Transcription
Today I'm breaking down 10 things I've learned from doing fantasy football projections. It's been seven seasons that I've been covering the NFL for fantasy football purposes. I have never done projections before. I've looked at other people's projections. I've looked at Vegas projections. I'm doing my own projections for the first time this year because basically I wanted to go through this process. I wanted to learn things about teams. I wanted to figure out that hey, when we use the term ceiling on this player, we're probably overrating what that means and so on.
So, today what I'm going to go through from Arizona to Denver, alphabetically is how I'm projecting the teams. There's 10 teams in that alphabetical order that I'm going to go through and talk about one thing that I learned from each team and I'll I'll kind of talk through my process of projecting these teams and go through the projections themselves. Obviously, these projections are not yet live on the site, but right now you guys can get access to the season pass. Last year we didn't drop the season pass till August. This year we're dropping it two months early. So, if you're planning on getting it in August, you might as well get it now because you'll get extra site access for redraft content for the next two months over the course of June and July when you didn't have that access before.
So, quickly I'm going to go through my process for how I projected the teams because there's plenty of projection guys out there. Mike Clay, my old boss Jared Smola at Draft Sharks. I respect everything that they do, but I have my own process here that I've kind of built out over the last couple of weeks, over the last couple of months. My process for projecting these teams was starting with coaching tendencies. Who's their coach? Who's their play caller? Historic pass run rates, pa- uh pace of play, getting to a concrete number of overall plays for each team, projecting run and pass splits, and then kind of working my way down from there. I load in, you know, projected Vegas win totals, O-line rankings, defensive points per game allowed, and uh strength of schedule. And then I kind of started the framework for each position. Starting with the quarterback position, sometimes it was cut and dry. You have like Dak Prescott and the Cowboys, so much historical data about their offense. Or it's a little murky. Atlanta Falcons, for example, had a new coach, quarterback battle. One guy is hurt, one guy you you kind of have to take a stance on. Is it going to be Tua for most of the games? Is it going to be Penix for most of the games? Then from the passing projections, you go to the rushing projections, the backfield splits, etc. And then you go through the target hierarchy at wide receiver, at tight end, factoring in how much teams run, you know, three wide receiver sets and two tight end sets and so on and so forth. And then from there, everything has to match back. Obviously, you can't have more targets projected than pass attempts. You can't have more receiving touchdowns projected than passing touchdowns and so on and so forth.
So again, I don't know exactly how everybody else does projections. This is how I'm personally doing projections. I don't expect them all to be correct. I don't expect them all to win a contest of some kind. I am doing them to learn more about the teams. I am doing them to learn more about how big of a overall pie does this offense have? What do the target shares look like? What do the rushing attempt shares look like and so on? So, everything that I did was rooted in historical averages. I didn't usually go outside the the historical averages of a career for a player. If it was a rookie, obviously, that's a little bit more murky, but I tried to factor in their college usage, their college production as well. And that said, I am projecting what I believe will happen. So, there are some stances that are in my projections that wouldn't be in Mike Clay's projections, for example, but that's what the point of me doing my own projections was. I wanted to factor in things that I think are going to happen and not just go off of what everybody else thinks is going to happen.
So, let's move over to the projections tab here and we're going to go through each team, kind of give you guys an overview of what I think of the projection so far and of course, kind of who is my biggest takeaway. What was my biggest thing that I learned from each team. So, let's start with the Arizona Cardinals. Like I said, I'm going alphabetically. I've only done Arizona to Denver so far. So, if you're going to ask me about, you know, the Tampa Bay Bucs or the Washington Commanders, I haven't gotten that far yet. I'm still going through team by team, doing about one a day. The goal is to have all these done by the 1st of July before my wedding and also to when our draft guide comes out in the next couple of weeks, which of course, you'll be able to get with the season pass or for free when you sign up with code FSE over on Underdog, you'll get access to these projections as well.
So, starting with the Arizona Cardinals, my biggest takeaway here was somebody is going to be left out in the cold here. Now, the Cardinals, when you look at their situation, their team, they have the 32nd ranked strength of schedule in the NFL. Mike LaFleur, as a member of the Jets coaching staff, um and the new head coach of the uh the Arizona Cardinals here, and they have Nathaniel Hackett as the offensive coordinator. So, call me crazy, but I think the Arizona Cardinals were better off last year with Jonathan Gannon and Drew Petzing, who immediately took a job with the Detroit Lions, who are obviously a better franchise than the Cardinals. I think this is a downgrade brain trust-wise. Now, all that being said, the positives here is garbage time. I think that the Arizona Cardinals are going to be playing from behind a lot. You have the Seahawks, the 49ers, and the Rams in your division, the 32nd ranked strength of schedule. Mike LaFleur with the Jets had an average of 1,052 offensive plays called for the Jets, which was top 16 in the NFL over that stretch. So, we're talking above-average total plays because you're playing from behind so much. The Cardinals as a team last year were obviously playing from behind a ton as well. They were 12th in the NFL with 1,074 plays ran. I am projecting them for 1,075 because I do think there will be lots of garbage time, lots of playing from behind, and that's why I projected them for that. However, with this brain trust, Mike LaFleur and Nathaniel Hackett, I think that we are going to look back at the Arizona Cardinals season, who are currently projected for 4 and 1/2 wins according to Vegas, and one of the top three favorites for the first pick in the draft. I think we are going to look back at this season and go talented team, young team, ascending team, but we are not going to look at them like they got the full value out of the players that they have. I think that Jeremiah Love is going to look a lot better than a 15.72 point per game rookie running back would indicate. That's a little bit better than JT was last year to give you guys a piece of context. Marvin Harrison Jr., I'm expecting kind of a breakout season based on the numbers that you guys see here. 13.23 points per game with would be his best season of his career. 1,000 yards, six touchdowns, and so on. Trey McBride, I'm projecting a three point per game discrepancy from what he put up last year, but a large part of that is that I just don't think they're going to be throwing 45-50 times a game like they were doing down the stretch, even if I think garbage time's going to be a factor. So again, I think there's going to be some stuff left on on the field, but my biggest takeaway here is that Trey McBride might be a little bit overvalued because I think when you look at what he did last year, 18.58 points per game, you need that from a tight end. When you're going to draft a tight end in the second round or in the early third round, you need him to be better than every other tight end, and I just frankly don't believe he's going to be much better than Cole St. Loveland, than Tyler Warren, than you know, whoever else. And I do think Brock Bowers will be better than him this upcoming season. So Trey McBride to me, obviously a great season last year. I do expect him to take a marginal step back, which 15 points per game from a tight end is still great in the projections, but I do worry that people are going to be like over their skis on Trey McBride thinking he's going to do exactly what he did last year, and I just don't think that's going to happen. Even though I do expect the Cardinals to throw a lot, you also have to factor in the fact that they did draft Carson back in the third round. So however many games we get Jacoby Brissett for might be better for the fantasy value of everybody involved, but I do think they're going to be losing enough, you know, behind enough that they're going to want to see Carson back before they draft a quarterback in the top five, in the top 10 of the NFL draft. So Carson back probably getting in there at some point also throws a wrench into things. And that's why I think Trey McBride could, you know, maybe take a small step back even if Marvin Harrison does take a step forward. Like I said, 1,000 yards, six touchdowns would be the best season of his career, and I do think from like a just a tape perspective, we're going to see a visible step from Marvin Harrison Jr. It's just not going to translate completely to fantasy points per game because there's going to be a lot left out on the field, a lot of bad, you know, stalled drives, a lot of interceptions, a lot of turnovers. Like the offense will probably just be an issue. I think in in totality, the Cardinals won't be as fantasy friendly as they were down the stretch last year. And the biggest culprit, I think, of, you know, why I wouldn't draft Michael Wilson is this whole thing. Because I think the reason Michael Wilson broke out, and this is a good tweet from Dwayne McFarland explaining it here, when you have a year three player who in the second half of a season just had a great breakout stretch, and again, in Michael Wilson's case, it was largely due to Marvin Harrison's injury and the pass volume that the Cardinals were putting up, there has been a lot of traps that we've seen. You see Hunter Renfrow, Rashard Matthews, Marquise Goodwin, so on and so forth as examples of players that had really good back halves of the season, and we were drafting them a lot higher as a result. We know historically, Michael Wilson has not been a great NFL fantasy receiver outside of the last five, six, seven games of 2025. He's been pretty much droppable waiver wire material. With Harrison back, with McBride there, and a maybe slight downtick in the offense, that all gets me nervous about the situation, which is basically my biggest thing from the Arizona Cardinals and what I learned is that I wouldn't draft a Cardinals player expecting a league winner. I would draft McBride in love because you don't want to miss on your pick. You want to get a young running back who has a decent floor because of the receiving skill set, because of the rushing upside that a third overall pick is going to have. And I would draft McBride thinking, "Hey, you're not going to have to worry about your tight end position all year." But I would not draft them with the expectation that they're going to be a league winner, cuz the one I feel most comfortable with is Harrison because he goes in the sixth round as opposed to the second, third round turn like those other two guys go. And I would be avoiding Michael Wilson entirely. I know that I am of the opinion that Marvin is much better than Michael Wilson, and some people are not of that opinion, but these are my projections. You guys want to do your own projections, go ahead and do them. I'm just telling you how I projected the offense is out, and I did base it a lot in historical trends, base it a lot in how Marvin Harrison's target share has looked when healthy in his career, how Michael Wilson's target share has looked when Marvin Harrison's been healthy in his career. So, nothing that I did here was like outlandish. I can explain every number on the sheet. And a lot of it was rooted in historical averages, slight uptick in terms of Marvin Harrison's overall target share.
So, let's move into the Atlanta Falcons. The Atlanta Falcons were an interesting team to project. I think it's pretty straightforward what we expect to be Bijan Robinson and Drake London. 22-point per game running back out of Bijan. He's a top two pick for a reason. Drake London 16.39 points per game. But, a large part of that is somewhat of a tumultuous quarterback situation. I think that Kyle Pitts can do it again. That's my biggest takeaway from the Atlanta Falcons. Kyle Pitts finished the season with a top five fantasy point per game finish at tight end. For me, the medical side of Michael Penix is up in the air, which is what me and Dr. Freddy discussed on Friday or on Thursday it was. The coaching staff and front office is not linked to Michael Penix. And to me this is good for Kyle Pitts because Tua Tagovailoa is an accurate quarterback. Tua Tagovailoa has high completion percentage seasons. He's once led the NFL in passing yards. Whereas, Michael Penix has struggled with accuracy in college and at the next level. And he fits Kevin Stefanski's offensive scheme better. And through two seasons of Michael Penix's career and whatever it is, six seasons of Tua Tagovailoa's career, I think unequivocally Tua Tagovailoa is a better NFL quarterback at this point in time. Now, all that being said, the reason I'm optimistic on Pitts is that even with a sub-20% target share in my projections here because Bijan's going to be heavily involved as a receiver and because Drake London's the target alpha, I can still see an 11.18 projection for Kyle Pitts kind of on the low end based on historical career averages and all that kind of stuff. And I tweeted this out earlier today, but basically at age 25, which is Kyle Pitts somehow still not even 26 years old yet, that is typically the season in which a lot of these tight ends really break onto the scene. That was the best season of T.J. Hockenson's career. That was the first season Trey McBride broke out. Travis Kelce, Zach Ertz, Jordan Reed, Tyler Eifert, etc. And I don't really believe that Zachariah Branch is going to be a major factor as a rookie. He was a raw receiver. He's very young still. I think it's going to take him some time. He's going to have some packages. He's going to be a short and intermediate target. Jahan Dotson, role player who was added to this receiver core. The baseline for the Falcons of like 25 touchdowns, 3,800 passing yards doesn't sound like a lot, but we're talking like slightly below average passing production. And I think that that's fair to expect of Tua Tagovailoa, who I do expect to start the majority of the games. So, like I said, in terms of age, Kyle Pitts is right where he needs to be. He's produced at a high level dating back to last season. He's been productive in the past. I know he's hard to trust, but I think the fact that you're getting him, let's say in the seventh, eighth, ninth round of an Underdog Draft where he's going, I think he's a really good value. And especially in redraft, that point in the board, there are no more running backs that I feel confident in. There are very little wide receivers that I feel confident in. So, the idea of not taking a tight end early knowing I can get Kyle Pitts when the wide receivers and running backs have dried up is intriguing to me, and I'll actually talk about another tight end in a second who goes in the similar area of the board.
So, moving into the Baltimore Ravens, the biggest surprise I would say, not really a surprise to me, but the biggest takeaway I had from doing the Baltimore Ravens projections are that Zay Flowers' breakout is coming. Zay Flowers was really good last year. However, projecting Lamar Jackson and the Ravens passing offense was super difficult because on one hand, the two-time MVP quarterback, you also just got a major schematic upgrade in my opinion with Declan Doyle coming from Ben Johnson's Chicago Bears. Plus, the Ravens have seemingly made a philosophical shift personnel-wise. They let both their second tight end, Isaiah Likely, and their third tight end, Charlie Kolar, walk in free agency without really replacing them in the draft. I thought they might have been in on a like a Kanyon Sedeek type. I thought they would have prioritized replacing those guys. They didn't. They didn't draft a tight end until day three, instead drafting two receivers, Zay Flowers, Rashod Bateman, and Odell Beckham Jr., who I viewed as top eight receivers in the class. All signs point to me towards a passing uptick assuming Lamar Jackson can stay healthy. Jesse Minter and Declan Doyle are one of the youngest brain trusts NFL offensive coordinator and head coach combined in the NFL right now. They take over for John Harbaugh and Todd Monken, who are both above the age of 60, who are one of the oldest were one of the oldest duos in the league last year and fact the oldest duo in the league last year. I think the run-heavy Ravens that we've seen could be coming to an end. I'm not expecting them to be a 600 pass attempt team as you guys can see here, but a 53% projected pass rate would be a major uptick in pass volume for the Baltimore Ravens. And when you look at Kyle when you look at Zay Flowers, sorry, you saw a guy last season 2.61 yards per route run, a 29.1% target share. And again, you can see this tweet on the screen here. The Ravens last season 29th in offensive plays, 30th in neutral pace, 32nd in pass rate just 47%. New offensive coordinator Declan Doyle comes from Ben Johnson and also the Sean Payton coaching tree. Second in offensive plays, sixth in neutral pace, 26th in pass rate. So yes, the the Bears were also a run-heavy team, but they were much more up-tempo, much more fast-paced than the Ravens have been. So for me, the biggest beneficiary of this is Zay Flowers. Zay Flowers had a breakout season from a play standpoint, from a tape standpoint, from a route running standpoint. He could have easily cleared 16 points per game last season if Lamar Jackson had stayed healthy. If Lamar Jackson had played like 2024 Lamar Jackson. I have Flowers projected for over 15 points per game this season on the basis of the Ravens pass rate kind of increasing marginally. Now, he goes pretty high in ADP. He's a 33.3 overall ADP pick, but I think he is absolutely justified in going that high. So I think that the this year's JSN, if you're looking for it. I think Zay Flowers is a very reasonable candidate to do it. Now, that's a tall task asking him to win Offensive Player of the Year, but could he go from a 50 14 point per game receiver like he was last year to a 17 point per game receiver, an 18 point per game receiver? I think he absolutely can do that.
Moving in to the Buffalo Bills. Now, anybody who's done projections would probably tell you that the Buffalo Bills are not easy to do projections for because they've been spreading the ball out quite a bit the last few years. But, here's the thing. Philosophically very similar to Baltimore. What have they done? They've added DJ Moore, they've added Dalton Kincaid healthy back, hopefully, for the whole season, and Khalil Shakir is still a consistent, reliable target share guy. I tend to believe that Joe Brady, who's now the head coach instead of the offensive coordinator, will not have the same attitude as Sean McDermott, which is we have no alpha, we spread the ball out, we're a run-heavy team. The Bills, with probably the best quarterback in the league, had a 50% pass rate last season, which is among the lowest in the NFL. They were at a 58% pass rate during the Stefon Diggs last season that he played. So, not even like peak Stefon Diggs. The final season Diggs played in Buffalo, they were a 58% pass rate team, and they haven't had any receivers lately. Like, they just have not had the separating ability to be able to throw the ball a ton. And during Joe Brady's time in Carolina, so if you're wondering about when he's last been in charge of an offense, he was at a 59% pass rate. So, I tend to think that Dalton Kincaid is the best value in this offense. We all know James Cook is great. DJ Moore is going kind of in the mid rounds, but I would rather draft Dalton Kincaid at cost because, again, at tight end, I think that he is going in an area, 129th overall ADP, where I'm not excited about any of the receivers or running backs. So, why would I draft, let's call it Tyler Warren or Colston Loveland, where they're going around receivers and running backs I like, when I can draft Dalton Kincaid super late? I would just rather have the bundle of Kincaid plus Zay Flowers, as opposed to Colston Loveland plus Romeo Doubs or something like that. So, I have Kincaid scoring very similar to Pitts in the projections. The baseline being tight end 8 to 10 kind of production from last year at 11 points per game. And in most seasons, I think the ceiling would be higher for Dalton Kincaid cuz I have him projected for six touchdowns. He was a touchdown scoring machine on like a per route basis last year. So, as long as he can command the routes that he was commanding, and again, keep in mind last year we're talking a pretty baseline low level of like 60 to 70%. If he gets up 80% of the routes or something, we could be talking about a legitimately league-winning tight end here. And I Kincaid is unreliable and he's not been healthy, but he led all tight ends in yards per route run for a reason last year is that he's a talented player when he's on the field.
So, moving in to the Carolina Panthers. Now, this one was really difficult to find a takeaway for, but I think the biggest one that was kind of screaming right at me when I went back through and looked through this is Terrace Marshall is probably overvalued, man. I'm optimistic on Bryce Young. You guys know me. I am I I admit that Bryce Young could be a really solid NFL quarterback, but to slightly improve Bryce Young's numbers across the board only can do so much cuz they haven't been good to this point in his career. From a volume standpoint, this is a team that I'm projecting for a 54% pass rate and the slowest pace of play of all the teams I've projected so far. So, this team wants to run the ball. They're getting a running back back from injury in Jonathan Brooks. And they don't have like Justin Herbert at quarterback. At least with Justin Herbert, you could expect him to be very efficient when he does throw the ball to make sure that Terrace Marshall McMillan crushes on the opportunities he does get. Bryce Young hasn't proven that ability yet. So, Terrace Marshall McMillan only catching 57% of his targets as a rookie last year, it looked like that. I had him in my home league and it felt that way. Jalen Coker, when healthy, caught 76% of his targets last year. The role that Terrace Marshall McMillan plays is extremely valuable for the real life team of Carolina. They use him at X receiver. He draws away number one coverage. He's able to stretch the field, but I don't think it's going to result in an extremely dominant fantasy football season. Terrace Marshall and offensive rookie of the year last year with 12.44 fantasy points per game, barely a thousand yards, seven touchdowns despite being a starter and the number one receiver from the beginning of the season. Even though he was offensive rookie of the year, it didn't really feel like that as a manager of Terrace Marshall to me. I don't think he is warranted for going in the late third round of redraft. I think he should be more of like a fourth fifth round pick in my opinion and I think that big jump in production that everybody expects from, you know, the second year wide receiver breakout, etc. has actually been a little bit overstated, especially as it relates to X receivers. Think about other X receivers we expected big breakouts for, Marvin Harrison Jr., Rome Odunze, and so on. I think that this position specifically, this alignment of playing receiver, might be more lending itself to the third year wide receiver breakout as we saw, you know, 10-15 years ago because it is a difficult position to play on the field. My gut is telling me that Jonathan Mingo and Terrace Marshall are probably closer in overall receiving projections than people want to admit and I imagine that most people will not have them this close and I guess the other takeaway from doing these is that Jonathan Mingo is an insanely good value at this point in time because 11.52 fantasy points per game, 918 yards and five touchdowns would be an incredible return on a 12th round redraft pick where he's currently going right now. So, Mingo, who was just paid a big contract, like Marshall had a 24% target share when Mingo was on the field. I cannot in good faith say that Terrace Marshall is going to go out there and have a 30% target share his second season. I just haven't seen evidence of that and they added Chris Braswell into the offense and like I said, it's a small pie to share. They're going to want to run the ball a lot. They have Jonathan Brooks back. They have Chuba Hubbard back. So, for me, Marshall either has to have a 30% target share or higher to be able to really return on his ADP, be a 1300 yard receiver, be a second year wide receiver top 15 breakout, or conversely Bryce Young has to really take a step forward more so than I'm even projecting here because 3,600 yards, 7.0 yards per attempt, 25 touchdowns, 12 picks, I would say that most people would not expect Bryce Young to be that productive. Most Most people would. So, I I'm a little bit lower on Tetero McMillan as a result.
Moving in to the next team and the next player, the biggest takeaway for me on the Chicago Bears is not, okay, Rome Odunze, Luther Burden, and Colson Loveland, the guys that we're all talking about. Um the biggest takeaway for me was actually that D'Andre Swift maybe is the most undervalued running back in all fantasy football right now. The power of Ben Johnson took the Bears offense from terrible in 2024, Swift averaging 3.8 yards per carry, to awesome in 2025 with a top-three ranked offensive line heading into the season by ESPN, and Swift coming off a season where he had 4.9 yards per carry last year. D'Andre Swift's value is very simple to me. If you don't believe that Khalil Mangan guy is better than D'Andre Swift, then D'Andre Swift is a huge value. Because I think that Khalil Mangan guy is a good player and will be involved in this backfield and will be a pest for D'Andre Swift. But, he's probably not going to get more than 10, 12, maybe 15 touches if he's running hot on a certain game. D'Andre Swift is slated for yet another top-24 finish because in his career, he's never done anything else. He has been a top-24 running back in overall finish every season of his career, top-21 finisher in overall points every season of his career. For a guy that gets labeled as like injury-prone, can't stay on the field, he's been relatively durable and Caleb Williams I'm projecting to take a jump forward in second-year Ben Johnson offense. I'm also projecting lots of production from Odunze, from Burden, and from Loveland. However, at running back, I don't really have to decide who the guy is. I know who the guy is. I I don't know if Odunze is the guy at receiver. I don't know if Burden's the guy at receiver. I don't know if Loveland's going to lead this team in targets like I'm projecting here. So, all that being said, it just points me in the direction that D'Andre Swift is an underrated fantasy asset right now, going off the board early fifth round. I think that the 14.7 PPR points per game that I'm projecting feels relatively conservative because this offense could be the best in the NFL if things break right. If Caleb Williams takes that step and the Madden curse doesn't become a thing, it wouldn't shock me if De'Andre Swift has close to one of the best seasons of his career. And he's been a 70-plus target uh running back before in any given season, and I actually really like Kyle Manengay to have a role for what it's worth. It's just that Swift is the primary guy here, and he's going to be the guy that the offense functions through.
So, moving into the Cincinnati Bengals, um Chase Brown's going nuclear, man. I I I don't know how to get to any other takeaway other than Chase Brown is going absolutely [ __ ] nuclear this year. I cannot begin to emphasize how much I love him in fantasy. He's projected for 18.72 points per game for me, and I feel like I had to take stuff off the top to make him not seem too overvalued. 88 targets last season. 88. 14.5% target share. Again, he shares the field with Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins. That puts him at a 93 target projection. Check. Contract year. Lots to play for, lots to prove. Check. 9.5 projected win total for the Bengals, and I would hammer the higher on that because I think they're going to be one of the best teams in the league. Fantasy production-wise, I have Burrow projected for nearly 5,000 yards. I tend to think that Burrow will win the MVP of the NFL in 2026. 39 touchdowns, probably an MVP trophy. I know that's a very high projection. You will never ever ever see anybody project any quarterback for that type of production. But like I said, I'm doing projections the way that I want to do projections. I'm factoring in what I actually believe in my gut to be the case, which is that Joe Burrow, Ja'Marr Chase, Tee Higgins, and Chase Brown are going absolutely nuclear this year. Chase Brown with a healthy Joe Burrow over the last two seasons averages 17.1 fantasy points per game. Last year, from week eight onwards, only Jahmyr Gibbs, Christian McCaffrey, Bijan Robinson average more than Chase Brown's 21.5 PPR points per game. His ADP is in the mid-second round. I have him ranked at 109 in my Underdog rankings and in my redraft rankings right now. I would draft Chase Brown with ease over Achane Achane who I have offensive question marks about, Marion Hampton somewhat workload question marks about, Saquon Barkley age question marks about, Devon Achane offensive question marks about, Drake an offensive question marks about. I would draft him over those guys with ease. He goes after them on Underdog drafts right now. I would draft him and these are the spicy ones over Jonathan Taylor who I have more offensive question marks about, more receiving question marks about than Chase Brown. I would draft him over James Cook which is a little bit of a hot take but I believe that he projects a little bit better. You know, that's a toss-up. They're really close. And I would draft him over Justin Jefferson who I have question marks about Kyler Murray. So, um yeah, Chase Brown absolutely going nuclear this year. I wasn't trying to confirm my bias going into this. I was really trying to be somewhat conservative in my projections to Chase Brown but when I projected his touchdowns, projected all the stuff based on his career touchdown totals and what I expect him to have here unless you think Taj Brooks or Semaje Perine are going to be a huge part of this backfield which I do not, um I don't see how you can think anything other than Chase Brown is maybe the biggest smash in all of drafts right now from a redraft perspective and as a good dynasty buy low contending asset. He's never scored more than 11 touchdowns in any season of his career and I kind of expect him to score like 15 plus this year as well um because he can do it as a receiver, he can do it as a runner, he's been very efficient. Like I just I don't have anything bad to say about him at this point in time.
So, moving into the Cleveland Browns. Now, the Cleveland Browns not a very good team, not expecting a whole lot of production out of the Cleveland Browns. My biggest takeaway from this team was that I think Casey Conception can produce right away. The Browns are one of the hardest reads in the NFL. Usually, if it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it's a duck and they look like a bad team and sound like a bad team. However, the Browns without any real quarterback are probably going to still be in games because their defense, even without Myles Garrett, has Jared Verse now and should be keeping them in games. Projected 1,030 plays, 57% pass rate, it does give them a decent amount of volume to go around and Harold Fannin's a great young player, but I and I expect him to lead the team in targets, but I don't think he's going to be a 30% dominant target alpha by any means. And uh Casey Concepcion is already turning heads in camp. Casey Concepcion um has the ability to play all over the formation, whether it's at X receiver, Z receiver, slot receiver, and I think the way that the alignments work out for Cleveland and the way that we saw Todd Monken, who's the head coach of this team, use Zay Flowers last year, it's going to probably result in Casey getting a lot of targets. I have him projected for 107 targets, which is quite a bit for a player that's going right now off the board in the uh what is that? The 10th round of ADP. I think a a lot of people real- ized a couple years ago that like when we overvalue positional landing spot for really good prospects, it bites us in the ass. We did it with Jefferson, we did it with Garrett Wilson. Now, Concepcion not quite to the level of prospect as those guys, but he was a very solid prospect. He was clearly the wide receiver four in this class. Some people even saying that he was better than Jordan Tyson, people that have very, you know, valid takes to say that he was better than Jordan Tyson or better than Michael Lemon or something like that. There's targets up for grabs in this offense and I really do think that Cedric Tillman and Jerry Jeudy, their routes are going to decline as the season goes along. It wouldn't shock me if one or both of them is traded either before the season or during the season. And Casey Concepcion to me, based on where he's going to play in the formation, is so much better set up to produce right away than Denzel Boston. Denzel Boston's going to have to play X receiver, big boy routes against big boy corners. It's going to be a larger learning curve for him than it's going to be for Concepcion. And like I said, unless you think Harold Fannin is going to be the best tight end in fantasy this year, there's enough production for the for this offense to actually produce a couple fantasy relevant players. Now, 3,600 passing yards, 20 touchdowns, 12 interceptions might even be on the optimistic side of projection for uh Cleveland, but Vegas has them projected for 6 and 1/2 wins. They're going to be in games. They're going to be let's call them like a New Orleans Saints-like offense. And what a what happens if on the 10% chance that Shedeur Sanders or Deshaun Watson is actually decent, they can support some some players. I think Casey Conception could be a very underrated rookie target for those of you guys looking for upside in the double-digit rounds.
All right, so what did I learn from the Cowboys projections? Uh CeeDee Lamb is a good round one pick, but I don't think he's a smash pick. Now, me and Danny argued about this for about 20-30 minutes when I told him this. I have CeeDee Lamb projected for 17.64 PPR points per game. Now, this angered him, as you can imagine, because in the mind of Danny and most Cowboys fans, they're going to fart money and win seven Super Bowls over the next seven years. But here's the rationale here. CeeDee Lamb's career-best finish in 2023 when he was dominant, 23.72 PPR points per game. In 2023, he was the best receiver in fantasy. However, if you look at these other seasons, he's not been at that level of fantasy production. 17 points per game, 17 points per game, 14 points per game, 14 points per game. Even when you remove certain games where you left early and you're still talking about relatively a 17-20 point per game receiver most NFL seasons. And in that 2023 year, he needed nearly a 30% target share to produce that number. And I do not think that with George Pickens out there, who played at an what, second-team all-pro level last year, that you're going to get 12 touchdowns, 29.9% target share, both of which were outliers in CeeDee Lamb's career when you look at his overall totals. He'd never had double-digit touchdowns in any other season. He had never had close to 29.9% of his team's targets. Excellent season in 2023, but I'm drafting him in 2026, not in 2023. In healthy games with Pickens last year, he was a 26.8% target share receiver, which is exactly what I projected him for here. Much better target competition this year in Dallas than he's really had, especially in that 2023 season, and even in 2024 when he was about a 17-point per game receiver that year as well. The Cowboys project project yet again for a really good offense, 600 pass attempts, 4,500 yards, 30-plus touchdowns, etc. But with Pickens healthy and Ferguson healthy, it seems impossible to me that CeeDee Lamb is like a 20-22-point per game receiver without an injury to either of those players or maybe Dak going for 5,000 yards, 40 touchdowns. So, if you think one of those two things are going to happen, by all means, CeeDee Lamb is absolutely worth, you know, probably the 1.04, 1.05 if that's what you believed. But for me, I think he's just a very easy, comfortable click. I do not expect CeeDee Lamb to disappoint people, but I don't expect him to blow people out of the water. I think that we're going to look back on the first round of fantasy drafts on CeeDee Lamb like, yeah, he was a good pick. He was the fifth or sixth best player out of the first round in terms of like level of disappointment that you got. I don't anticipate him dropping a 23-point per game season and being the ultimate giga smash that you had to take in the middle to end of the first round of of fantasy drafts. So, for me, I do feel like he's got a little bit lower of a ceiling than my channel co-host will tell you he has, just based on the projections. Anything can change, of course. Based on the projections, I think he's a little bit lower ceiling player than maybe a lot of people want to admit.
The Denver Broncos in general surprised me, but Bo Nix and Jaylen Waddle really surprised me. First off, the Denver Broncos have a top 12 schedule in football. They have the second best offensive line in football preseason at ESPN rankings. They added former 1,300-yard wide receiver Jaylen Waddle, but here's what gets me really excited. Bo Nix, 18.8, 19.6 fantasy points per game as a first- and a second-year fantasy quarterback. With Courtland Sutton, a young Troy Franklin who was figuring some things out, and then not much else behind that. Now you add in Jaylen Waddle, Justin Jolley who I absolutely loved in the NFL draft, and Jona Coleman, my pre-draft RB2. This team has got me feeling some type of way, and if you take this in and this is the thing that gets me the most excited. We have noted egomaniac Sean Payton, who's been a head coach and a play-caller for two decades in the NFL. This is a guy that probably likes things done a certain way. He has relinquished play-calling duties to a hot young head coaching candidate by the name of Davis Webb. Now, if that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in the play-caller that the Denver Broncos are about to have, I don't know what does because I I know for a fact that Sean Payton is kind of a control freak and I feel like him relinquishing play-calling duties must mean that this dude is legit and is going places. How talented Davis Webb is as a play-caller has to inspire that kind of confidence from Sean Payton. And again, when we just look at Jaylen Waddle, that's why I'm excited about Bo Nix. Very strong point per game output quarterback, QB10 and QB8 the last two years, right? Very strong for a first and second-year quarterback. Then you look at Jaylen Waddle. In his career, obviously he had the best season of his career in 2022 in Miami as a second-year receiver. That was the first year that Tyreek Hill was in Miami. Since then, he's kind of slowly tapered off production-wise, but Jaylen Waddle's only 27 years old and when you look at his like targets per route run commanding ability from the Denver two top receivers, you have Courtland Sutton who's been the clear number one in his offense for the last five years. You could see his average targets per route run over that span, 21.78%. Then you have Jaylen Waddle who's been the clear number two in his offense most of this time. Average targets per route run of 24.1% and overall routes per game, the Denver Broncos were dropping back much more often than the uh Miami Dolphins were. 463 routes per season for Jaylen Waddle, 548 routes per season for Courtland Sutton. Last season, Jaylen Waddle ran 378 routes versus Courtland Sutton 589 routes. So, that just gives you an idea of the discrepancy in overall volume between these two guys when they were on different teams. Now, they're both on the same team, a team that was in the AFC Championship last year and Jaylen Waddle nearly had the same amount of points scored as Courtland Sutton on the dumpster fire Dolphins that he was on last season. I don't think we truly understand maybe how much better Jaylen Waddle is than Courtland Sutton. Like he is a much better receiver in my opinion. So, when you look at his best season finish, wide receiver 11, 15 points per game, knowing that Tyreek Hill was on the same field compared to Courtland Sutton's best finish, which is like a top 20 receiver in fantasy, it's it gets me fired up about Jaylen Waddle. Jaylen Waddle in my projections as you can see here, I have him projected for 15.10 PPR points per game, which is the same territory as both Bears receivers, higher than Terrace Marshall and Marvin Mims, right in the territory of a George Pickens, of a Tee Higgins, of a Zay Flowers. So, when you factor in that this guy's going 48th overall and those other guys are going kind of more in the third round consistently, I'm getting very excited about Jaylen Waddle and I'm not going to I'm not going to say this year's JSN, but I could see Jaylen Waddle kind of smashing his ADP and having, let's say, a 2024 Terry McLaurin type of season where he has, you know, 11, 12 touchdowns and, you know, 1,200 yards receiving because I really do believe in this Denver Broncos team. As you can see from my projections, I have them projected for 27.94 points per game as an offense. Like I said, a 57% pass rate, offensive line ranking very, very high. Those are not my O-line rankings, that is ESPN's offensive line rankings. And again, I could see Bo Nix being a 20-point per game quarterback. I think the running back field will be kind of a mess as far as, okay, beginning of the season, maybe it's Shakey Dobbins, middle of the season, we see RJ Harvey and Jaleel McLaughlin more involved. I do think it's going to be, you know, week over week, who are you starting in this Broncos backfield and maybe for a 10-week span, there's two guys that are in RB3 territory. But the thing I'm focused on, like I said, is the receiver core because I love the output for Jaylen Waddle, even at his price, even though he's now the number two receiver in my mind. Courtland Sutton is a decent option because he can score touchdowns and make big plays happen. Even Troy Franklin, 18th round dart throw in best ball, very good option.
So, those are the 10 things I learned from doing projections. Again, I want to reiterate that I'm not doing projections to win a contest. I'm not doing projections to try and prove that I'm going to be right about everything. The reason I'm doing projections this year is because I want to learn more about these teams. I want to um dive into the play-calling tendencies. I want to dive into the personnel tendencies. I'm going to update these all off-season. The projections you see here, if you're watching this August 25th, they might be completely different. When players get signed, when moves happen, when players get camp hype, I'm going to adjust the projections accordingly. So, that's what I'm going to be doing this off-season. Again, if you want to get access to our redraft guide, our projections, which are going to be live in the redraft guide probably July 1st or so, um before my wedding, that is when we are going to have that all live for you. The season pass is live right now. If you were planning on getting it at the end of August or whatever you got it last year, you might as well get it now cuz it's the same price and you're going to get two extra months of access to the site for the same price essentially. And Zach from Fantasy Land already has his first edition of his draft guide out. Um Mason already has some content up on the site. So, you're getting basically a bonus two months this season for getting the season pass. And of course, as I made reference to, anybody who's new to Underdog right now can sign up using promo code FSE, do some World Cup stuff. Uh NHL playoffs are still going on. The NBA finals obviously wrapped up today or yesterday with the New York Knicks finally winning a championship. But, you can get started on Underdog, do some best ball drafts, do some World Cup stuff, do some NHL stuff, and you'll get access to our draft guide for free for the entire off-season. And you'll also get our weekly start sit rankings and our dynasty rookie draft guide with just a $10 sign up and first play. So, you sign up, use our code, make a $10 deposit, make a play on the site, enter a best ball draft, whatever, you'll get the draft guide emailed to you within 24 hours. So, definitely check that out if you guys are interested. Check out the season pass, like I said. And of course, make sure to keep those flock league auditions coming. We are going to have our first um recording of, you know, the best auditions that we've seen so far on Wednesday. So, make sure you guys get in your videos before that if you can. Um but yeah, like, comment, subscribe if you enjoyed. Let me know what you think of this series. I'm probably going to do it again. Obviously, I'm just going Arizona to Denver for this one from, you know, whoever the next five team or next 10 teams are. Would that be Detroit all the way down to like the Vikings or something? I'll probably do this video again, talk about what I've learned, and so on and so forth. Let me know what you thought down below. And with that being said, peace out. I'll talk to you soon.