The Fantasy Options Most Hurt by Their Division in 2023

The NFL schedule changes every year, but six games for each team remain the same: the intradivisional matchups. The Rams might face the Eagles one season, the Saints the next, the Lions the one after that, but they’ll face the 49ers, Seahawks and Cardinals twice each, every single year.

That doesn’t always have to mean much, but at the least, you can use teams’ divisional games as the control to the rest of the schedule’s variable. If a team is in a division with three putrid defenses, and its players thrive in those games but struggle out of the division, well, that tells us something, but it also means good news for that team’s players the next year, because they will still play those teams. The inverse is also true if a team’s divisionmates are all defensive stalwarts.

Of course, this is small samples we’re dealing with here. In a 17-game season, you face divisional opponents six times and non-divisional opponents 11. Miss a game here and there, and the sample size is even smaller. So just doing well or poorly against division foes isn’t enough to draw a conclusion. But it’s a heck of a place to start.

That’s what I’ve been doing Tuesday and today. Below, I’m looking at the fantasy players most hurt by their division in 2023, and what that means (if anything) for 2024. Tuesday, I did the opposite — players most helped by their division.

(All scoring is PPR, players needed at least four intradivisional games to be considered.)

Players Most hurt by Their Division in 2023

Isaiah Likely, TE, Baltimore Ravens

Outside the division: 7.9 PPR points per game
Inside the division: 2.4
Decrease: -69.6%

The reason here is easily identifiable, and it doesn’t really have much to do with opponents, so I’m only including it because Likely was literally the top of the list. Yes, Likely averaged 7.9 points when the Ravens played outside the AFC North and 2.4 inside. But also, the Ravens in 2023 had their intradivisional games clustered early in the season … when Mark Andrews was active. Likely only got one divisional game as the featured tight end, and it was Week 18 (when he scored 11.1). This isn’t a divisional point; it’s a “nice to be the No. 1” point.

Gabe Davis, WR, Buffalo Bills (now Jacksonville Jaguars)

Outside the division: 12.3
Inside the division: 4.3
Decrease: -64.8%

Running alongside Stefon Diggs in Buffalo, Davis’ biggest success came against teams that didn’t have strong No. 2 pieces in their secondary. He was good at picking on underwhelming defensive backs, which he could do when the star opposing corners had to mark Diggs, but really struggled when he had to face good ones. You know what the 2023 AFC East had a lot of? Good corners. (That explains why Davis was also in this piece a year ago!)

Now, Davis is in Jacksonville, which as we saw in Tuesday’s piece, is much friendlier to opposing receivers. The problem, though, is that he’s at best the No. 2 target in Jacksonville and could be as low as No. 4 (behind, in some order, Christian Kirk, Brian Thomas and TE Evan Engram). So it might actually be a bad turn for Davis, but if he claims a spot near the top of the depth chart for 2024, he could be a sneaky add.

Dalton Schultz, TE, Houston Texans

Outside the division: 13.0
Inside the division: 5.6
Decrease: -57.2%

Schultz reached double-digit PPR points seven times in 2023. All seven came outside the AFC South, in nine total tries. His best intradivisional output was a 9.8-point game in Week 15 that was just 4 catches for 58 yards. That’s pretty compelling … but also, the Texans receiver room makes this game difficult for any individual piece of the passing game. Nico Collins, Tank Dell and Noah Brown all missed multiple games, and C.J. Stroud was of course a rookie. So Schultz totaled 7 receptions for 47 yards in his first three weeks, when the receivers were mostly healthy. But also, he was new to the Texans and Stroud was new to the league. Then Stroud and Schultz were both worked into the offense, and he had big games for a while in the middle of the season, but one or more of the receivers missed several of those games. There are far too many variables and far too few controls.

I’m interested in Schultz’s lack of success against the AFC South, but for now, I’m much more liable to chalk it up to noise more than signal.

George Kittle, TE, San Francisco 49ers

Outside the division: 15.1
Inside the division: 7.4
Decrease: -51.3%

Kittle has become increasingly boom-or-bust as his career has gone on. That’s partly attributable to his success as a blocker (and the 49ers O-line’s mediocrity), because staying in to protect Brock Purdy takes away some of his receiving opportunity. But last year, he was the overall TE1 three times … and outside the top 30 tight ends three times. In Weeks 2-7, Kittle’s weekly finishes were TE32, TE3, TE45, TE1, TE51, TE8.

So were his big weeks outside the NFC West a function of the opponent? Were his relatively down intradivisional games because he faced tougher opponents, despite the fact that the teams ranked third, 11^th and 17^th in most points allowed to tight ends? Or were those just the unpredictable spike weeks from an increasingly unpredictable tight end?

Diontae Johnson, WR, Pittsburgh Steelers (now Carolina Panthers)

Outside the division: 13.1
Inside the division: 7.0
Decrease: -46.5%

Johnson’s career has stalled out a bit since Ben Roethlisberger retired. Over Ben’s last two years, Johnson totaled 2,084 yards and 15 touchdowns. In the two years since, that’s dropped to 1,599 and 5, including famously scoring zero touchdowns in 2022 despite 147 targets and 86 receptions. The Mitch Trubisky/mostly Kenny Pickett era didn’t do him any favors, and certainly the always-tense AFC North matchups didn’t help matters. Now, he’s free to start over in the NFC South with Carolina, which doesn’t feature teams (and defenses) as traditionally physical and rough as the AFC North. The Bryce Young issue is a big question mark, but at the least it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Johnson get more consistent in 2024.