Thanksgiving Turkeys for 2023

How do you prepare your turkey? I’m a stickler for brining; the number one problem with a terrible turkey is having it dry out and brining it helps it absorb extra moisture and make a juicer, more flavorful bird. But there are dozens of ways to go about it. I’ve enjoyed deep-fried birds, spatchcocked birds, and I’ve even had a friend do sous vide with what I am going to be polite and say was an “interesting result.” No matter how you slice it, preparation is important. You want to make sure you have a game plan well in advance to make sure your turkey is perfect.

For example, some of us select our turkeys at the end of August during our fantasy football drafts.

Yes, with the fantasy football season entering the last stretch of the regular season, some of us have found our rosters cluttered up with the detritus of first-round busts, rookie flops, and sleepers who have simply stayed asleep. Well, I have all this brine ready to go, so let’s roast some of the year’s fantasy football turkeys, shall we?

We’re going to create a starting lineup filled with the most disappointing players at each position – one quarterback, two running backs, two wide receivers, one flex, and one tight end. We’re not going to bother picking a kicker or defense, because if you drafted one of those highly enough to be disappointed by their performance, you’re actually the turkey, in truth. These aren’t necessarily the worst players at their positions, just the ones that have caused you the most headaches. We’re looking at players drafted highly enough to be at least potential every-week starters who have very much not been that this season.

We’re also solely looking at fantasy production today. There are plenty of players who have been bad at actual football but passible in fantasy – looking at you, Austin Ekeler. That’s for a different list; we’ll deal with the Wood Choppers of the world towards the end of the season. We’re also including a minimum six games played requirement, because we want to focus on players who were bad on the field, not players who have been to hurt to line up. Drafting Justin Jefferson with your first-round pick might be the most painful thing you’ve done this year, but it would seem overly harsh to label Jefferson a turkey just because his hamstring gave out in Week 5. Playing through injuries poorly? We’ll accept that. But not if you’ve missed half the season.

Quarterback

Speaking of “playing through injuries poorly,” Joe Burrow certainly qualifies as a candidate. QB5 if your league drafted early enough, Burrow’s strained calf made him a liability on the field for the first month of the season, averaging just 7.9 fantasy points per game. You had to keep trotting him out; he was your quarterback! You used a high pick on him! And maybe this was the week he would be healthy enough to have literally any pocket movement whatsoever! And you would say that as you watched Burrow get buried underneath another gaggle of linemen or throw a wounded duck up that he simply could not step into. Burrow doesn’t get the nod because his injury happened early enough that you could have planned around it by the time of your draft, and because his performance after his calf injury cleared up was closer to what was expected. But getting QB18 out of a top-five passer from a year ago is massively disappointing, even before he suffered his season-ending wrist injury.

Trevor Lawrence is also another option. There was optimism that Lawrence was going to take another step forward in Year 3, with the addition of Calvin Ridley upping the explosive potential of the Jacksonville offense. Instead, Lawrence has only scored multiple touchdowns in three of his ten games, a rate that just doesn’t cut it for preseason’s QB8. Ridley isn’t separating. The offensive line isn’t giving Lawrence time to work. And under Press Taylor, Lawrence has become a short-game quick-passer almost exclusively. That’s a step back.

But our pick for starting quarterback turkey is Daniel Jones. No one expected Jones to be as good as Burrow or Lawrence, but his ADP had him as QB13 before the season started. That rushing value – 120 carries, 708 yards, seven touchdowns – was a siren’s song that took Jones from a backup option to a fringe starting passer, someone you grab if you put off the quarterback position ‘til the end of the draft. And with Darren Waller and Parris Campbell coming in? There was some legitimate fantasy buzz here. 

Instead, Jones averaged 9.5 PPG before getting injured, lower than Zach Wilson, Bryce Young, Mac Jones or Kenny Pickett. Jones only found the end zone in one of his six games, the miracle comeback over Arizona. Instead, he spent most of his season picking himself out of the turf at MetLife. Jones finished his season with a -53.8% passing DVOA, and while he won’t end up qualifying for the final leaderboards due to lack of volume, it will go down as the ninth-worst passing season in DVOA history for anyone with at least 175 dropbacks. Hey, at least your fantasy team didn’t sign him to a four-year, $160-million contract extension before the year started!

Running Backs

Our honorable mentions have to start with Bijan Robinson, the no-miss first-round rookie who was going to supercharge Atlanta’s offense. Every rookie running back drafted in the top 10 since 2011 has been a reliable fantasy option as a rookie, finishing no worse than 15th in PPG, because if you spend all that capital on a running back, you’ve gotta use him, right? Well, that is apparently news to Arthur Smith. Robinson is 20th in PPG at 13.1, in part because he’s only getting 15.4 touches per game, nearly splitting time evenly with Tyler Allgeier. Robinson doesn’t get a turkey nod because he has been a solid second running back, but you didn’t draft him to fill a depth chart on your roster; you used a first-round pick on him to supercharge your offense. He just had a 22-carry, 95-yard, one-touchdown day against Arizona, which is what we were expecting week-in and week-out. Give the man his touches, Arthur Smith; at least you’ll save someone’s fantasy season.

Elsewhere, there was hope that Rhamondre Stevenson would take a step forward in his second year as a primary back in New England; he is instead RB27, stuck in a platoon with Ezekiel Elliott. There are Dameon Pierce and Alexander Mattison, both drafted in the late teens at the position with top-10 upside. Instead, they are 34th and 35th out of 35 qualified running backs in rushing DYAR and DVOA and arguably the worst parts of their respective offenses. And speaking of “worst” and “offense,” Najee Harris not only doesn’t have the volume he had in his first two seasons, but he’s still averaging under four yards per carry. Jaylen Warren is right there, people.

But no, our starters are Miles Sanders and Cam Akers. Both were drafted a little lower than the five guys we listed above – RB21 and RB22, specifically – but both of them faceplanted harder than any of that lot.

Going from Philadelphia to Carolina, Sanders looked to be in line for a heavy workload in a bad offense. His lack of pass-catching chops kept him in a rotation in Philly, but what are the Panthers going to do; give touches to Chuba Hubbard? Well, as it turns out, yes, that’s exactly it. Hubbard has 127 touches, Sanders 103. And it’s not wrong, either; Sanders is averaging just 3.8 yards per touch, has found the end zone only once, and has a pair of fumbles. At times this season, Sanders has even been behind Raheem Blackshear. This is the guy who was sixth and seventh in rushing DVOA in 2021 and 2022! A drop in efficiency was expected when you replace the Eagles offensive line with whatever is Carolina is trotting out, but he’s not even replacing it with volume. Sanders’ -14.4% rushing DVOA would rank 31st, but he doesn’t even have enough touches to qualify. Even a full-time player would struggle to produce fantasy value in Carolina’s offense, but Sanders can’t even be that.

But at least Sanders still has his opening day job. Akers looked to have a clear grasp on the Rams’ starting running back role because, really, who else was there? After some time in the doghouse in 2022, Akers took 70% of the Rams carries down the stretch last year; surely, that would continue and now he’d be a full year recovered from his torn Achilles. Instead, something called “Kyren Williams” took away first Akers’ goal line carries, then his passing routes, and then his starting jog entirely. Akers was then made a healthy scratch before being sent to Minnesota for a swap of late 2026 draft picks. Any thoughts that Akers would produce instead of the struggling Mattison quickly went out the window; he received an average of 6.3 carries per game for Minnesota before tearing his Achilles once again. Drafting him was basically setting a fifth-round pick on fire.

Wide Receivers

I feel your pain, Garrett Wilson drafters. He was solid as a rookie with the dregs of the Jets quarterback room; he was going to blast off with Aaron Rodgers throwing him the ball – a “fringe fantasy WR1 with elite upside”, as ESPN put it. That upside immediately crashed when Rodgers tore his Achilles four plays into the season; Wilson continues to be one of the better receivers in football at getting open, but Zach Wilson just couldn’t get the ball to him with any regularity. Wilson can’t be one of our starting turkeys because he’s still an OK second receiver, but we mourn what could have been.

You drafted Deebo Samuel because he’s the king of schemed up short-yardage plays. Well, San Francisco’s offense has been too good to need that; Christian McCaffrey is a better runner and the Brock Purdy to Brandon Aiyuk or George Kittle connection has been pushing the ball downfield with regularity. Samuel is now weapon no. 4 for the 49ers, and while that’s terrifying for actual football, six touches per game isn’t great for a receiver with an aDOT of 7.1. You drafted Chris Godwin coming off a career year in targets and receptions despite coming off of a torn ACL, instead, it turns out – and this might shock you – Baker Mayfield isn’t as good as Tom Brady. Godwin has only topped 80 yards once this year, and has one touchdown to his name. 

You drafted Jerry Jeudy and Drake London because of hype; this being the year they put things together. Jeudy was going to get to work with Sean Payton, coming off career years in receptions and yards and touchdowns in a Nate Hackett offense. London was the only wideout Atlanta actually had. Both were popular picks for breakout years; instead, they’re borderline WR3 options.

But our starters are Christian Watson, Cooper Kupp and, as our flex, Tee Higgins.

Watson was the least hyped of the three, but also the biggest disappointment. From Week 10 onwards last year, Watson was a top-10 receiver with 584 yards and eight(!) touchdowns on 35 touches. The switch to Jordan Love, however, had destroyed Watson’s value. Not because Love has been terrible; he’s connecting just fine with Jayden Reed and Romeo Doubs and Dontayvion Wicks. But Love and Watson have negative chemistry together, frequently failing to hook up at all. Watson hasn’t had a single game this season with more than three receptions, which is nuts – even Jonathan Mingo, dead last in receiving DYAR and DVOA, has two such games under his belt. This is a mighty sophomore slump, and while it’s far too early to give up on Watson as a receiver, it’s time to give up on your fantasy team this year if he was your best wideout.

Kupp just squeaks in under the “minimum six games” threshold, as he’s been battling hamstring and ankle injuries all season. And, for two weeks, it looked like he was going to be well clear from this sort of list, with 266 yards in his first two games back – better late than never for the fifth wideout in ADP. Since then, though, Kupp hasn’t found the end zone, and has put up 29, 21, 48 and 11 receiving yards. In the last month, he’s been under a 40% catch rate in every game where he’s received more than one target. Some of this is due to Matthew Stafford playing through injury as well, certainly, but Kupp was projected as one of the five best receivers in the league; the kind of sure-handed receiver who can get an offense through anything. For an elite fantasy option to be scoring 11.6 PPG is criminal; he’s putting up Jayden Reed numbers with CeeDee Lamb draft pedigree. It’s that ADP which pushes him over the edge; he was likely your first-round pick.

But at least he’s out-producing Higgins. Higgins opened up the year with zero receptions on eight targets, which would have been an all-time great Loser League performance (those who know, know). He’s had three other games under 25 yards, including one after Burrow’s calf had recovered. All of the Bengals suffered when Burrow was struggling, but no one saw their numbers drop quite as precipitously as Higgins. He just gets the flex spot because he’s doing better than Watson and wasn’t drafted as highly as Kupp, but he does kind of hit the sweet spot between the two, rounding out our receiving corps nicely.

Tight Ends

Chigoziem Okonkwo was hyped entering his second season, with Austin Hooper gone. Okonkwo was second among tight ends over the back half of the season in yards per target and yards per reception, and now he was going to be the undisputed TE1 on the team. Well, no; he’s yet to find the end zone this year and is an afterthought in a run-heavy offense. Sliding up the ADP board slightly, you could perhaps argue for Dallas Goedert, who is just 11th in PPG behind guys like Evan Engram and Dalton Kincaid as the Philadelphia offense really hasn’t hit full gear at any point this season.

But no, this was the easiest pick of the lot. Atlanta can’t hang out in the honorable mention section forever, it’s Kyle Pitts. Pitts is averaging fewer fantasy points per game than Trey McBride, or Logan Thomas, or Jonnu Smith on his own team. That Pitts and Smith both have 36 touches – and that Smith has more touchdowns and yards per touch – makes no sense. But then again, making no sense seems to be the primary goal of the Arthur Smith offense, a collection of intriguing ideas thrown into a blender and served vastly undercooked. 

Arthur Smith is the one bringing the ambrosia salad to your Thanksgiving dinner, except he’s topped them with a heaping helping of creamed onions. Smith is making a tofurkey and sauerkraut main course, when you just spent all day and quite a lot of money buying him some premium ingredients. Someone stop him before he ruins everything, please.