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Fantasy expert Frankie Soler analyzes the New York Giants' depth charts and position battles for the 2015 fantasy football and NFL season.
Previous Team Previews on the Cowboys, Saints and Bucs can be found here.
Odell Beckham Jr. By now you’ve all heard the name and seen one of the most spectacular catches in NFL history. One of the hot topics heading into the 2015 fantasy season has been where to rank Odell Beckham among wide receivers. In fact, Beckham has garnered so much attention that the rest of the Giants roster is often overlooked. That’s a real shame, because there’s actually some fantasy value to be had independent of OBJ.
Off-Season Acquisitions: RB Shane Vereen
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Quarterbacks
Is there a division in football with more sporadic quarterback play than the NFC East? Between the Romocoaster in Dallas, Robert Griffin III’s health in Washington, and the QB carousel in Philadelphia, you would think that New York’s Eli Manning would be the most consistent of the bunch. Eli has been an average fantasy quarterback over the course of his career, but after a forgettable 2013 campaign, he was pretty much ignored in 2014. Eli actually finished 10th in fantasy points among quarterbacks last season, improving his numbers considerably. He went from just 18 touchdowns in 2013 to 30 in 2014, his second highest total since throwing for 31 in 2010. Eli also boasted the highest completion percentage of his career at 63.1% and his second highest yardage total at 4,410. In short, Eli Manning had himself a solid bounce-back year.
Most fantasy rankers have Eli as a boarder-line starter in 12-team leagues and I think that’s appropriate. The thing is, the offense in New York is expected to improve with Odell Beckham Jr entering his second year, Victor Cruz returning from injury, a (presumably) healthy Rashad Jennings, and an additional pass-catching running back in Shane Vereen. Eli will be a trendy sleeper at the quarterback position and rightfully so. If you’re a fan of waiting on quarterback, even in a 12-team league, you can do far worse than Eli Manning.
I’ve always been an advocate of grabbing two quarterbacks quickly in the above scenario, so consider grabbing say, both Manning and Ryan Tannehill if you decide to wait. Better yet, why not pair Eli Manning with the suspended Tom Brady? You can roll with Eli for the first five weeks (the Patriots have their bye week during Brady’s suspension), and if he does well, use one of them as trade bait. There’s definitely a scenario where Eli finishes well inside the top 10 at QB with how much the offense is expected to improve.
Wide Receivers
So about that Odell Beckam Jr guy…he’s good. Beckham missed the first four games of the 2014 season with a left hamstring injury but jumped right into fantasy relevance during his first game as a rookie. It took a few games for him to find his stride, but once he did he never looked back. After a big 156-yard performance against the Colts in week nine, Beckham’s fantasy production was extremely consistent. He finished the year with 1,305 yards on 91 receptions and 12 touchdowns. Those are crazy numbers for a rookie who missed four games.
In a year where so many rookie wide receivers had solid seasons, it’s difficult to accurately predict which ones will repeat or improve in their sophomore season. There’s a clear consensus that OBJ is the most likely wide receiver to do so, and with numbers like that it’s hard to argue. Most rankers have him slotted around fifth at the position, ahead of notable veterans like Calvin Johnson, Jordy Nelson and Julio Jones. Under a normal set of circumstances, that would teeter on insanity. But Odell Beckham Jr is far from normal. There’s always a chance he’s a flash in the pan and will regress in his second season. But when you put up monster numbers nine weeks in a row as a rookie it’s hard to argue with his talent. I have no problem taking OBJ as my number one receiver in the middle of round two. As of writing, he’s dealing with an injured hamstring, so we’ll have to see how that turns out. For now, I wouldn’t lower him in any rankings.
That leaves us with Victor Cruz who is currently recovering from massive knee surgery in 2014. We’re still a long way away from knowing just how healthy Cruz will be for the start of the season or how him and Beckham will share the workload. I don’t think either receiver will cut into the other’s targets, as the offense is expected to be a lot more potent in 2015. Besides, the two of them are very different players athletically. Cruz should be treated as an overlooked sleeper, as many rankers have him far too low for my liking. He’s currently slotted in the early 50s among wide receivers, which is just crazy to me. Even if it were revealed that Cruz is going to miss the first few games while he recovers from injury, I would much rather have a rusty Victor Cruz than a healthy Kendall Wright. You're almost certainly not going to need to start a WR you draft that low right away anyway. Other players ranked ahead of Cruz are guys like Terrance Williams and Donte Moncrief. Without getting into the specifics of each player ahead of him, the point here is that I would much rather take a chance on a more consistent player coming off an injury than someone who hasn’t proved to be all that valuable even when healthy. I’d happily draft Cruz a round earlier than the rankings suggest.
Running Backs
The New York Giants signed former Patriot running back Shane Vereen to compliment the often-injured Rashad Jennings. Jennings finished the year with just 639 yards and four touchdowns while missing five games along the way. Jennings has never been one to boast a clean bill of health for long, so the addition of Vereen should be looked at in two ways. The first is obvious in that Vereeen is a solid back who can take on a full workload in the event that Jennings gets hurt again. The other viewpoint is that Vereen is more of a pass-catching back that can compliment Jennings and thus lessen his workload. I think both points are true here, as the Giants have shown us in the past that they can utilize multiple backs at once.
Vereen automatically becomes an interesting RB2 candidate in PPR leagues thus hurting the value of Jennings slightly. Even outside of injury, there’s a chance Vereen simply outplays Jenning. But, for now, it’s Jennings’s job to lose. Plenty of teams have managed to provide us with two fantasy relevant running backs in a PPR format, and the Giants are certainly capable of doing so with this new and improved offense. I wouldn’t go as far to say this will be a time share or running back by committee since that would suggest both backs have their values muted. Rather, this is a scenario where both guys could be started in any given week. This obviously assumes Jennings is able to stay on the field in a productive manner, but either way, I will be targeting Vereen as a flex play with RB2 upside.
Rookies and Tight Ends
The Giants went fairly defense heavy while also bolstering their offensive line in the draft, so there isn’t much to report as far as rookies are concerned. Larry Donnell is still the starting tight end for the Giants and falls into the 12-15 range at the position. He certainly possesses upside and is a guy to keep an eye on as the season progresses, but I wouldn’t advocate drafting him as your starter. Unless you wait on tight end in a deeper league, let Donnell be until he shows you something.
As you can probably tell, I’m optimistic for a big offensive year for the New York Giants. I expect all of their moving parts to come together between Eli’s bounce-back, another year of Odell Beckham Jr, Cruz returning from injury, and a nice one-two punch combination between Jennings and the addition of Vereen. If you’re a Giants fan, you have every right to be excited for the upcoming season.
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