had 40 such touches in just six games started. Love’s lack of production on the ground torpedoed my mobile QB theory. Heck, everything about his 2023 campaign was different than what we saw in 2021.
Unsurprisingly, all you needed was a look at his final year at Utah State to get a better picture of who he really was stylistically.
In the end, I still got a W on Love; however, my process was flawed. As we head into 2024, understanding each prospect’s strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies will be critical to finding the next first-year starter to target.
Jayden Reed, WR - Packers
In theory, we were all in on Jayden Reed. After all, once a player becomes one of “Matt Harmon’s guys”, he's hard to ignore in the draft streets.
The only real concern was his QB and how impactful Love was going to be in his first year as a starter. I already went into how that unfolded above, but Reed’s skill set made his outlook all the more enticing.
As noted, Reed primarily manned the slot at MSU. If Love continued working the intermediate parts of the field as he showcased in 2021, Reed would in theory earn more targets relative to his teammates. It’s not like Romeo Doubs was an interior maven, and Allen Lazard and Randall Cobb were gone. Reed’s path to volume was supposedly cleared for takeoff in 2023.
Well, as the WR68 in drafts, the Packers’ rookie WR finished as the fantasy WR26. But how Reed got there wasn’t as I expected.
We already hashed out my error in Love’s style of play. His penchant for looking downfield didn’t jibe with my vision of Reed getting near double-digit looks per game. But Reed ended up seeing another issue I overlooked: his teammates.
- Christian Watson: 5.9 (targets per game)
- Jayden Reed: 5.9
- Romeo Doubs: 5.7
- Bo Melton: 4.8
- Luke Musgrave: 4.2
- Aaron Jones: 3.9
- Dontayvion Wicks: 3.9
Of course, injuries kept all of these guys from playing every game together, but they each played a role when active. And these are just the primary pass-catchers. Remember Tucker Kraft’s mini-breakout down the stretch? Patrick Taylor even mixed in for a few catches while A.J. Dillon was hurt, too.
Packers head coach Matt LaFleur’s genius of sequencing different personnel packages kept his offense rolling into the playoffs. But it was a nightmare for folks who drafted Reed in fantasy outside of best ball formats. 
- Yards per route run rank: 1st (among GB pass-catchers), (19th among all WRs with a min. 15.0% target share)
- Targets per route run rank: 2nd, 18th
- Air yards share rank: 2nd, 41st
We ended up being accurate in projecting Reed’s talent level. Even when he wasn't seeing a ton of targets, LaFleur was using him as a runner. Regardless, understanding a WR’s strengths relative to his target competition (assuming he has a competent play-caller) can help determine their true fantasy potential.
Rachaad White, RB - Buccaneers
To see Rachaad White’s value, we had to remove the name and team environment from the equation and solely focus on his situation. The way I saw it last June, you couldn’t find a better RB option for high-volume touches in the middle rounds:
“The simplistic approach to Rachaad White’s mid-round potential is that there is no one filling the Leonard Fournette role from last season, or at least not yet. The Buccaneers signed Chase Edmonds, but he earned only six red-zone carries all of last season. Meanwhile, White was picking up more and more work as his rookie campaign progressed.”
My issue was that I looked at the full picture and stuck to my initial assessment. It was uncertain whether Baker Mayfield or Kyle Trask was going to be the starter even heading into August. Investing in a RB tied to an iffy offense seemed like a situation to approach with caution.
Even with the volume, I thought that White would have trouble outperforming his ADP. But I didn’t really consider how valuable his workload would be. 
So while projecting team-level efficiency can be important, we should accept that we can also be wrong about those projections. Volume of rushing attempts and targets is the lifeblood of RB production, and volume should prevail as the primary factor to evaluate over team situation when ranking RBs being drafted in the mid to late rounds.
