Deep Sleeper in the Chargers backfield? 😴

There is truly no better feeling than getting a dynasty trade offer to finally go through after days and weeks of negotiation. Yes, I’m riding the high from getting one done in my league, and I don’t know when I’ll come down.

What’s in store:

• The Cardinals have their Marvin Harrison Jr. complement. Zay Jones lands with the Cardinals to run opposite the dynamic rookie.

• ‘This is fine’: Aidan O’Connell and Gardner Minshew set to duke it out for starting gig in Las Vegas. This is what happens when six quarterbacks come off the board in the top-12 of the draft.

• J.J. McCarthy: not the automatic starter in Minnesota? 😯The other first round QB in the NFC North will have to go through Sam Darnold to claim the No. 1 spot.

• Trouble in paradise? 🌩️ The Chargers got the band back together with Greg Roman, Gus Edwards, and J.K. Dobbins, but could a newcomer crash the party?

• Former Jaguars WR Zay Jones signs with Cardinals on one-year, $4.25M deal, concluding his free agency tour

  • Landing with the Cardinals gives Jones his most clear path to a potential No. 2 role in an NFL offense with just second-year receiver Michael Wilson standing in his way. On an offense that’s quietly amassed talent at every position, Jones will have his work cut out for him to become a consistent piece of the target distribution puzzle. We’ve seen Kyler Murray’s preference for TE Trey McBride in the passing game (his 0.27 targets per route run ranked first among all TEs in 2023), and with rookie WR Marvin Harrison Jr. penciled in for at least 100 targets and a dynamic backfield duo in James Conner and Trey Benson, Jones finds himself in a situation not unlike the one he was part of in Jacksonville. At 29 years old, there should be no concerns about him hitting the wall just yet on an offense that is perfectly capable of producing points in bunches. Much like he was last year, Jones will likely be a fixture on fantasy football benches while being elevated/promoted as needed to return WR3/flex value. His addition to the offense does little to impact the sizes of the prospective pieces of the target pie for Harrison Jr. and McBride, but it’s certainly a possibility that Jones could vulture a touchdown or two from the Cardinals dynamic young weapons.

• Raiders QBs Aidan O’Connell, Gardner Minshew II set to compete for No. 1 job in Las Vegas as starter remains unnamed

  • *Insert the battle of mid meme here*. This was the fear for fantasy managers coming into last month’s draft: that the Raiders ultimately wouldn’t land a quarterback and would be forced to trot out one of the two low-ceiling fallback options they had on the roster beforehand. Those fears have been realized, unfortunately, and at this point the best we can hope for is that one of the two signal callers improves over the course of the offseason to add a little more appeal to the offense as a whole. O’Connell has familiarity in the Raiders system that should give him the benefit of the doubt as the starter at this point in time, but there’s a fair shot that we ultimately see both Minshew and O’Connell in action by the season’s end regardless of whether either quarterback is injured. Both Minshew and O’Connell were able to sustain relatively livable production for their top wideouts last season (Davante Adams averaged 16.3 PPR pts/game in games where O’Connell was the starter from Weeks 9-18; Michael Pittman Jr. averaged 16.6 PPR pts/game in games where Minshew was the starter from Weeks 6-18), so there doesn’t appear to be a wrong answer as much as there also doesn’t appear to be a right one. Until the Raiders can find a long-term answer at QB, the prospects for the entire offense’s ceiling as a whole remains limited.

• QB Sam Darnold expected to begin offseason training activities atop depth chart over rookie J.J. McCarthy

  • Darnold spent the 2023 season behind Brock Purdy in the QB-friendly Shanahan system in San Francisco, and the Vikings took a flier on him for 2024 in hopes that he would, at the very least, be able to keep things afloat for his eventual successor in 1st-round QB J.J. McCarthy. Darnold has yet to throw for more than 20 touchdowns in a season in his career and is unlikely to challenge that in 2024, but he could have utility early in the season in deeper 2QB leagues considering the supporting cast in place in Minnesota. With the $8.75M in guaranteed money the Vikings have tied up in Sam Darnold’s contract, they at least owe him the first crack at the starting job – which it appears he’s been granted to open offseason training activities. But the sense is clear that Darnold’s time with the vikings is an audition as a potential starter elsewhere in the NFL beyond this year, especially with McCarthy waiting in the wings to take his first snaps as captain of the offense. Regardless of which quarterback starts any given week, both figure to have relatively safe floors with Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison to throw to and HC Kevin O’Connell in their ear.

Gus Edwards was signed during free agency, and GM Joe Hortiz called him “the bell cow, the goal line guy, the finisher.” This was just GM speak - the real test of whether or not he meant what he said would come in the draft.

A week before the draft, the Chargers signed JK Dobbins to reunite him with Edwards and his old OC Greg Roman. Dobbins is coming off an Achilles injury, so I wouldn’t expect him to make a big impact this year. At this point of the offseson, Gus was still in the lead going into the draft…

The next week, Day 1 and Day 2 of the NFL Draft went by with no running back selections. But the Chargers did end up selecting Kimani Vidal, a bit of a sneaky selection on Day 3.

Among 174 RBs with 500+ career carries since 2014, Vidal ranks 10th and 37th in career yards after contact/attempt and missed tackles forced/attempt, respectively. However, he didn’t play in the Power 5, so level of competition is a question mark – not a dealbreaker, but something to bear in mind.

I think Vidal is going to be Edwards’ main competition this year. If he can’t prove himself this offseason, this very well can be Edwards’ backfield. But if he does prove himself, we could either see Vidal take over if he’s that dude, or we see something similar to what we saw in Baltimore during Greg Roman’s tenure - a 1a/1b rotation.

Just to remind you, Gus Edwards is no slouch. He was a Top-5 back efficiency-wise during his four years with Greg Roman in Baltimore, who he’s now reunited with in LA as part of what’s likely to be a run-first offense. And he’s pretty much locked in as their goal line back, to boot.

With Gus coming off the board as the RB36 in Underdog tournament drafts right now, that’s a serious value. But I’ll be taking my shots on Vidal, as well. This could be one of the most run-heavy offenses in the NFL under Roman and Harbaugh.

Do you think Edwards will end up being the bell cow like GM Joe Hortiz describes him? Am I too low on JK Dobbins? Can Kimani Vidal win this backfield?

TARGET WR Tyreek Hill, MIA

Is Tyreek Hill the obvious answer on the Dolphins offense? Without a doubt, yes – but there’s an argument for him to be the first player taken in drafts regardless of whether the league has one or two QBs in the starting lineup. Even as the WR2 off the board behind only Ceedee Lamb and the third overall player behind Lamb and McCaffrey, he could reasonably qualify as a value for whichever team is lucky enough to have him fall in their lap at the 1.03.

Statistically, there’s nothing that we saw last season that justifies him being ranked as anything besides the No. 1 receiver in fantasy football. Hill produced 23.6 fantasy points per game, second to only Ceedee Lamb’s 23.8, and scored the second most fantasy points total with 377.4 – again, second to only Lamb’s 405.2.

The difference? Tyreek Hill put up those numbers while running 159 fewer routes than Lamb did. Tyreek Hill’s 76% route participation ranked just 45th out of all wide receivers to run a route in 2023 compared to Lamb’s 88.5% (7th out of 233). How could a wide receiver that runs that many fewer routes essentially end up with the same output? The answer is alien efficiency and target domination that only Tyreek Hill can manage to pull off.

Tyreek Hill’s 0.38 targets per route run led all WRs by a long shot in 2023 with the next highest (Davante Adams) checking in at 0.31 targets per route run. That ability to earn targets on its own is enough to raise eyebrows, but when you combine that with the efficiency of his production, you end up with the fantasy cheat code at wide receiver that is Tyreek Hill. His 4.05 yards per route ranked easily as the highest in the league, and he was able to register over 4 YPRR lined up both in the slot and out wide. Put quite simply: you can’t cover Tyreek Hill, and he’s as inevitable a fantasy asset as a team can have.

Ceedee Lamb is an excellent fantasy WR and is primed to pick up where he left off on a Cowboys offense that is slated to be even more reliant on the pass in 2024. But what Tyreek Hill does cannot be matched by any other fantasy WR, and he’ll likely find himself at the top of my WR positional rankings once again simply because he produces at an elite level regardless of his workload, target competition, and matchup.