100 Questions: Fantasy Football 2024 (Detroit Lions)

As we head toward the start of the 2024 NFL and fantasy football season, FTN Fantasy editor-in-chief Daniel Kelley is asking (and attempting to answer) the 100 most pressing questions in fantasy football. This is 100 Questions. Today: The Detroit Lions.

There was a little thing going around earlier this offseason that the Colts (part of the AFC South, if you aren’t aware) have more AFC East titles (6) than the Jets (4). Because haha, Jets bad, you get the punch line. I’m not saying it’s not good. My brother’s a Jets fan (and I’m a Colts fan), I definitely sent it to him with some mockery.

But a better joke ended a few months ago. Because before the Lions won the 2023-2024 NFC North division title, the Lions, Bears and Vikings had more recent division wins than the Lions … and so did the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Yes, the second-most southernmost NFL team had an NFC North crown (1999) more recently than the Detroit Lions (1993) prior to Detroit going 12-5 in 2023 and going to the Conference Championship Game.

Good for the Lions, for sure. But man, bad for jokes, because that was very funny right up until the joke died. Oh well! On to the fantasy football.

The Questions

35. What Is Jahmyr Gibbs’ Ceiling?
36. Is Jared Goff a Fantasy Star Now?
37. So Is Jameson Williams a Third-Year Breakout?

100 Questions for 2024: Detroit Lions

What Is Jahmyr Gibbs’ Ceiling?

Jahmyr Gibbs was the PPR RB10 last year. Every back ahead of him had at least 27 more carries than Gibbs’ 182, and Alvin Kamara (RB11, 180 carries) was the only other top-20 back with fewer than 200 carries. And before you say “Well yeah, he’s a receiving back, he did all his work as a receiver,” Gibbs was only 18^th in receiving PPR scoring among backs. He scored 37.0% of his PPR points as a receiver, 29^th among 48 backs with at least 100 PPR points. No, Gibbs’ excellent rookie season came because he scored on the ground — his 10 rushing scores came in eighth among running backs, the first rookie back with double-digit scores since 2020 and only the sixth in the last decade. The other names in the last 10 years are almost entirely stars (Todd Gurley, Ezekiel Elliott, Saquon Barkley, Jonathan Taylor and … uh, Antonio Gibson).

So he’s an efficient back with a nose for the end zone and some receiving upside. Sounds like a borderline overall RB1 candidate, right?

Well, pump the brakes.

Gibbs grades out fairly poorly as a receiver and pass-blocker. And given David Montgomery finished dead last among running backs (min. 100 PPR points) in percentage of scoring as a receiver, the Lions seem perfectly fine with backfield receiving being a small part of their game. Montgomery missed three games last year, and in those games, Gibbs averaged 18.0 carries and 100.0 yards on the ground, compared to 10.5 carries and 52.6 yards in games Montgomery played (counting the postseason). Gibbs had two 1-yard scored last year, and they came in Week 10, when Montgomery was just returning from a two-game absence and the team was easing him in.

Translation: Unless you think Montgomery misses significant time in 2024, Gibbs’ ceiling isn’t as high as you probably think. He makes sense as a back-end RB1/high-end RB2, but beyond that, you have to bet on an injury to his teammate.

Is Jared Goff a Fantasy Star Now?

The pros to Jared Goff:

• He’s steady (at least 16.5 fantasy points per game in six of the last seven years).
• He’s reliable (missed five games in seven seasons, including playing all 17 the last two years, back-to-back top-10 fantasy seasons).
• He’s in a good situation (one of the game’s best offensive coordinators, 14 of first 15 games indoors).

The cons to Jared Goff:

• He’s a plodder (495 rushing yards in eight years, career-high of 108 yards; only more than 2 TDs once and that was in 2020).
• He’s got a shallow group of weapons (Amon-Ra St. Brown and Sam LaPorta are the only sure things).
• He’s low-upside (despite 16.5-plus PPG in six of seven years, he’s never reached 20.0).

Add it all up, and the sum (to me) is a fringe QB1. Goff scored 310.3 fantasy points in 2018 and 303.1 in 2023, his best two seasons, both QB7 seasons. How much can he climb above that? Give him a Jameson Williams breakout, factor in the indoor games, but acknowledge he’s not going to do anything on the ground, and that’s … 320 points? You can’t really draw up a realistic scenario of better than that.

The fun thing? That’s more or less exactly what the drafting community is doing with him. He’s QB14 by current ADP, the perfect spot for a quarterback who can be the QB10 but not the QB5. If you can draft Goff and pair him with a fellow high-end QB2 like one of the rookies (Jayden Daniels or Caleb Williams?) or even Aaron Rodgers later, it’s a solid approach, with the hopes that you maybe use Goff in Week 1 to give your upside pick a week to prove himself, and then bench him from there until a bye week or you trade him.

So Is Jameson Williams a Third-Year Breakout?

Jameson Williams left high school after 2018. Take out 2021 (when he had 1,572 yards and 15 touchdowns at Alabama), and he has 522 receiving yards and 7 touchdowns across four years combined. Now, of course, there are caveats combined (Ohio State had a hundred different excellent receivers; recovery from a torn ACL; gambling suspension), but we’re rapidly approaching the point where there’s not enough positive to outweigh the negative — even his huge college season was mostly one hot stretch, with a six-game stretch of 143.0 yards and 1.5 touchdowns per game in the middle of nine games where those averages were 79.3 and 0.7.

Williams has the athleticism, and it also works in his favor that Amon-Ra St. Brown and Sam LaPorta are more or less the entire list of other target threats in Detroit (when you’re mourning the loss of Josh Reynolds, depth ain’t great). And his ADP is only WR49, meaning if you’re drafting him, it’s just as an upside play. There’s nothing wrong with that! But he is the kind of guy you absolutely cannot put in your lineup until he shows he’s developing on the field at least once, and maybe at least twice. That means a draft pick spent on Jameson Williams needs to be a commitment to stash him and not use him for at least three weeks or so, and potentially more than that. If your roster limits are sufficiently deep, go for it. But if it’s a shallow league, I don’t want that risk.