The only time Devonta Smith will be locked up 💰

Not a Jets fan, but these new uniforms are going to look great in the primetime lights at MetLife Stadium. The Green jersey with the white pants and facemask is just a chef’s kiss.

What’s in store:

• The only time Devonta Smith will be locked up in his career 🦅. The 2021 first-round pick signed a multi-year extension yesterday that ties him to the Eagles for the foreseeable future.

• CeeDee Lamb, on the other hand, continues to fight for an extension. We’re not quite sure what more he has to do to get his bag.

• Status update on Tee Higgins, straight from the horse’s (or in this case, Bengal’s) mouth 🐅. Will No. 5 run alongside No. 1 in Cincy for 2024?

• Get your updated copy of the Rookie Draft Kit today! The most up-to-date version will keep you primed for the draft next Thursday – and stay tuned for the post-draft version!

• Eagles and WR Devonta Smith agree to terms on 3-year, $75M deal with $51M guaranteed

  • The Eagles have been dishing out paydays to many of their key contributors so far this offseason, and Smith is next in line as he signs a lucrative three-year extension just three years into his NFL career. While the numbers haven’t been as eye-popping as some of the league’s very best (Jefferson, Chase, Lamb, and even his teammate A.J. Brown), the Slim Reaper™ has solidified himself as one of the most important cogs in Philly’s passing game and the Eagles compensated him accordingly. The deal ties him to QB Jalen Hurts and the excellent Eagles offense through the 2028 season, a fantastic development for Smith’s dynasty managers and redraft players alike. While operating across from Brown and competing for targets with the likes of Dallas Goedert will limit his ultimate fantasy upside, he should remain a highly productive, high-WR2 option on a weekly basis across fantasy formats. Speaking of young wide receivers getting their paydays…

• Cowboys WR Ceedee Lamb predictably absent from beginning of team’s voluntary offseason activities

• We are far from needing to panic about the availability of Lamb for the 2024 season, but there’s a chance this could be the start of a turbulent few months as the Cowboys ramp up their training as we head into the summer. These are, in fact, voluntary workouts that Lamb is missing, so this doesn’t necessarily mean that the star receiver is making a statement by not showing up - but it’s hard to imagine his absence not being at least somewhat fueled by the Cowboys’ front office and their lack of progress in negotiating a long term deal. The Cowboys are currently sorting through all kinds of cap issues stemming from the impending contract expirations of QB Dak Prescott, the aforementioned Lamb and edge Micah Parsons, so it will be no easy task for Jerry Jones and co. to retain all three while maintaining the talent around them. But as we’ve seen before from Jerry, he tends to drag his feet with getting his top players signed to big deals, and this could very well be the next example. With plenty of time to get the deal negotiated, fantasy managers should have no reservations about having Lamb on their dynasty rosters, nor the prospect of selecting him in redraft formats at this point in time.

• Bengals WR Tee Higgins says he ‘anticipates’ playing for the Bengals in 2024 on franchise tag

  • It’s been an offseason of speculation surrounding the former 2020 second-round wide receiver. Higgins has long been rumored to be available via trade with the Bengals facing the reality of needing to extend both QB Joe Burrow and WR Ja’Marr Chase, and despite Higgins officially requesting a trade in March, nothing has manifested itself on that front to date. Higgins finished inside the weekly top-36 WRs just five times last year, finishing with career lows in receptions, receiving yards, touchdowns, and most importantly, fantasy points. His struggles last year have only made the whispers about a trade even louder, but his most recent comments seem to suggest that the most likely scenario may be one where he plays out the 2024 season on the franchise tag. For fantasy purposes, this very well may be the preferred outcome – Higgins could get another year with Joe Burrow as his quarterback as opposed to a potential downgrade under center should he end up ultimately being dealt. Higgins will always be an upside WR2 play as long as he and Joe Burrow are healthy.

Dominator rating - this is the percentage of a team’s offensive output a player is responsible for. So when we say that Marvin Harrison had a 39% career dominator rating, this means 39% of his team’s offensive output during his career can be credited to him - which is kind of insane. Sometimes we use a player’s best year dominator rating as well as the career dominate rating.

Breakout age - this is the age at which a receiver accounted for 20% of a team’s offensive output in a particular year, which means he would have at least a 20% dominator rating. So if a WR accounts for 20% of his team’s offensive output for the first time in their career, the age at which they do that is their breakout age. There is a correlation between breaking out at a young age and draft capital translating to fantasy success. Breaking out as a freshman at 18 years old or breaking out at 19 years old like Malik Nabers did is very impressive, and these prospects should get a bump because of it. There is one WR who broke out at 18 years old and even hit a 30% dominator rating in the Power 5 - and we’ll get to him shortly.

I also mention yards/route run and something new that is being talked about a lot more this year - first downs/route run - mainly introduced and made popular by Fantasy Points’ Ryan Heath (Twitter: @RyanJ_Heath) - two stats that are relatively sticky when it comes to WR production - two stats we want to use together to know which WRs are not just big play merchants, but also are used to move the chains - this is the type of WR that gets it done for fantasy on a consistent basis. 

As far as draft capital goes, long story short, the first round and second round is where it’s at. Fantasy Life’s Dwain McFarland broke this down for WRs, and he’ll be on the show next week to talk more about this - but 47% of 1st round WRs drafted between 2011 and 2020 have finished as a Top-24 WR at least in their first three seasons, with 24% of them finishing as a Top-12 fantasy WR. Those numbers go down to 41% and 18% for WRs taken in the 2nd round. The numbers go up slightly for WRs taken early in the first.

When you get to the third round, that rate drops dramatically to 21% of those WRs hitting a Top-24 season in their first three years. After that, it gets bleak. The chances it happens after that is pretty low, so keep that in mind. You’re going to have the Amon-Ra’s and the Tank Dell’s, and this deep class can have a hit or two as well, but it’s good to understand these historical hit rates when planning for our rookie drafts.

Daniels is simply one of the most efficient QBs of all time with the combination of passing and rushing ability. He’s electric as a rusher, and he has the playmaking ability in the pass game, too. I don’t think anyone in this class throws a prettier deep ball than Daniels, even when on the run. I don’t think anyone is as accurate as Daniels when he’s on schedule, especially when you consider all three levels of the field. His overall on-target percentage is the highest in this class.

The fact that he threw 40 TDs to only 4 interceptions last season, and then also had over 1000 yards rushing on top of nearly 4000 yards passing is… impressive to say the least. His 8.8 yards per attempt for his career and career 4.5:1 TD:INT ratio was 2nd only to Caleb Williams.

One of the concerns with Daniels is he wasn’t big enough to handle all the hits he takes in the run game, but with him weighing in at 210 pounds at his Pro Day, I’m good with it. With that said, he did get thrown around like a rag doll at times at the end of runs. Hopefully he’ll get better at going down before contact in the NFL. He loves to tuck and run, which means more fantasy points on top of his designed rushes.

I will say that if he’s going to be a good NFL QB, he’ll have to be a little more patient before he decides to tuck and run. He also has to take less sacks; he wasn’t his best when under pressure. He usually ends up running the ball in those situations, and doesn’t keep his eyes downfield while trying to evade pressure. Hopefully he’ll have some good WRs to throw the ball to like he did at LSU to help him out.