Five Biggest Questions
1. Will Daniel Jones be good enough to keep his job in 2022?
2. Is it worth investing a first-round pick on Saquon Barkley?
3. Can Kenny Golladay be a top-20 WR?
4. Who will be the #2 fantasy WR, and will it matter?
5. Is Evan Engram a TE1?
Will Daniel Jones be an NFL starter after this season? We're about to find out. Like his New York counterpart who found friendlier digs in Carolina, Jones so far is an early-first-round bust. His promising rookie numbers included a major yellow flag on decision-making skills. While he cut down on lost fumbles last year, dropping from 11 to 6 is nothing to be proud of, especially when his TD total dropped by more than 50%. Jones is the prototypical "He can't get any worse, right?" player. Except of course he can. And there are two x-factors who will play huge roles in whether his QB-26 ADP is accurate or insulting.
The first is obviously Saquon Barkley. You can't lose a guy like Barkley for almost the entire season and expect your quarterback to be just fine. While the Giants' can't-miss franchise back has no official timetable for his return, he has to be on the field for this team to compete. They scored the second-fewest points in the league for many reasons; it wasn't only on Jones. The replacement backfield combo of Devonta Freeman, Alfred Morris, Dion Lewis, and yes, even Wayne Gallman, could not come close to compensating for the uniquely exceptional playmaking of Barkley, whose RB-5 ADP is both fair and aggressive. If you're okay knowing he's one of the biggest injury question marks among RB1s, then he's worth grabbing at that price.
The other x-factor is Kenny Golladay, whose lost 2020 campaign shouldn't erase how special a talent he is. The question is how much he benefited from Matthew Stafford's arm; can Jones feed him just as effectively? Golladay's WR-24 ADP assumes a QB-change regression, which makes sense. Still, he's clearly the team's #1, so you're not risking much drafting him at his price. Elsewhere, Sterling Shepard (WR-65) and the formerly rising Darius Slayton (WR-82) will compete with first-round rookie Kadarius Toney (WR-70). Toney's selection that earlier in the draft confused me, since most first-rounders have more immediate impacts than Toney is expected to, and he could realistically be the sixth receiving option to start the season (when factoring in Barkley). There's definitely value to be had among these non-Golladay wideouts; one or two should comfortably outperform expectations.
And Evan Engram finally played 16 games. But he also produced the worst per-game numbers of his career. His TE-14 ADP assumes no improvement, and that's fair if most of the other guys remain on the field; Engram's 109 targets will be hard to replicate.