NBA Postseason Best Bets (5/3)
Alex Christenson
(Knowing the right question to ask is as important as knowing the answer. In 100 Questions, FTN’s Daniel Kelley identifies the key fantasy football questions to ask heading into the 2021 NFL season. Today: The NFC West.)
Four divisions have a team with a wins over/under of at least 11 on DraftKings Sportsbook. The NFC West is not among them. But seven divisions have at least one team with a win total under 8, and the NFC West is also not among them. The Cardinals (8.5 wins), Seahawks (10), Rams (10.5) and 49ers (10.5) all project to finish .500 or better in 2021.
In other words: This is a good division, with a lot of things to consider for fantasy.
Arizona Cardinals
Since a 13-3 division title in 2015, the Cardinals have fallen on hard times, going 31-47-2 with no seasons over .500 and no playoff appearances. In Year 3 of Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray and with a bunch of veteran additions this offseason, the Cardinals need to start showing more progress.
89. Will first-half Kyler Murray show up again?
Through Week 12, Murray had 11 weekly finishes as a QB1, with only a bye week keeping him from 12-for-12. He averaged only 264.4 passing yards per game, but added 61.9 yards on the ground and a rushing touchdown per game. He only had one more rush TD the rest of the way, though, with the rest of his numbers falling off similarly. Of course, we all know he was hurt.
Best answer: First-half Kyler Murray was on a record pace, so maybe don’t expect that. But even if he isn’t that, he’s an easy QB1 — our FTN Fantasy ADP tool has him as QB3, while our FTN Fantasy rankings say he’s QB2. Patrick Mahomes is most everybody’s No. 1, but after him, I’d have a hard time going anybody over Murray.
90. Chase Edmonds or James Conner? Or both? Or neither?
Chase Edmonds is 45 games into his NFL career. He has double-digit carries in three of them, more than 11 carries in only two. His heavy-work games came in Week 7 of 2019 (27 carries, 126 yards, 3 touchdowns, everybody party) and Week 9 of 2020 (25 carries, 70 yards, no scores, aw nuts). With Kenyan Drake leaving, though, the job was Edmonds’ … until late in free agency, when the Cardinals signed the ex-Steeler James Conner.
Best answer: If we assume perfect health, Edmonds without Conner has low-end RB1 upside, given his receiving skills, and Conner without Edmonds has solid RB1 upside we’ve seen in the past. Of course, assuming health — particularly with Conner — is a fool’s errand. So you can expect something of a split load this year, with Edmonds getting the receptions and therefore the higher-value work. Right now, Edmonds is a high-end flex option and Conner is a bench play. I think they should probably be closer than that (and Jeff Ratcliffe’s projections agree) — Edmonds a low flex, Conner a high one.
91. Who is the No. 2 receiver here, and what’s his value?
DeAndre Hopkins is obviously the No. 1, but after that we have multi-year breakout candidate Christian Kirk, rookie second-rounder Rondale Moore and veteran free agent A.J. Green … and that assumes Larry Fitzgerald doesn’t return, which isn’t necessarily a foregone conclusion.
Best answer: The drafting community is holding out hope for Kirk, with him going one spot ahead of Moore and a few before Green. Our projections have Moore a clear tier ahead of the other two, though — Moore is projected for 95 targets and 157.2 PPR points, with Green (78, 114.1) and Kirk (63, 114.8) lagging behind. They’re all reasonable fliers, but Moore is the best pick for 2021 and has the highest upside. He’s the pick.
Los Angeles Rams
Jared Goff got five years. He made the playoffs three times, won the division twice, made the Super Bowl once. But the team appeared to decide it had gone as far as it could with him. Now we’ll see if the team can reach new heights with Matthew Stafford at quarterback in Los Angeles.
92. Is Darrell Henderson worth his new, lofty price tag?
Darrell Henderson was hovering around the 11th round most of the offseason until Cam Akers tore his Achilles, and suddenly Henderson will cost you a fifth-round pick. He entered last year as the borderline No. 1 in Los Angeles, so is the new price worth it?
Best answer: Right after the injury, Henderson shot up to the mid-RB2s, clearly an overpay. But even as more of a flex option, there’s more risk here than reward. The team reportedly loves 2020 rookie Xavier Jones, and of course there are several veterans out there who could catch on, with more likely to hit the market as teams figure out their rosters. Henderson was one of the busts in the Rams’ Booms, Busts, Breakouts & Bets segment, and that feels right. He’s got RB2 upside, but he has “can’t use him” floor.
93. What is Matthew Stafford’s ceiling in Los Angeles?
Stafford had six top-10 fantasy finishes in seven years in Detroit 2011-2017, peaking as QB5 in 2011. He’s had worse finishes the last three years, though he averaged 20.82 PPG in eight games in 2019, which would have had him finishing as QB4 over 16 games. Now he gets the best coaching staff and one of the best slate of weapons of his career.
Best answer: How many quarterbacks have a higher floor than Stafford? Assuming health (he’s played all 16 games in nine of the last 10 years), it’s hard to imagine a Stafford with Sean McVay coaching and Robert Woods/Cooper Kupp as his receivers coming in lower than a high-end QB2. But with little rushing upside (no rush TD since 2016), he also has a relatively low ceiling. That means that, while his price (low-end QB1 per ADP) is fair, it also might not be the best use of resources. I’m not sad if I get Stafford, but I’m probably waiting for other, later options.
94. Without Gerald Everett, is Tyler Higbee a locked-in TE1?
2020:
- Tyler Higbee: 814 snaps, 60 targets, 44 receptions, 521 yards, 5 TDs
- Gerald Everett: 636 snaps, 62 targets, 41 receptions, 417 yards, 1 TD
2019:
- Tyler Higbee: 696 snaps, 89 targets, 69 receptions, 734 yards, 3 TDs
- Gerald Everett: 440 snaps, 60 targets, 37 receptions, 408 yards, 2 TDs
Obviously, you can’t just combine them, but with Everett now in Seattle, Higbee’s ceiling climbs in 2021.
Best answer: There are a lot of mouths to feed in Los Angeles, but we’ve seen Higbee have a massive weekly ceiling before. He’s currently going off the board as TE11, behind Noah Fant, Logan Thomas and Robert Tonyan, and our rankers have him the same. Me, I’d take him ahead of all three of those. There’s value in Higbee.
San Francisco 49ers
It seems like there’s a team every year that goes through its “disaster season,” and last year that was San Francisco, going from 13-3 and nearly a title to a 6-10 last-place finish and more injuries than the aftermath of a battle royale.
(Check the intro to this series for how to handle the quarterback situation.)
95. How do you handle this backfield?
You never root for injuries, but Jeffery Wilson’s meniscus surgery at least helps us sort out the backfield morass in San Francisco. Still, there’s veteran Raheem Mostert, free agent Wayne Gallman and rookie third-rounder Trey Sermon to sort out here.
Best answer: Gallman had a nice little stretch filling in for Saquon Barkley last year, but let’s not pretend he’s a real threat here. No, this is a Mostert/Sermon question. (Don’t suggest Mostert is hurt, it won’t go well.) Both are going as mid/late flex options, per ADP and our FTN Fantasy rankings, with Mostert a few picks earlier. And maybe I’m blinded by what’s new, but if you tell me I can pick between a journeyman 29-year-old (albeit one who has come into his own the last couple years) and a rookie who averaged more than 4.0 yards after contact at Ohio State last year and is one of Jeff Ratcliffe’s 5 rookies I love, well, give me the shiny new thing. Flip their ADPs.
96. Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk sure are exciting, aren’t they?
Deebo Samuel had 391 receiving yards, with 398 of them coming after the catch. Yes, that means he had more YAC than he had yards (103.6%), a virtue of his 2.02-yard aDOT (see all this in our FTN Fantasy advanced receiving stats). The only fantasy-relevant names you’ll see anywhere near Samuel on those lists is JuJu Smith-Schuster (5.83-yard aDOT) and Michael Pittman (56.5% after-catch percentage), and … those aren’t actually that close. Brandon Aiyuk was slightly more conventional, with a 9.49-yard aDOT and 98 targets in 12 games.
Best answer: Look at Samuel’s advanced stats again. It’s absurd. I don’t have a point there, I just … it’s absurd. Nobody does that. But in Kyle Shanahan’s offense, that’s what you get, and Samuel could do something like it again. In our FTN Fantasy projections, Aiyuk is set for 194.7 PPR points, Samuel for 194.3 — essentially a dead heat. Meanwhile, there’s a slight gap in ADP (Aiyuk at WR25, Samuel at WR34), and — while Aiyuk is slightly safer — that tells me maybe Samuel is the one you should opt for.
97. This is one of the shallowest target trees in the league, right?
Our projections peg George Kittle for 119 targets, Aiyuk for 102, Samuel for 96. No one else on the 49ers is projected for more than 35, a paltry number, easily lowest in the league for a No. 4 target. At a glance, that would indicate that, once those three are off the board, you can ignore the San Francisco passing game altogether.
Best answer: The astute reader will realize that I put this question here almost entirely to talk up one of my favorite sleepers, in this case Jalen Hurd. Hurd was the 49ers’ third-round pick in 2019, but he missed 2019 with a back injury and 2020 with a torn ACL. He’s not on PUP to open camp, which is a great sign. He had a profile similar to the ones San Francisco has liked in Aiyuk, Samuel and Kittle, and if he’s healthy, he could slip right into this offense. It is one of the longest of shots, to be sure, but I’ve been tossing some last-rounders on Hurd this draft season, and the reward could be nice.
Seattle Seahawks
With the Patriots finishing 7-9 last year, the Seahawks now have the longest streak of over-.500 finishes in the NFL, nine straight years. That’s one ahead of the Chiefs’ eight seasons and four clear of any other team. The stout NFC West has masked just how good the Seahawks have been, as they have only four division titles in their streak, but this team has been elite since Russell Wilson landed in Seattle.
98. So, Russ, cooking, all that jazz. You know the deal. What’s gonna happen?
By now you know the numbers: Through Week 9, Wilson was averaging 29.52 fantasy points per game, in line to break some records. From Week 10 to the end of the year, he averaged 17.08 points and was looking up at guys like Andy Dalton and Derek Carr, as the Seahawks shifted to a run-heavy approach.
Best answer: Anyone answering this confidently is more confident than is reasonable. Wilson almost has to be better than he was down the stretch last year (but only “almost”), and there’s essentially no way he can be as fantasy-productive as he was for the first half. Right now, he’s QB6 in ADP and our rankings, and … I mean, it’s fine, but the next two quarterbacks off the board are Justin Herbert and Aaron Rodgers, and I think I’d prefer both.
99. Is there fantasy room for D’Wayne Eskridge or Gerald Everett?
In the 49ers section above, I noted that the target tree in San Francisco is pretty shallow. It’s similar in Seattle, where DK Metcalf is projected for 132 targets, Tyler Lockett for 117, and no one else for more than 68 (free agent signing TE Gerald Everett) and 53 (rookie second-round WR D’Wayne Eskridge).
Best answer: With Eskridge opening camp on PUP, we can more or less scratch him off even the deep-dive draft picks unless and until news gets a lot better. But while the best single fantasy performance from an individual Seahawk tight end in the last three years is Jacob Hollister’s 93.9 PPR points in 2019 (TE23), the team’s tight end grouping has put up 158.0, 193.0 and 184.5 points the last three years. If that was one player, it would have been TE7 (2018), TE6 (2019) and TE3. You can’t just throw all those points at Everett (Will Dissly is still around), but there’s some moderate upside there, and Everett could be an interesting TE2 flyer.
100. Do we still care about Rashaad Penny at all?
Chris Carson has been been banged up a lot in four years in Seattle. That’s true. On the other hand, after missing 12 of 16 games as a rookie, he’s played 41 of a possible 48 games the last three years. Meanwhile, former first-rounder Rashaad Penny had played 27 games in his three years, totaling 161 carries for 823 yards. Penny enters 2021 as the clear No. 2, but it’s fair to question what that’s worth.
Best answer: After years of scuffling around the bottom of the league’s lines, Seattle added Gabe Jackson this offseason and now ranks 14th in our Brett Whitefield’s offensive line rankings. That could be huge for this running game, and with Carson never sure to stay healthy, Penny could be an interesting handcuff. Carson has a sky-high ceiling, but Penny (current ADP RB50) has one last chance to live up to his potential.
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