Fantasy Football Breakouts, Busts, and Locks - Arizona Cardinals 2023 Outlooks

The Arizona Cardinals are expected to be one of the worst teams in the NFL for the 2023 season. 

Their starting quarterback is going to miss most of the season after tearing his ACL late last year. They had to cut their leading receiver after no one would trade for him, and they have holes on defense after key players retired and departed in free agency. Their projected win line in Vegas is 5.5, tied for the worst in the league.

The Cardinals also have a new coach. They replaced Kliff Kingsbury with former Eagles defensive coordinator Jeff Gannon as head coach and former Browns quarterbacks coach Drew Petzing as offensive coordinator. Could these guys get the most out of a talent-deprived lineup? Will there be more opportunities for young breakout stars or fewer opportunities for all?

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Fantasy Football Breakout: Clayton Tune

Fifth-round rookie Clayton Tune has been getting rave reviews at training camp. There is even talk, as summarized by RotoBaller's Brant Henson, that Tune could start Week 1. While it might be unlikely for Tune to play much in September, he will take over if Colt McCoy gets injured or plays so poorly that the Cardinals bench him.

Tune was cited by Chris Simms and Conor Rodgers as a possible Brock Purdy of 2023. He played for five years at Houston and earned valuable experience, attempting 1,497 passes in his collegiate career.

Early on, Tune was inaccurate. His completion percentage was under 60% for each of his first three seasons. He came on strong as a junior and senior, completing over 67% of his passes for over 3,500 yards and a 158 passer rating both years. Critics might point to the fact that WR Nathaniel Dell was starting for Houston those two years. Dell led the American Conference in receiving yards in 2021 and led the NCAA in 2022. 

Of course, Tune would put up good numbers throwing to him. His PFF grade was also in the top five for all quarterbacks last season, meaning he wasn't just throwing terrible passes in Dell's general direction.

The odds are stacked against any rookie quarterback. Even for first-round generational talents, it is difficult to transition into a league where players are faster and better than in college and defenses are much more complicated. The first thing you need to be a success in fantasy football is volume. Tune has a better chance to find his way onto the field than any of the other middle- and late-round quarterback prospects.

He is being taken at an average draft position of No. 284 overall, which puts him in the 24th round. He might be taken later if there were more rounds. But the 24th round is last, or close to last, in most redraft fantasy football leagues you might play for. So even though Tune is going late, he still costs a pick you could use to gamble on someone else.

Otherwise, you could let him go undrafted (as he very well might) and watch him on the waiver wire. Just be prepared to spend significant FAAB if you are interested in him because there could be a hype rush when the news is announced that he is starting. 

Fantasy Football Bust: Kyler Murray

Some fantasy managers are excited about drafting Kyler Murray and holding him for a late-season fantasy playoff run. An ACL tear takes about nine to 12 months to recover from. Murray tore his ACL on December 12, 2022. That puts his return date somewhere in the frame of mid-September to mid-December. There should be no rush to bring back a potential franchise quarterback for a team that has no shot at the Super Bowl, even with Murray in the lineup.

Running backs and wide receivers typically underperform in their first seasons back from an ACL injury. RBs lost an approximate value (AV) of -90.5% in the years following an ACL tear, according to a 2022 paper published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine. While quarterbacks did not suffer much of a decline in AV, Murray has always been a rushing quarterback.

In his NFL career, he has averaged 38.7 rushing yards per game and 0.4 touchdowns. That translates to 6.3 fantasy points per game on the ground and about 110 over the course of a season. If he lost just half of his rushing production in 2021, Murray would have gone from the QB10 to the QB15. So here's a mobile quarterback who will lose most of his rushing upside, who we don't know when he will be back, and who has to learn a new offense. I'm out.

Fantasy Football Lock: James Conner

Picking a lock on this Cardinals team is difficult. They're so bad that it's hard to say anyone is a lock. I'll tell you someone who really isn't a lock: Marquise Brown. He averaged only 44.8 yards per game and not a single touchdown in the five games he played without Kyler Murray late in the season. He averaged 34.5 yards per game in the final two games, which both Murray and DeAndre Hopkins missed. "Hollywood" is a lock to get a lot of snaps and targets potentially, but he's hardly a lock for production.

One player who has produced relatively well in good and bad situations is running back James Conner. After Murray left the Week 14 game versus the Patriots, Conner ran for 85 yards on 15 carries and scored a touchdown while making six catches for 29 yards.  

In the final four Kyler-less games of the season, Conner ran for 306 yards and three touchdowns and added 129 yards through the air. In fact, in his career, Conner gets more carries and amasses better production when Murray doesn't play. In the eight games Conner played without Murray over the past two seasons, Conner averages 21.3 PPR points per game compared to just 14.5 with Murray behind center. Poor quarterback play means more carries for Conner and more passes coming his way.

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