RADIO
You may have already caught the first part of this series, looking at the bottom tier of NFL teams as far as fantasy relevance. Now we move on to the middle tier.
As any experienced fantasy football enthusiast knows, evaluating individual players is only part of the equation when it comes to building a roster. There are many instances in which the team a player plays for is just as important as his ability and talent. And in these cases, the determining factor is not always whether the team is good or bad in real life.
Teams that are good on the actual football field aren't always appealing from a fantasy standpoint. The criteria we use to gauge a team's fantasy appeal can certainly intersect with the qualities that make them a winning or losing team in real life, but there are also junctures where the two roads go their separate ways.
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How to Evaluate Fantasy Relevance
A few questions we can ask ourselves when evaluating a team from a fantasy perspective include the following: What kind of offensive philosophy does their coaching staff employ? Run-heavy? Pass-happy? A balanced attack? Is their quarterback any good? And if he isn't, are the skill players around him good enough to overcome his play? (The same can be asked of good quarterbacks with underwhelming supporting casts.) Does their offensive line protect well enough to give plays a chance to develop, or is the quarterback constantly taking hits and running for his life? Does their defense keep them in games, or are they routinely forced to try to outscore their opponents? What does their schedule look like?
And then there is a pretty tricky one: If the team in question frequently distributes the ball around to multiple players, is that a detriment or an advantage in fantasy? In other words, some teams are appealing because they have multiple players to turn to, if they're adept enough offensively to sustain multiple fantasy contributors. Others can be unappealing for the exact same reason, such as a team that regularly utilizes multiple running backs because the head coach doesn't trust any of them enough to give one a full workload.
I'm certain there are other questions fantasy writers would choose to ask, but these are a solid foundation and most of them are pretty easily answered. With these criteria in mind, and with all of the NFL's major offseason events having concluded, I've compiled a ranking board for all 32 teams in terms of how fantasy-relevant they figure to be in 2020. We'll discuss each team's strengths (if they have any) and flaws, some in more detail than others, with the ultimate goal of providing ourselves a starting point for our spring and summer draft preparation.
Note: All stats used in this article are courtesy of Pro Football Reference, unless otherwise noted.
20. Buffalo Bills
I have a difficult time getting a read on the Bills as a fantasy unit. On one hand, we should be excited about the possibility of Devin Singletary's explosiveness leading to a breakout RB campaign with a full season's worth of touches. Josh Allen, whose legs have always provided him with an edge in fantasy lineups, finally has a top-20 real-life wide receiver to throw to in Stefon Diggs. And with one of the league's best defenses, Buffalo should be able to dictate its own offensive tempo more often than not.
On the other hand, you could argue Allen's legs are the only reason he has an edge in fantasy lineups, as he has seldom shown consistency through the air. Without following the leader and jumping onto one extreme end of the spectrum or the other regarding Allen's ability at QB, it's fair to say he's a downgrade for Diggs from Kirk Cousins.
While the Bills' defense may provide the offense the luxury of controlling the ball, it also minimizes the need for the offense to score a ton of points. The Bills scored 24 points or fewer in six of their 10 wins last season, and in 12 of 16 games overall. They only broke the 30-point threshold twice all year, and both instances came against the hapless Dolphins. When you think about how this team has to win games, it's tough to get overly enthused about its fantasy upside. But for where you should be able to get Singletary (low-end RB2), Diggs (low-end WR2), and Allen (mid-tier QB1) on draft day, you don't have to worry about the Bills' offense totally decimating your fantasy lineup either.
19. Denver Broncos
The Broncos are my 2020 All-Upside Team. The only difficult part about buying Denver's offense on draft day will be deciding whether or not to trust quarterback Drew Lock. Concerns over Lock are valid, but he's one of maybe five quarterbacks in the entire league who could have Denver's arsenal of weapons and not be viewed as a safe bet to get the most out of them in fantasy. Some risks are more worth taking than others.
We've already discussed a handful of wideouts who excelled in 2019 regardless of who their quarterback was, and Courtland Sutton belongs on that list. When you're able to turn Lock, Joe Flacco, and Brandon Allen into a 72-catch, 1,112-yard season at wide receiver, you're doing something right. Sutton did experience a dip in production once Emmanuel Sanders was traded during the season. Per the RotoViz Game Splits App, here are Sutton's per-game averages both with and without Sanders in Denver in 2019:
- With Sanders (seven games) - 5.14 receptions, 7.86 targets, 80.57 yards, 0.43 touchdowns
- Without Sanders (nine games) - four receptions, 7.89 targets, 60.89 yards, 0.33 touchdowns
The Sanders trade did not impact Sutton's volume one way or the other, suggesting the latter is a favored target regardless of who he's sharing the field with. It's also worth noting the Broncos underwent two quarterback changes in the nine-game stretch without Sanders, which can result in inconsistent production from wide receivers. The addition of Jerry Jeudy re-equips Sutton with the tag-team partner he lost when Sanders left.
This has all been a long-winded way of explaining why I'm still all-in on Sutton and I'm not particularly worried about his QB or the potential for Jeudy to put a dent in his target share (though Jeudy is a captivating fantasy prospect in his own right). The Broncos also added Melvin Gordon to a backfield that already included an effective Phillip Lindsay. I'll entertain the question of whether there is enough to go around in this particular offense to produce an RB1, but Gordon and Lindsay are two solid backs on a team that will certainly use them both behind an above-average offensive line. Factor in the potential for tight end Noah Fant to take a step forward in his second year, and the Broncos could pretty easily exceed this ranking as long as their quarterback doesn't drag them down.
18. Tennessee Titans
You could make the argument that the Titans should be ranked higher due simply to Derrick Henry existing and A.J. Brown being arguably the most exciting year-two fantasy prospect in the NFL. But where else can we look on Tennessee's roster for start-worthy fantasy output on a weekly basis? And are we certain Ryan Tannehill is going to have the same success at quarterback?
Tannehill ranked third among qualified QBs in completion rate in 2019, and second in touchdown rate on attempted passes. He also finished third in intended air yards per pass attempt, a metric that gauges how far a player's average throw travels in the air whether it is completed or not. Only Matt Ryan's pass-catchers dropped a lower percentage of passes thrown their way in 2019 than Tannehill's. The farther a ball travels in the air from the line of scrimmage, the less likely it is to successfully reach its intended destination. Yet Tannehill's propensity for throwing downfield did not impede his completion rate, his receivers rarely let him down on catchable passes, and a significantly above-average percentage of his throws resulted in touchdowns.
I'm all-in on the idea that Tennessee has been able to extract from Tannehill what Miami was not, but you can't exactly just throw his 88-game sample size with the Dolphins out the window. At a minimum, I think we can look for gravity to take hold of his touchdown rate in 2020. If he regresses in any other facet, this offense goes back to being a pretty vanilla and one-dimensional fantasy unit.
17. Carolina Panthers
Any time a team undergoes the type of coaching turnover the Panthers have since last season ended, I have my concerns. Yes, I'm aware Carolina's new offensive coordinator is Joe Brady, the man behind the curtain of LSU's unstoppable 2019 offense. Yes, I'm aware head coach Matt Rhule's most recent job was at a Big 12 school, where the only way to survive is by putting up video-game-on-rookie-mode point totals. But that was then, and that was college. This is now, and this is the NFL. We can't just automatically assume they're poised for a seamless transition to the next level, especially when we know they're staring down the barrel of a potentially constricted preseason and training camp format.
What we'd like to be able to assume is that they'll continue to make Christian McCaffrey the focal point of the offense, which should keep last year's fantasy MVP as the consensus first overall pick in most 2020 redraft leagues. D.J. Moore also thrived as a high-end WR2 for the Panthers last year, and that was with Kyle Allen throwing him passes. At the very least, Teddy Bridgewater is not a downgrade from Allen. Adding some allure to Carolina's fantasy outlook is that its defense was downright awful in 2019, and it shares a division with three of the most dangerous offenses in the league. In other words, there's room for some serious shootout potential here.
I could've ranked the Panthers slightly higher than this based on McCaffrey and Moore alone, but I'm not ecstatic about their quarterback situation, I don't know who else to trust besides their top two offensive options (Robby Anderson? Curtis Samuel?), and I think we need to allow for some bumps in the road with the new coaching staff. With all those factors in mind, the top 20 seems like a reasonable spot for the overall team, even if someone like McCaffrey could finish number-one at his position.
16. Cleveland Browns
Like the Broncos and Bengals below them on this list, the Browns are a team with the skill position talent to achieve fantasy greatness in 2020 if they can put it all together. As we learned from 2019, potential does not always translate into reality. Looking ahead, some fantasy owners will have concerns over Nick Chubb's status as an RB1, with Kareem Hunt having chewed into his workload upon returning from suspension last year. While such concerns are not without merit, we are getting carried away if we allow Hunt's presence to scare us out of selecting Chubb on draft day. The two running backs played eight games together in 2019. Here are Chubb's per-game averages with and without Hunt, courtesy of the RotoViz Game Splits App:
- With Hunt - 18 rush attempts, 86.38 rushing yards, 1.38 receptions, 2.25 targets, 14.62 receiving yards
- Without Hunt - 19.12 rush attempts, 100.25 rushing yards, 3.12 receptions, four targets, 20.12 receiving yards
Hunt took the passing-game work away from Chubb, but Chubb wasn't seeing a ton of it in the first place. Chubb still saw upwards of 20 touches per game even with Hunt in the fold. Chubb also toted the ball 50 times inside the red zone compared to Hunt's four. In fact, Hunt didn't have much of a red-zone role at all, seeing just two targets inside the 20 and none inside the 10. Chubb isn't going anywhere. The rest of the offense will go as far as Baker Mayfield takes it, and it's fair to say Mayfield will take it as far as his offensive line allows him to. Cleveland's O-Line is regarded as one of the league's most improved heading into 2020, so we could be singing a much different tune about this team in six months. The addition of Austin Hooper to Mayfield's pass-catching options naturally makes this an even more intriguing fantasy unit. And are we sure we're ready to move on from Odell Beckham Jr.?
15. Houston Texans
Deshaun Watson alone is reason enough to rank the Texans much higher than 15th on this list, but this is the punishment Houston gets for trading away DeAndre Hopkins. For his career, Watson has completed 804 of 1,204 pass attempts for 9,716 yards and 71 touchdowns. Hopkins has caught 263 of those (32.7%) on 384 targets (31.9%) for 3,336 yards (34.3%) and 25 touchdowns (35.2%). In other words, a little over one-third of Watson's career production has come from throwing the ball to one player, and that player is now gone. As much as we love Watson, that counts for something.
Brandin Cooks is exciting as a field-stretching speedster, as is Will Fuller when the latter is actually on the field. Fuller has never played all 16 games in his four-year career, and has missed 20 of a possible 48 since the beginning of 2017. The last and only time the Texans produced a top-12 fantasy running back under Bill O'Brien was in his first year as Houston's head coach, 2014 (Arian Foster). Even if we believe in a David Johnson resurrection in 2020, we should hardly be counting on O'Brien to squeeze an RB1-caliber campaign out of him. Watson "raises all ships," as they say, but you don't get to trade a top-five wide receiver in the NFL and still be regarded as a top-five source of fantasy production.
14. Green Bay Packers
The Packers were one of the top stories of the NFL draft for all the wrong reasons. Following a 2019 season in which Davante Adams, who missed four games, was the only Green Bay pass-catcher to amass more than 500 receiving yards, the Packers used their first-round pick on Aaron Rodgers' heir apparent rather than give their 36-year-old quarterback another weapon to chuck it to as his career winds down and the team's championship window dwindles with it.
As though in an attempt to add insult to injury, Green Bay spent its second pick on a running back despite Aaron Jones proving more than capable of carrying the team on the ground. Defensively, the Packers were one of 10 teams to hold opponents under 20 points per game in 2019. Add all of this up, and I see a Packers coaching staff that no longer wants to ask Rodgers to put up MVP-caliber numbers in order for the team to be good in real life.
Rodgers is coming off back-to-back full seasons with fewer than 30 touchdown passes for the first time in his career, and should be viewed as more of a low-end, high-floor QB1 than the surefire week-winner we had grown accustomed to in years past. Jones' 2019 fantasy production was largely the result of a statistically improbable scoring rate, as he found the endzone 19 times on 285 total touches. For reference, Christian McCaffrey scored the same number of touchdowns on 405 touches. It'd be wise to factor regression into Jones' fantasy profile, which renders Adams the safest bet to be an elite starting option in Green Bay's offense. The vast majority of aerial opportunities will continue to be funneled through Adams, keeping him firmly entrenched as a top-five fantasy wide receiver.
13. Las Vegas Raiders
The Raiders might be an unpopular pick to come in just ahead of the Watson-led Texans and the Rodgers-led Packers, but give me a chance to defend myself here. If anyone is going to dethrone Travis Kelce, Zach Ertz, and George Kittle atop Tight End Mountain in 2020, Darren Waller has to be the odds-on favorite. Waller trailed only Kelce among tight ends in receptions and receiving yards last season. Josh Jacobs finished sixth among running backs in rushing yards despite missing three games. Jacobs was also one of only five running backs to average 4.8 yards or better on 200 or more carries, and he managed that behind a middling offensive line. Hunter Renfrow and Henry Ruggs represent an intriguing pair of young wide receivers, and Tyrell Williams had a handful of serviceable fantasy outings in 2019.
In two seasons with Jon Gruden as his head coach, Derek Carr has finished fifth or better in completion rate. What Carr has lacked in over-the-top fantasy explosions, he's accounted for by being efficient and giving his supporting cast a chance to produce. The Raiders have also been among the worst defenses in the league in terms of points allowed to their opponents over the last two seasons. With a 2020 defense that can best be described as an improving work in progress, the Raiders can reasonably expect to find themselves in their fair share of shootouts, especially considering their schedule.
In addition to playing the high-scoring Chiefs twice, the Raiders will play the entire NFC South. Matchups against the high-octane offenses of Atlanta, Tampa Bay, and New Orleans could easily serve up big-time fantasy production if the Raiders are forced to try to keep up on the scoreboard. I'm probably higher on the Raiders than most, but they do have the pieces in place to become a solid fantasy offense in 2020. And they have moved to Vegas, after all--why not take a gamble?
12. Los Angeles Rams
The closer we get to the top of the fantasy ladder, the more this becomes an exercise in splitting hairs. We're running out of things to nitpick regarding the teams we have yet to discuss. In the interest of dwelling on flaws first, here's what I don't like about the Rams. Their offensive line was a huge problem in 2019, and that hasn't been adequately addressed this offseason. I trust Jared Goff the least of the remaining quarterbacks, whether we are talking real life or fantasy. As for the backfield, you'd like to believe rookie Cam Akers will eventually run away with the lead role. But he wouldn't be the first running back to see frustrating usage rates as a rookie. I'm not completely confident he provides consistent start-worthy fantasy value right out of the gate.
What we do like about the Rams is the presence of two sure-handed wide receivers who are great at picking up yards after the catch in Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp. Among wideouts with at least 100 targets in 2019, Kupp and Woods had the fourth- and seventh-lowest drop rates, respectively. We know they're going to see volume, and we know they're going to capitalize on it. Not to be ignored is the fact that tight end Tyler Higbee edged out the rest of the Rams' pass-catchers in red-zone usage with a 28.4% target share inside the 20. Todd Gurley attempted 51 rushes inside the 20 in 2019, the third-most of any running back in the league.
I can see the Rams being hesitant to trust any of their current running backs with that level of responsibility, at least early on, so look for Higbee to plant himself in TE1 territory with a touchdown-friendly role in close. Overall, a creative offensive philosophy keeps the Rams attractive as a fantasy unit. How high they fly will depend on a bounce-back season from Goff and a massive leap forward from their offensive line.
11. Indianapolis Colts
We've talked about a handful of teams that could drastically exceed expectations if things break right. The Colts, on the other hand, are one of my high-floor fantasy units. You give me Philip Rivers, a healthy T.Y. Hilton, a solid rushing attack led by Marlon Mack and presumably Jonathan Taylor, and one of the best offensive lines in the league, and I'll show you an offense that is going to be reliable across the board as a fantasy unit in 2020. The glaring variable in that equation is Hilton, who missed six games last season and posted the lowest yards-per-catch average of his eight-year career. In the games Hilton did suit up, he was naturally held back by underwhelming QB play. Maybe he's not Andrew Luck, but can we at least agree Rivers is a step up from Jacoby Brissett? As long as Hilton is on the field, Rivers will give him a chance to produce.
Throw in the large frame of rookie Michael Pittman and the blazing speed of Parris Campbell, and it's not hard to imagine the Colts becoming a dangerous aerial attack. And let's not forget Rivers' affinity for throwing to his tight ends, making Jack Doyle an interesting, low-hype option on draft day. If there's any reason to be concerned about the Colts from a fantasy standpoint, it's that their crowded backfield could result in Mack and Taylor vulturing opportunities from each other, and Nyheim Hines sneaking onto the field for passing-game work. For this reason, I don't see myself investing early-round draft picks on either Mack or Taylor, but I love Taylor's upside and at least we know Mack has a tolerable volume-based floor.
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