What We Learned for Fantasy Football in 2023: AFC

For most, the 2023 fantasy football season came to a close after Week 17. Others may still have a championship that needs to be decided by the chaos of Week 18. Regardless, we are close to talking about the 2023 season in the past tense.

Now that the fantasy season is essentially over, we can take time to look at performances and analyze them. Below, you will find a fantasy takeaway for each of the AFC teams from the 2023 season. (Check back Tuesday for the NFC version.)

What We Learned in 2023: AFC

Baltimore Ravens

Lamar Jackson can get it done as a passer.

There was some skepticism about Lamar Jackson moving from Greg Roman’s run-heavy offense to a more balanced offense with Todd Monken. Those concerns should be alleviated after Lamar put together his best fantasy (and real) season since 2020.

It took just 15 games for Jackson to set a career-high in pass attempts (436). The increased attempts have allowed the veteran quarterback to showcase his growth as a passer. After Week 17, Jackson had put together his best passing season, throwing for 3,678 yards and 24 touchdowns with just seven interceptions. All of this has been done with just 10 games of Mark Andrews and a rotating cast of injured wide receivers.

The passing attack hasn’t been a deterrent to Jackson as a runner either. Through 16 games, the dual-threat quarterback has amassed his third-most rushing attempts (147), rushing yards (811) and rushing touchdowns (5).

Jackson is once again a top-3 quarterback in fantasy and is just now hitting his prime as an athlete. His game could truly ascend next season in the second year of an explosive passing offense with his full complement of weapons healthy.

Buffalo Bills

James Cook was great and still has room to grow.

It has been an excellent season for James Cook. Through 15 games, Cook has logged 208 attempts for 1,038 rushing yards and two touchdowns while catching 40-of-47 targets for 433 yards and four receiving touchdowns. The running back has benefited greatly from Buffalo’s offensive line, ranking 3rd (behind De’Von Achane and Nick Chubb) in yards before contact per attempt (2.72).

Cook entered Week 15 as the RB10 in PPR leagues, but there is still significant room to grow if his role in the offense evolves. Cook has played in just 54% of Buffalo’s offensive snaps this season with just 29.6% of those snaps coming on third down. Coming out of college, Cook was seen as more of a pass-catching back, but Buffalo seems to value pass-blocking in those situations over his receiving skill set.

Additionally, Cook’s role takes a major hit once Buffalo hits the 15-yard line. Throughout 2023, the Bills felt more comfortable with a bigger back like Latavius Murray (49 attempts inside the 15) over Cook (34 attempts).

Cook provided RB1 numbers on a limited role by living off of volume and explosive rushing plays in 2023. If his role in the offense grows and he gets more valuable touches, there is a realistic chance for him to be a top-5 fantasy running back in 2024.

Cincinnati Bengals

Ja’Marr Chase: 2024 1.01.

Nobody would blame fantasy managers for feeling like they were burned by selecting Ja’Marr Chase with a top-3 pick in 2023 fantasy drafts. The Bengals offense struggled thanks to the injury woes of Joe Burrow (and most of the team’s other offensive weapons). However, it would be a mistake to let the issues in 2023 stop you from selecting Chase at the top of fantasy drafts again in 2024.

The veteran receiver had a solid season in fantasy, racking up 17.8 PPR points per game despite missing Burrow. However, there was a clear difference between Chase when operating in the offense with Burrow (even being limited due to a calf injury) and his games with Jake Browning.

Additionally, FTN’s advanced receiving metrics show that Chase finished sixth among wide receivers in opportunity share (16.9%), 13th in target share (26.8%), and 19th in AirYard share (36.8%). Assuming the Bengals move on from Tee Higgins (free agent) and Joe Mixon (cut candidate) during the offseason, then Chase could be looking at a much bigger role in the Bengals offense with a fully healthy Burrow in 2024.

It is easy to overcorrect when a player burns you in fantasy football, but Chase could represent value in fantasy drafts depending on where he falls in the first round.

Cleveland Browns

Cleveland has a Deshaun Watson problem.

It was understandable when Deshaun Watson struggled at the end of 2022 after missing over a year of football. However, the prevailing thought was that his time knocking off the rust combined with a full offseason would take Cleveland’s offense to another level. That just hasn’t been the case.

In 2022, Watson played six games and completed 58.2% of his passes for 1,102 yards and seven touchdowns with five interceptions. The veteran quarterback also played six games in 2023, completing 61.4% of his passes for 1,115 yards and seven touchdowns with four interceptions.

Even worse is the fact that the passing offense has taken off toward the end of the season with Joe Flacco at the helm. Flacco has played in just five games since signing with Cleveland but has thrown for 1,616 yards and 13 touchdowns with eight interceptions.

Cleveland gave Watson a fully guaranteed $230 million contract after trading him, but there has to be some concern that the passing offense didn’t take off until Flacco landed in Cleveland. There is still time for Watson to bounce back, but the team around him may suffer as his yearly salary climbs.

Denver Broncos

Courtland Sutton: 2024’s top regression candidate.

Courtland Sutton had a significant bounce-back season in 2023, catching 58 passes for 770 yards and 10 touchdowns through 15 games with Russell Wilson. The high touchdown totals made Sutton a fantastic value in fantasy, but projecting him for those numbers going forward is a dangerous game.

According to FTN’s advanced receiving stats, Sutton played 80.1% of Denver’s offensive snaps in 2023 which is 13% more than the next closest player (Jerry Jeudy). However, Sutton’s statistics don’t stand out despite being on the field more than any other receiver.

Sutton commanded just 20% of the team’s targets and had a 10% opportunity share in the Broncos offense despite being on the field more than any other receiver. Additionally, his percentage of the reception yards (25%) and air yards share (35%) were marginally better than Jeudy’s.

Seven of Sutton’s 10 touchdowns came from inside the 15-yard line, where Wilson could throw the ball up to his big red-zone target.

Sutton will have a role in this offense in 2024, but Sean Payton is rebuilding the team into the style he wants, which means that touchdown variance could strike and bring Sutton down to earth next season. Elevating him up draft boards next season could backfire in a big way.

Houston Texans

C.J. Stroud should be in the QB1 conversation for 2024.

C.J. Stroud burst onto the fantasy scene in 2023, completing over 62% of his passes for 3,843 yards and 21 touchdowns with five interceptions. Stroud came into the season viewed as a quarterback who landed in an offense that had few weapons to elevate his game. Instead, he elevated the players around him.

Stroud helped Nico Collins (71 receptions for 1,102 yards and seven touchdowns) achieve a career year. He turned an undersized Day 2 wide receiver (Tank Dell) into a stud who racked up 47 receptions for 709 yards and seven touchdowns. And he did all of it with a middling run game behind an offensive line that suffered numerous injuries.

The offensive line will be back in 2024 and should be healthy. Houston could also attempt to upgrade the tight end position while adding another weapon to the receiving game. There will be a surplus of running back options in free agency that can provide an upgrade to the Devin Singletary/Dameon Pierce combination.

Stroud could be in a much better offensive situation in a division that features numerous teams that have poor secondaries. He could be poised to erupt in 2024.

Indianapolis Colts

Beware the Michael Pittman splits.

Michael Pittman answered the questions about his status as an NFL WR1 emphatically in 2023, racking up 150 targets, 104 receptions, 1,106 yards and four touchdowns. Pittman certainly earned his second contract with Indianapolis, but be cautious about elevating Pittman to unrealistic heights heading into 2024.

The Colts got just four games from Anthony Richardson before he was shut down with a shoulder injury. The rookie first-round pick looked solid but averaged 21 pass attempts per game under center. The rookie completed just 59% of his passes for 577 yards with three touchdowns and one interception.

Conversely, in Gardner Minshew’s 11 starts, the team averaged 38 passing attempts. The difference in quarterbacks led to a significant difference in Pittman’s production.

Anthony Richardson will be under center again in 2024. The Colts will also have a full season of Jonathan Taylor in the backfield and will likely be a more balanced (if not run-heavy) offense. We may have seen a career-year (volume-wise) from Pittman in this offense, so draft accordingly next season.

Jacksonville Jaguars

Stop sleeping on Evan Engram. 

Nobody would blame you if you didn’t buy in on Evan Engram after his strong 2022 season. The veteran tight end was coming off a career-best year (73 receptions for 766 yards and four touchdowns) with Christian Kirk and Zay Jones as his primary receiving competition. This, of course, came after spending his rookie contract with the New York Giants where he was very inconsistent and struggled to catch the ball. Sure, Engram got a contract extension with the Jaguars, but he’d now be competing with Kirk, Jones and Calvin Ridley in the Jaguars passing attack.

Engram should have put those concerns to rest after another excellent season in 2023. Through 16 weeks, the veteran tight end has once again raised the bar, leading the Jaguars in targets (130), and receptions (104) and is second on the team in receiving yards (884). He also logged his sixth season with at least three receiving touchdowns. Engram finished the fantasy season as the TE6 in PPR points per game, behind the big four (Kelce, Hockenson, Andrews and Kittle) as well as rookie standout Sam LaPorta.

Engram will undoubtedly be overlooked again in the tight end ranks heading into 2024, overshadowed by the veteran stalwarts and surpassed by the youth movement (LaPorta, Trey McBride, Dalton Kincaid, Luke Musgrave and Brock Bowers) at the position. He will once again be a screaming value in the middle-to-late rounds as your team’s fantasy tight end.

Kansas City Chiefs

Patrick Mahomes is human (and his receivers suck). 

2023 will be remembered as the year Patrick Mahomes fell off. Sure, a down season from Mahomes still includes over 4,000 passing yards and 30+ passing touchdowns, but we have come to expect more. At the very least, Mahomes had the second-highest interception rate of his career at 2.5% (it feels worth mentioning that his worst was his rookie season, where he threw one interception on 35 pass attempts in his lone start of the season).

Kansas City will still be going to the playoffs, but this feels like the first season in a while where the field seems to have an advantage against them offensively thanks to the Chiefs pass-catchers. Travis Kelce has seemingly lost a step. Justin Watson and Marquez Valdes-Scantling are both field stretchers with few other skills. Kadarius Toney is good at being injured. Skyy Moore is good at running wind sprints. The team has one lone bright spot in 2023 second-round pick Rashee Rice, who leads the team in touchdowns (7) and is second behind Kelce in every other meaningful counting stat.

Kansas City desperately needs a talent infusion at the receiver position even with Mahomes’ otherworldly talent.

Las Vegas Raiders

Embrace Zamir White. 

Josh Jacobs broke fantasy in 2022, racking up 2,000 all-purpose yards with 12 touchdowns. Las Vegas brought him back on the franchise tag, which seems to be the right choice at this point. Jacobs played in just 13 games in 2023, averaging a career-low 3.5 yards per carry while barely eclipsing 1,000 all-purpose yards.

Jacobs was injured down the stretch of 2023, which allowed 2022 fourth-round pick Zamir White an opportunity to show his skill set. White took advantage of his three-game audition, racking up 285 yards and a touchdown on 59 carries. He also added eight receptions for 51 yards.

In today’s NFL, one of the worst moves you can make is to pay for the running back position. We don’t know how smart the Raiders front office is, but there is a good chance that Jacobs will not be with the team in 2024. That means that White will be poised to take over the rushing role behind a good offensive line on a team that wants to build their identity around running the ball.

White should have an impact in fantasy (although he’s probably worth fading in PPR leagues given his lack of receiving upside) in 2024.

Los Angeles Chargers

Father Time claims Austin Ekeler.

2023 was an abject disaster for fantasy managers who used a first-round pick on Austin Ekeler. It is hard to blame them, considering Ekeler was coming off consecutive seasons that saw him total 410 carries, 1,826 rushing yards and 25 rushing touchdowns while adding 177 receptions on 221 targets for 1,369 yards and 13 receiving touchdowns. Hopes were even higher after the team added offensive coordinator Kellen Moore before the 2023 offseason to unlock the offense.

Then the season happened. The offensive line struggled to create rushing lanes and injuries tanked the offense. Ekeler (along with Justin Herbert, Keenan Allen and Mike Williams) all missed time due to injuries, leading to an anemic offense. More importantly, Ekeler just didn’t have the same burst we have seen from him in past years.

Through Week 16, Ekeler logged just 12 games played, totaling 156 carries for 571 yards and five rushing touchdowns with 64 targets, 43 receptions, 394 receiving yards and one receiving touchdown. Ekeler posted career lows in yards per carry (3.5) and receiving yards (1) and will head into the offseason as a free agent.

Ekeler is certainly better than these numbers and could have a small resurgence in the right situation, but his days as a bell-cow back seem like they are behind us.

Miami Dolphins

De’Von Achane: Small sample size extrapolation extraordinaire 

Nobody will ever forget De’Von Achane’s fantasy-breaking stretch from Weeks 3-5 of the 2023 season. During that stretch, Achane carried the ball 37 times for 455 yards and five touchdowns while adding eight receptions on 10 targets for 63 yards and two receiving scores. Then Achane got hurt and fell into a secondary role behind Raheem Mostert, which is where he stayed for the rest of the season.

The upside of Achane was displayed throughout the season. In three of the four games where the rookie had double-digit carries, he surpassed 100 rushing yards. He had six games with at least three targets, including a game with nine targets. Fantasy analysts and managers will project these workloads into oblivion. He may even get some projection based on the fact that backfield running mate Mostert totaled 21 touchdowns in 2023 as well.

None of this is to say that Achane wasn’t extremely impressive. Depending on where he is drafted, he will likely be a staple of my best ball portfolio (again). But there is risk in assuming that Achane will take over a backfield that is historically split. There is also a risk in believing that a 5-foot-9, 188-pound running back can hold up to the grind of consistent double-digit carries. And there is even more risk in thinking that he will be the outlier in a running scheme (wide zone) that historically chews up running backs every season.

Be careful being too overzealous projecting Achane next season (and beyond). He can break fantasy. But he also carries a big risk.

New England Patriots

We all owe Matt Patricia and Joe Judge an apology (just kidding).

Hopes were high for Mac Jones coming into 2023. His second season was brutal, but it was easily explained by a lack of weapons, and more importantly, the fact that two longtime defensive coaches were calling the Patriots offense. It was easy to see that the experiment would fail. But it was also easy to tell a story that Bill O’Brien’s return to the Patriots would jumpstart the offense and elevate Jones’ career.

Unfortunately, that never happened. Things looked great after a Week 1 game against the Eagles where Jones threw for 316 yards and three touchdowns. But that was before we knew the Eagles secondary would be one of the worst in football.

The third-year quarterback lasted just 11 games before he was replaced by Bailey Zappe. He threw for just 2,120 yards and 10 touchdowns with 12 interceptions along the way. While it is unfair to put it all on Jones’ shoulders (the offensive line was very injured early and the wide receivers were still underwhelming), Jones played badly enough to warrant another trip to the bench.

Now New England heads into the offseason in a position to draft Jones’ replacement. At the very least, the quarterback’s time with the Patriots appears limited with Zappe looking just as good (low bar, I know) as his replacement.

New York Jets

Breece Hall: Top-10 redraft pick in 2024.

2023 was always going to be a slow burn for Breece Hall coming off an ACL injury in his rookie year. It didn’t help that during his ramp-up period the team cycled quarterbacks between a bunch of poor options (after Aaron Rodgers’ injury) and was forced to constantly replace injured offensive linemen.

Hall had an understandably slow start before the switch flipped around Week 11. After that point, Hall had 79 carries for 295 yards while adding 48 receptions on 59 targets for 333 yards and three touchdowns. During that stretch, Hall averaged 11.3 carries and 8.4 targets per game.

Hall’s season will be most remembered by his league-winning stretch in Weeks 15 and 16 of the fantasy playoffs. That stretch saw Hall handle 33 carries for 179 yards and two touchdowns while racking up 21 receptions (25 targets) for 138 receiving yards and an additional score.

If that is the Hall we can expect (given the Jets’ cap woes and a 2024 version of Rodgers coming off an Achilles tear it is logical), then Hall needs to be in the top-10 pick conversation in 2024. If he never reaches that height in fantasy drafts, then Hall will be a smash pick in the second-round of 2024 fantasy drafts.

Pittsburgh Steelers

The Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren splits helped nobody. 

Together, the combination of Najee Harris and Jaylen Warren’s stats would be a very good fantasy player. The duo combined for 329 carries 1,514 rushing yards and nine rushing touchdowns while adding 80 receptions for 502 yards through the air. Unfortunately, these two wound up with a nearly perfect split in the backfield.

Harris operated as the team’s grinder, carrying the ball 229 times for 926 rushing yards and seven rushing touchdowns. Warren came in as a pace-changing back with receiving chops and led the backfield with 56 receptions for 550 receiving yards. Each player ate into the other’s role enough to be frustrating. Both had startable fantasy weeks (most likely when you had them on the bench). Both players finished as flex plays in fantasy, landing in the RB24-RB30 range.

Theoretically, Warren was the better pick since his fantasy scoring was buoyed by the receptions in PPR leagues and he was the later pick in drafts. In half-PPR leagues (where touchdowns reign supreme), Harris gave you better production. Neither player provided much to your team in wins and losses, making them an extremely frustrating roster spot in 2023.

Tennessee Titans

All aboard the Tyjae Spears hype train.

2023 was a rough season for the Titans. The struggles were felt by Derrick Henry more than anyone else.

Henry still had an excellent season by volume. Through Week 17, Henry had handled 249 carries for 972 yards and 11 touchdowns while adding 28 receptions (35 targets) for 214 receiving yards. However, by his dominant standard, it was a very underwhelming year.

As the season comes to a close, it feels like the Titans will move on from Henry in 2024. If that is the case, then Tyjae Spears may have shown enough as a rookie to take over as the primary running back in Tennessee.

The rookie quietly had a very strong first season. Spears played in every game for Tennessee, logging 91 carries for 428 yards and a rushing touchdown while adding 45 receptions on 61 targets for 315 receiving yards. From Weeks 13-16, Spears took over the backfield (in reps only) by logging at least a 52% snap share in four straight games.

Spears offers explosivity as a rusher and has the size (5-foot-10, 200 pounds) to handle the workload in the NFL. Naturally, the concerns about his knee (Spears doesn’t have an ACL in one of his knees) will pop up and likely suppress his fantasy value, but that sounds like more of a long-term issue than an immediate problem.

Spears will have a major role in 2024, regardless of Henry’s status with the team.