NHL Best Bets for Tuesday (11/19)
Kenneth Le
With the fantasy football season (and NFL regular season) over, it’s time to take a few minutes to look back on the season and see what we can learn from the wild ride it was. Monday, I discussed a few season-long takeaways within the AFC, so today we’ll flip that to the NFC.
Justin Jefferson Is the King
Justin Jefferson continued his ascent to the top again this year, as he set career-highs in receiving yards with 1,771 and receptions with 124. That helped him to the WR1 finish in fantasy, with 368.6 points. It was all impressive, but the most impressive part of this season was his peaks. Jefferson finished inside the top five eight times throughout the season, including six top-threes. That was two more top-five finishes than the next-closest wide receiver (Davante Adams). When he did finish outside the top-20, it’s worth noting that it sometimes got very bad — he had a weekly top-20 finish 12 times in 17 games but finished outside the top 44 in the other five.
It may be unlikely to improve on a top positional finish, but I do think Jefferson could improve some in 2023. This was the first year in a new system, and there were a few learning curves in a system that produced a historic fantasy season out of Cooper Kupp in 2021 — we could see Jefferson repeat that in 2023. With this in mind, I will be very muchly considering Jefferson as the 1.01 in redraft leagues next summer.
Amon-Ra St. Brown Proves It Wasn’t a Fluke
We saw Amon-Ra St. Brown explode down the stretch of the 2021 season, finishing as the WR2 in Weeks 9-18 of 2021. That was 11 points behind Cooper Kupp, but more than 20 points ahead of WR3 Davante Adams. Many people (myself included) believed this was due to the injuries and lack of playmakers in the offense, so headed into 2022, there was some doubt that he would be able to recreate this success. In the end, though, St. Brown proved the doubters wrong, putting up a WR7 season with 267.6 points, while averaging over 16 points per game.
St. Brown possessed a high upside, finishing as a top-five option three times, but he also had some low floors, finishing outside the top-20 10 times and outside the top-36 three. Still, at a preseason ADP of WR21, that’s a more-than-acceptable return. As we look to 2023, the Lions have a lot of free agents among their receivers, so there is likely going to be an even larger opportunity for St. Brown coming. I will be looking to draft St. Brown for 2023.
Jalen Hurts Takes a Step Forward
In 2021, we saw Jalen Hurts start the season on a tear — he was the QB2 through Week 7, averaging over 24 fantasy points per game. However, he faded over the back half of the season, ultimately finishing as the QB9 and averaging just over 21 points per game. That was not the case this year, as Hurts finished the season as the QB3 (despite missing two games), and his 25.6 PPG average was tops in the league. Other than a Week 18 game that the Eagles had well in hand early, Hurts never finished outside the top 15 in a game he played all season, and he finished as a top-six fantasy QB 12 times in 15 weeks.
Hurts’ legs were a key part of his success this year as he rushed for over 700 yards for the second straight season and scored a career-high 13 times. But we knew that. More impressively, he took a step forward as a passer, throwing for career-highs with 3,701 yards and 22 touchdowns. His 66.5% completion percentage was a career-high — it’s clear that the addition of A.J. Brown was a big help. There was some question about how committed the Eagles might be to Hurts entering the season, but at this point he seems likely to be the starter for at least the next few years, and that means we should buy him as a top-five fantasy QB going forward.
George Kittle Is Still as Elite as Ever
It has been an up-and-down few years for George Kittle as he has battled injuries, missing 14 games in 2019-2021. However, he just keeps turning out top-tier TE fantasy seasons. This year he posted his first 200-plus-point season in three years and finished as the TE3 in PPR, TE2 by points per game (13.4). Kittle produced these points in a different way this year than he has in previous years—he had his fewest targets (86), receptions (60) and yards (765) since his rookie year in 2017 (other than his eight-game 2020), but set a career-high with 11 touchdowns, his second straight season with a career high in touchdowns.
That did make Kittle more volatile as a week-to-week option, as he finished 20th or worst among TEs six different weeks, but he did average 5.7 targets per game, so his usage is still plenty strong. Kittle is 29 now — Travis Kelce might have you believing tight ends can be dominant well into their 30s, but at the very least that has to raise a small red flag about Kittle’s future — but for at least the immediate future, he’s still comfortable a top-five fantasy tight end.
Jamaal Williams Completes a Historic Season
The notion of Jamaal Williams breaking the Lions’ rushing TD record would have been comical at the start of the season. But with two scores Sunday, Williams ran for two more scores, getting him to 17 on the season, one more than Barry Sanders’ previous Lions record of 16. This helped propel Williams to a top-15 finish in fantasy (RB13) with 225.9 points despite only 12 receptions on the season (the next-best fantasy finish for a back with 12 or fewer receptions was D’Onta Foreman at RB38. Williams had six different top-10 weekly finishes despite his lack of receiving production, turning out to be one of the values in 2022 fantasy drafts — he had an ADP of RB49 this draft season.
Going forward, Williams’ production probably isn’t going to be that reliable. Touchdowns are very volatile, and he’ll be 28 when next season starts, old for a running back. He’s also a free agent this offseason, and it’s hard to imagine another team using him like the Lions did. So this might not be a lesson we can apply for the future, though if Williams leaves Detroit, D’Andre Swift could have a big theoretical ceiling if the team commits to him as the bell cow, however unlikely that might look.
