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Chris Meaney
(Knowing the right question to ask is as important as knowing the answer. In 100 Questions, FTN’s Daniel Kelley identifies the key fantasy football questions to ask heading into the 2021 NFL season. Today: The NFC South.)
The NFC South was born in 2002. Famously, from that point until 2012, the division never had a repeat champion. So it’s funny that since then, the team has had two streaks at the top (Carolina, 2013-2015, and New Orleans, 2017-2020), with only Atlanta in 2016 breaking up a sudden monotony.
Meanwhile, the Buccaneers have 10 last-place finishes in 19 years and hasn’t won the division since 2007. But the NFC South might be in for a lot of change in 2021.
Atlanta Falcons
The Falcons finished 4-12 last year despite a -18 point differential. That was 3.6 wins below their Pythagorean record, comfortably the largest in the league and the only team more than 3.0 games off. That would suggest improvement the next year, just from better luck … but man, you don’t want to use the L-word around Atlanta sports fans.
77. Can Calvin Ridley be the overall WR1?
Calvin Ridley has played eight career games without Julio Jones and averaged 7.3 receptions for 106.3 yards on 11.1 targets (and only 0.4 touchdowns, because it wouldn’t be the Falcons without the No. 1 receiver not finding the end zone). That’s 17.1 PPR points per game, 274.0 over a full season. Last year, that would have been WR7 … behind Ridley’s actual finish.
Best answer: The only reason Ridley’s total fantasy point total isn’t as impressive as you might guess is because of the touchdowns — 11.1 targets is 178 over the course of the season, most in the league by 12. Kyle Pitts will absorb some of the Julio role, but that still means Ridley should get at least the work he did last year, possibly way more. The FTN Fantasy ADP tool shows Ridley currently at WR6, and … I think that’s low by at least two spots, maybe more. The only receiver I am definitely taking over Ridley is Davante Adams.
78. How will this backfield shake out?
With Todd Gurley, Brian Hill and Ito Smith gone, everyone assumed the Falcons would bring in a big name (or two (or three)). Instead, they signed Mike Davis, and then … that was pretty much it. The backfield is Davis, Qadree Ollison, Cordarrelle Patterson and UDFAs Javian Hawkins and Caleb Huntley.
Best answer: For all the buzz Davis generated last year, did you know he had as many hundred-yard games as I did? That he didn’t average 4.0 yards per carry? There is nothing wrong with taking Davis as a super-late RB2 or flex, but there also aren’t many riskier starting backs out there. I’m fine nabbing Davis around his ADP, but I’m also picking Ollison with my last-round picks fairly often.
79. Is there still value in Hayden Hurst?
After the Falcons traded for Hayden Hurst last offseason, he became a popular sleeper tight end, and it didn’t really work out — he finished as the TE10 but had seven different games under 30 yards and only scoring in Weeks 15, 16 and 17 salvaged his value. Now Kyle Pitts is in Atlanta.
Best answer: I only ask this question because I want to give the answer, and it’s … maybe yes? Pitts is obviously the Atlanta tight end you want, but as basically the Julio Jones replacement, and with not a lot of other weaponry, don’t be surprised if Atlanta runs a lot of two-TE sets (I would take Pitts comfortably as the TE4 because I think his target floor is absurdly high). And that would mean Pitts’ arrival won’t actually cost Hurts as much as you might think. He’s basically free in drafts, and I think that could be fun.
Carolina Panthers
The Panthers went 5-11 in 2019. They fired their coach, got a new quarterback and changed their whole plan. The Panthers went 5-11 in 2020. Now, given they sort of hedged between contending and rebuilding and tanking, that might make sense, but if the team wins 5 games again in 2021, we might see another changing of the guard.
80. What is D.J. Moore’s fantasy ceiling?
Our Eliot Crist has had a favorite stat all offseason: Last year, three receivers had at least 93 receiving yards eight times. One, Stefon Diggs, finished as the fantasy WR3. Another, Calvin Ridley, finished WR5. The third was D.J. Moore, who rode those big games to only WR25, owing to only 4 touchdowns and 4 or fewer receptions nine times.
Best answer: Obviously, this comes down to what Sam Darnold can do away from New York. And Moore now only has 10 touchdowns in three years, so he’s not guaranteed a big TD number. But someone who can rack up the yardage Moore can finishing 25th doesn’t make sense. You can get Moore 19th in ADP. He’s 14th in our FTN Fantasy rankings. That’s a huge gap that high, and it shows you should be investing in this upside.
81. Is there any sleeper value to Dan Arnold?
Fun name thoughts aside, Dan Arnold, believe it or not, put up the best fantasy season by a Cardinals tight end since 2004. Of course, it was only 438 yards and 4 touchdowns, because the Cardinals ignore TEs like my kids ignore clothes (for context, I have twin 3-year-olds that spend approximately 98% of their days naked, please send help).
Best answer: I’ll leave this to our Eliot Crist, from his “last-round fliers in best ball” piece:
The Panthers offense remains one of the cheaper stacks in best ball season, and Arnold is the cheapest piece of it. He is the projected starter and is an elite athlete. At 6-5 and 222 pounds, he is built like a big wide receiver and has the measurables to produce that way as well. He has a 97th-percentile college dominator score, 98th-percentile burst score, 94th-percentile agility score and 95th-percentile catch radius. Arnold has caught 31 passes for 450 yards in 19 games with six touchdowns and was the Cardinals’ third leading receiver last year, playing just 40% of the snaps. If he becomes a full-time player this year, he could pay off taking a chance on him in a big way.
82. Can you handcuff Christian McCaffrey?
The Panthers are basically a known quantity in fantasy. Moore is intriguing, but otherwise, Christian McCaffrey is the No. 1 overall pick, Robby Anderson is a flex-ish player, Terrace Marshall is a sleeper, Sam Darnold is “I hope he can get better.” But if you had said a year ago that the Panthers were backing up McCaffrey with Chuba Hubbard, he’d be the most popular backup in the league. But then Hubbard went from 2,292 yards and 21 touchdowns in 2019 to 677 and 6 in 2020.
Best answer: Hubbard is a year removed from maybe being the first running back drafted. The Panthers’ starting back was just limited to three games. And the backup was previously unknown and became the RB12. Latavius Murray should be the first “handcuff” drafted this year, but Hubbard might be the sleeper-est of the handcuffs; if you handcuff, he’s a fantastic option.
New Orleans Saints
The Saints went 3-13 in 2005, acquired Drew Brees, and averaged 10 wins a year for the next fifteen years. They never went worse than 7-9. Sean Payton gets a lot of credit for the Brees era (he started the same year), and the team has a top-tier front office, but regardless, 2021 is the first year of the post-Brees era, and how that’s going to go is a big mystery.
83. How will this quarterback situation work out?
The Saints had Jameis Winston and Taysom Hill last year, and when Brees went down, it was Hill who got the work — in four games, he went 3-1, going 82-of-114 as a passer for 834 yards, 4 touchdowns and 2 interceptions, and adding 4 touchdowns and 209 yards on the ground. He was fantasy’s QB6 in that time, and that included that weird “Broncos don’t have a quarterback” game where the Saints didn’t have to do much. On the other hand, Hill’s starting QB resume is exactly those games long, and Winston is a former No. 1 overall pick with 70 starts.
Best answer: Obviously, we don’t know, and there’s a good argument for either guy being what we want for fantasy — Hill’s legs give him a huge floor and a reasonable ceiling, and Winston is just a year removed from being the fantasy QB3. A high-risk, high-reward strategy could be drafting both of them super late (Winston is currently going in the 15th round of 12-team leagues, Hill in the 18th) and starting whoever the Saints do. The risk, of course, is that the Saints employ a tandem approach. But if you’re up for a crazy idea, that one could pay big dividends.
84. Do you even draft Michael Thomas now? And what’s up with this passing game?
The strategy for the Saints’ passing game was simple enough — draft Michael Thomas early, maybe throw a flyer at Adam Trautman, ignore everyone else — until news of Thomas’ surgery recovery came out. Now it’s a cluster. Trautman is still interesting, Thomas should produce whenever he’s ready, and Tre’Quan Smith, Marquez Callaway and others are now the team’s top receivers.
Best answer: There is certainly a spot at which I’d draft Thomas, but my guess is it’s later than he’ll actually go in drafts. Clogging your roster with a player who could miss half the season is just a handicap most rosters can’t afford. Smith, Callaway and others could be interesting upside plays while Thomas is out, but the simple truth is that — unless Trautman can break out — there’s not a part of this passing game I’m bothering with. And even Trautman’s a long shot.
85. So if there aren’t any pass-catchers we want, are we pouncing on multiple running backs?
Crazy thing I realized this week:
Latavius Murray, oldest RB in the league? Who would’ve guessed. But even at his “advanced” age, Murray is (a) the top RB handcuff in the league, and (b) potentially valuable in his own right.
Best answer: Alvin Kamara is a top-tier running back whose value is — depending on your smart person of choice — either slightly enhanced or slightly depressed by Thomas’ injury. Either way, he’s not falling out of the top five at the position. But if you assume he’ll split out wide more to soak up some of Thomas’ vacated targets, Murray becomes a big beneficiary of the absence. You can get him around 50th among running backs in drafts, and I would take him 10 running backs earlier — maybe more.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
It’s funny that the defending Super Bowl champion, a team that is +600 to win the Super Bowl and +5000 to go undefeated on DraftKings Sportsbook, is also a team that hasn’t won a division title in 14 years. The Bucs last won the NFC South in 2007; only the Browns, Lions, Raiders and Jets have gone longer without a division title.
But oh, hopes are high for 2021.
86. Is Giovani Bernard Tom Brady’s new James White?
From 2015 (James White’s first relevant year) through 2019 (Tom Brady’s last year in New England), White had 430 targets. That’s 51 more than any other running back, and only two backs are within 100. He was the PPR RB7 in 2018, RB18 in 2019. There were some rumblings about White possibly joining Brady in Tampa, but he remained in New England and the Bucs brought in ex-Bengal Giovani Bernard.
Best answer: Over the same span White had 430 targets, Bernard had 268, 12th most. Leonard Fournette and Ronald Jones combined for 64 receptions last year, with Jones in particular not covering himself in receiving glory. So if there’s a big-time pass-catching back in Tampa, it’s Bernard. But considering this team has about 10 times the weapons the Patriots ever surrounded Brady with in the White era, you’d have to expect Bernard will be a depth piece, not a prime option, and that’s reflected in his ADP (RB58). Monitor, but don’t draft.
87. So what’s the target tree look like in Tampa?
Bernard joins receivers Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Antonio Brown and tight ends Rob Gronkowski, O.J. Howard and Cameron Brate, plus secondary receiving options like Scott Miller, Tyler Johnson, Jaleon Darden and others. It’s the deepest group of targets in the league by a factor of, like, three.
Best answer: Per our FTN Fantasy projections, Evans, Godwin and Brown all project for target shares between 15 and 20%, with no one cracking 20% and no other Buc reaching 10%. And that’s kind of the issue with having such a packed offense — no single player can really get the opportunity to break out, especially when the top three receivers are so stout. Our rankers have Godwin and Evans both as WR2s with Brown as a deep flex, with Gronkowski TE20 and Howard TE29. Translation: Take Godwin and Evans as starters. Take Brown as bench depth with upside. And ignore the rest of this passing game unless there are injuries.
88. Can the team stay healthy again?
Health is of course a prime concern for any NFL team. But after a season in which — O.J. Howard aside — the Buccaneers stayed remarkably healthy, contributing heavily to its Super Bowl run, you have to wonder if they can do that again. The average age of the Bucs’ QB, top two RBs and top four pass-catchers is 30.5 years old, and 28.2 without QB. Both are easily the highest in the league.
Best answer: One of the reasons it’s hard to repeat as champions is that things have to go super-right — both from a performance perspective and a health one — to win once, and it’s hard for things to go that right twice. The Bucs just aren’t going to stay as healthy in 2021 as they did in 2020. Of course, they know that, which is exactly why the team has so much depth. And that’s why you probably aren’t drafting guys like Bernard, Howard and Miller, but why they’ll pop up on various fantasy rosters all year long. There’s no roster in the NFL more worth monitoring, just in case.
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