Five Biggest Questions
1. Is Lamar Jackson a top-6 QB?
2. Will J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards return to 2020 form, or at least come close?
3. Is Tyler Badie draftable?
4. Can Rashod Bateman be a weekly fantasy starter?
5. Will any other Ravens WR be fantasy relevant?
Happy Father's Day to all you dads. And happy belated Mother's Day to all you moms. And now, the moderate insanity that is the Baltimore Ravens fantasy outlooks.
Maybe "moderate insanity" isn't fair. Each team has its share of fantasy question marks. But Baltimore's seem higher-stakes than most teams. Start with Lamar Jackson, who in 2019 came about a point short of the all-time points record for fantasy QBs (415.7). He was still only 22 years old when the season ended. I mean, talk about one of the greatest Year 2 leaps in fantasy history. Like Patrick Mahomes the year before, he wasn't even a top-14 ADP QB heading into the season. A few months later, people were wondering if he and Mahomes were going to be perennially elite QBs.
Jackson remained great the past two seasons, but not great enough based on preseason expectations. He was the QB4 last summer before injuries limited him to 12 contests. He put together his worst per-game campaign since his partial rookie year (2018). This offseason, the team traded away Marquise Brown and didn't replace him in free agency or in the draft. The backfield's health remains a giant question mark. And there's plenty of buzz that the Ravens will operate a more run-focused offense. Yet, despite all this, Jackson once again has a QB4 ADP. The fantasy world still considers him borderline elite. I get it, but I also don't get it.
Breaking this down briefly, we can assume Rashod Bateman will step up, and Mark Andrews is Mark Andrews. But last year's Ravens attempted the ninth-most passes in the league. For context, they were *last* in the league in pass attempts the year before. What changed? For starters, their defense went from elite to middling-at-best. In 2020, Jackson threw the least in the fourth quarter, accounting for only 17% of his non-overtime pass attempts. Last year, however, Jackson threw the *most* in the fourth quarter, accounting for 28% of his non-overtime pass attempts. While Jackson remains one of the best rushing QBs in history, an anticipated reduction in pass attempts could realistically keep him out of the top 8, if not the top 10. He was the co-QB8 last year in points per game. He's a firm fade at his QB4 ADP price tag.
In the backfield, this can only be a preliminary assessment. J.K. Dobbins (RB21 ADP) and Gus Edwards (RB58) are question marks to start the season. If they were both good bets, the team wouldn't have added rookie Tyler Badie and Mike Davis in the span of about 10 days. This is a franchise still scarred by what happened last August/September, which forced them to sign three aged RBs that no other team wanted. All credit goes to Devonta Freeman and Latavius Murray for proving me wrong by exceeding expectations. But the Ravens are taking precautions to ensure their backfield can withstand the possibility that Dobbins and/or Edwards cannot suit up Week 1 -- and worse, might not return to form by October or even November.
As it stands, Edwards appears to be a nothing-to-lose, end-of-draft selection. Remember, he had three straight 5.0+ YPC campaigns and was a valued goal-line contributor in 2020. While I'm not endorsing him as a top-35 RB, if you're in a deep league and need someone with a good shot at multiple double-digit weeks, he's your guy (as long as he's healthy, of course). Dobbins probably is the riskiest option. I don't see him carrying a big load for much of this season, if at all. Pre-injury, he was one of the NFL's most talented young backs. Who knows if he can get back to that level in 2022. His market value suggests "must-start" usage. Even if he's good to go Week 1, I won't trust him as more than a top 24-32 streamer, assuming he doesn't average more than 14 touches (similar to his role as the lead back beginning in Week 8 of 2020).
I really like Badie as a future passing-down back. If he shows well in camp, he could be the biggest fantasy steal in this backfield. Davis is little more than a desperation insurance policy. Justice Hill needs a lot of unlikely things to happen to become fantasy relevant, beginning with his own injury recovery in the midst of a more competitive backfield, and facing an expiring (and quite possibly not renewed) contract after this season.
At wideout, it's hard to understand why Rashod Bateman's ADP is WR38. This offseason I researched team-by-team player fantasy production going back 20 years and found that 84% of teams had at least one top-40 WR each season, while 72% had at least one top-30 WR. Even if we ignore Bateman's talent and nearly unquestioned status as his team's #1 WR, and even if we trust that Baltimore's passing attack will take a step back, Marquise Brown's absence has to be at least partially filled. But the fantasy universe doesn't see things that way.
In fact (and I've never seen this before), this team has no other players among ADP's top 120 WRs. Not Devin Duvernay, who should be no worse than a top-60 WR. Not James Proche or 2021 fourth-rounder Tylan Wallace, one of whom should finish in the top 90. Since ADP is an aggregate of fantasy manager draft behavior, stemming in part from fantasy experts' rankings and other stated opinions, there's no centralized "this makes no sense" recalibration. Our job, then, is to capitalize on this oversight. I'd invest in Bateman as, realistically, no worse than a top-32 WR with strong top-22 upside. And in deeper leagues, I'd bank on a Year 3 leap for Duvernay, who should provide no worse than occasional streaming value.
Finally, Mark Andrews. I won Division A of the Premier Fantasy Football League last year because the guy right before me drafted Kyle Pitts in the fourth round. Andrews was next on my list, and that proved to be the difference between a potentially 5-9 season and a title. One of the incredible things about Andrews is that he had 100+ yards and 1+ scores with three different QBs last year. How many players in NFL history can say the same? Perhaps none. Last year he was tied for fifth among TEs in red-zone targets, turning them into four scores. Last year he led the league in TE red-zone targets (22) and red-zone scores (9). While that wasn't *the* reason he broke out, it was a key reason. Can he remain Jackson's favorite target? There's no good reason to think he can't. While the team added a couple of promising rookie TEs, and while Andrews almost certainly will regress by at least 15% (due to a greater focus on the run), he's possibly the safest top-3 fantasy TE around--yes, even safer than Travis Kelce.