Who is the Saints QB1? ⚜️

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• Saints QB Derek Carr announce retirement from the NFL due to complications regarding treatment for shoulder injury

  • After months of uncertainty surrounding his standing with the Saints organization and their new coaching regime, Carr has officially put a lid on any and all speculation by stepping away from the game after 11 years. Based on the reporting we’re hearing, it looks, sounds, and smells like a medical retirement for the former longtime Raiders QB – it was revealed earlier this offseason that Carr was dealing with an injury that ‘threatened his 2025 season’, and it seems that after multiple treatment attempts, Carr has decided to forego any further damage that could have resulted from continuing to play. His retirement puts an end to what was shaping up to be one of the muddier quarterback situations around the league and leaves the Saints with just 2nd round rookie Tyler Shough and last year’s 5th round pick Spencer Rattler to duke it out for starting duties. Regardless of who starts, neither quarterback figures to be in the conversation as a fantasy-relevant starter – though they will be responsible for supporting WRs Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed to fantasy relevance in 2025 as both come back from injuries. Unless Tyler Shough hits the ground running in training camp and going into the regular season, it’ll be difficult to trust any Saints players outside of Alvin Kamara (who could be a target magnet once again if struggling QBs are forced to dump it off in the backfield all season).

• The Athletic’s Saad Yousef says that Cowboys rookie RB Jaydon Blue will be the No. 1 guy by the end of the year’

  • Dallas enters the new season with more quantity than quality once again in their backfield, with the trio of Javonte Williams, Miles Sanders, and the aforementioned rookie Jaydon Blue expected to pick up the slack on the ground in 2025. Williams and Sanders are both uninspiring adds and profile as nothing more than reclamation projects with RB3 potential, but will likely shoulder the load early as Dallas looks to ramp up Blue as the season progresses. It’s a situation reminiscent of what Dallas deployed last season between a washed up veteran Ezekiel Elliott and a spry Rico Dowdle, with the latter taking control of the backfield down the stretch in 2024 and providing comfortable RB2 value in the back half of the year. It’s a classic ambiguous backfield, and one that should be targeted in all formats because of the liquidity that exists. Blue is easily the most talented and most efficient of the backs in the Cowboys’ backfield, and offers the most in the way of receiving upside, as well, so he should be the clear target of the trio as a potential RB3/flex on day one. If he could take command of the carries in the backfield (even just 50% of the work on the ground), he’d be a viable fantasy RB2 with upside in what’s likely to be a run-first offensive scheme under new head coach Brian Schottenheimer.

• Jets TE Mason Taylor ‘should have a significant role as a rookie’, per ESPN’s Rich Cimini

  • Considering that the Jets have no real target competition outside of Garrett Wilson, Taylor is essentially being pigeonholed into opportunity in Year 1 – a welcome development in a world that has seen two rookies finish as the overall TE1 in back-to-back years. Will Mason Taylor be able to do that with Justin Fields at quarterback and Brock Bowers existing? That’s an entirely different question, but one thing is for certain: the Jets have plenty of snaps an opportunities available after letting veteran TE Tyler Conklin walk in free agency this past March. In other good news for Taylor: Justin Fields was a perfectly serviceable starter for the Steelers last season and has reportedly looked good in the early portion of the team’s OTAs. Taylor had a quiet but solid week at the Senior Bowl, and with 2nd-round draft capital added to his profile, the potential for him to be a contributor in the immediate and long-term futures is significant. His exact upside will likely come down to just how well Fields is able to command the Jets offense, but with new OC Tanner Engstrand coming over from the Lions, the hope for Taylor’s prospective managers should be that Engstrand is able to mold Taylor in his vision the same way he was able to with Sam LaPorta during his time in Detroit.

George Pickens:

Speaking of George Pickens, the move to Dallas is a relative upgrade: he moves from an offense directed by Arthur Smith (14th percentile in his career in pass play frequency) to one conducted by Schottenheimer (43rd percentile in his career in pass play frequency). That being said, this still isn’t going to be a pass-first offense, and Pickens isn’t exactly a target-earning WR: he’s posted target rates of 14%, 19%, and 23% in the first three years of his career on a per-route basis. Pickens only broke the 20% threshold in 2024 once Diontae Johnson - a proven target earner - left the picture for the Steelers, and now he’s teamed up with one of the league’s top target earners in Ceedee Lamb (28% targets per route run each of the past two seasons). Assuming the overall available target pool shrinks with Schottenheimer making a concerted effort to run the ball more, the situation for Pickens could mirror closely what we saw from him in Pittsburgh. It’s a lateral move.

Pickens has yet to eclipse 110 targets in a season in his career, but has over 100 (103 and 106) in his past two seasons. Does Dallas look like an offense that’s going to allow him to top those numbers? His catch rate could improve and that could bring up his bottom line, but Pickens looks the most like a WR3 - much more so than a WR2.

Ceedee Lamb:

Pickens being added isn’t going to limit Lamb as much as the expected change in offensive philosophy will. Lamb was able to post his 181-135-1749-12 line in 2023 with Jake Ferguson eclipsing 100 targets and Brandin Cooks having 81 targets of his own. He’s no stranger to dominating a target share, and Pickens isn’t substantial enough target competition to give up on Lamb’s ability to continue to shine. Lamb’s ceiling is lower this season by default, not as a direct result of the Pickens trade. Continue to draft him in the 1st round with confidence.

D.K. Metcalf

As we can see, D.K. Metcalf is a target-earning WR; not necessarily elite, but he is more than capable of holding his own when the competition around him is limited. With just one other competing receiver in Tyler Lockett, Metcalf was able to post two seasons with 27% target share - more than enough to be a fantasy WR1. Ultimately he finished as the overall WR14 and WR16 in those two seasons, and finished as the overall WR7 in 2020 despite having just a 24% target share.

Once JSN came around in 2023, though, Metcalf struggled to maintain his grip on the target distribution – he posted 23 and 22% target shares, with target rates of just 21 and 20%. That was with Lockett and JSN, so we can cut him some slack. The good news for Metcalf: there’s almost nobody else competing for targets with him at this point in Pittsburgh’s offense with Pickens out the door. TE Pat Freiermuth just had a career year where he caught 65 passes on 78 targets, so his target earning ceiling likely isn’t much higher. We could realistically see that target share number jump back into the mid-high 20%s , possibly even crossing the 30% threshold if the Steelers don’t add anyone before the start of the season.

Metcalf’s slice of the pie in terms of the target distribution should be large, but with Arthur Smith as the playcaller in Pittsburgh, the pie that he’s getting a slice of might be small to begin with. Smith has ranked bottom-8 in pass attempts in five of his six seasons calling plays, and no wide receiver has had more than 117 targets in a season in that span. Consider also that the Steelers QB depth chart features only Mason Rudolph and rookie WIll Howard, and it becomes another layer of uncertainty for Metcalf. He’s moving from an offense that was solid with plenty of target competition to an offense that, on paper, is much worse – but in Pittsburgh, he’ll be the clear alpha WR1. It’s a tradeoff that might help his weekly floor, but his overall upside on the season is probably low. Even the high-end of his range of outcomes looks like WR2, and that’s if best case scenario is exactly what unfolds.