Almost any offense can feed at least one weekly fantasy starter. Calvin Johnson was the overall WR3 on the winless 2008 Lions, catching passes thrown by Dan Orlovsky, 36-year-old journeyman Jon Kitna, and not-far-from-retirement Daunte Culpepper. The winless 2017 Browns had RB11 Duke Johnson.
This year's Seahawks have only one player in the overall top 60, and that's Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who's comfortably leading every other fantasy player across every position. He's on pace for 503 fantasy points. Unlike the Lions and Browns, Seattle has a more well-rounded roster, at least on paper. Zach Charbonnet had been out all season, Jadarian Price had missed a chunk of the season, and the injured Rashid Shaheed hadn't claimed the #2 WR job over Cooper Kupp.
If Charbonnet and Price had remained out, Emanuel Wilson probably would have had most of Seattle's touches, delivering at least somewhat fantasy-friendly numbers. But their return created just enough chaos to make it difficult for managers to know which one (if any) to bet on (though with Wilson seemingly out of the picture, the chaos should diminish).
JSN's almost unprecedented dominance coincides with his quarterback experiencing a meaningful statistical regression. Sam Darnold started last night as the QB31 in points per game and did enough to barely crack the top 30. His value is tied entirely to JSN. But not the other way around; JSN realistically could thrive with QBs that would otherwise destroy the fantasy values of most wideouts.
The QB32 in points per game is a good example: Kyler Murray has a relatively talented receiving corps led by elite-upside WR Justin Jefferson. Last season, J.J. McCarthy struggled to feed his #1 WR. Carson Wentz did much better. This year with Murray under center, Jefferson's numbers have been up and down. Managers have to think harder about Vikings receivers than Seahawks receivers, and as a result, are more likely to make a sit/start mistake.
So if the Darnold-JSN connection is almost impenetrable, and if the Murray-Jefferson connection is hit-or-miss, where does that leave Caleb Williams? The first two quarterbacks are ceiling-capped. For the ascending Williams in his high-powered Bears offense, the sky's the limit. It's a perfect storm of success: we haven't seen the best of Williams, and Chicago has the most loaded receiver talent.
The Bears have hit 30+ points in four of Williams' five starts. The one exception was against the elite Vikings D. Last night he helped dismantle a Seattle defense that had been yielding the third-fewest points per game. The week before, he and the Bears conquered a Patriots team that's giving up the eighth-fewest points per game.
Vikings-related fantasy questions include things like "Can I trust Jefferson to get 12+," or "Do I go for the Hail Mary with Jordan Addison," or "Will TJ Hockenson score?" There's not much room for error on a team that's scoring the sixth-fewest points per game. When it comes to Seattle's receivers, it's cut-and-dry: JSN or bust.
For the Bears, it's somewhere in between. Luther Burden and Colston Loveland are locked in, while Rome Odunze has been more of a stream-and-hope option. Last night was the third time this season that all three exceeded 10 points. D'Andre Swift dominated in two of those games. An offense has to be really good to feed four players. It has to be great to feed them consistently.
But only one of them (Burden) has hit 20+ points, and that was one time. The upside of a spread-the-ball, high-powered offense is also the downside: frequently fantastic floors and infrequently high ceilings. Look at the Bears last year: six times, either Burden, Odunze, or DJ Moore scored 20+. On four of those occasions, one of the three was sidelined. A fifth time, Moore was effectively sidelined with zero targets. The only other time was in Week 2, when the rookie Burden played only 12 offensive snaps.
Every summer, I struggle with the question of whether to draft a bad offense's alpha over a great offense's #2. I go back and forth on drafting a great WR with a low-tier QB versus a very good WR with a relatively high-tier QB. There doesn't seem to be a consistent right answer statistically. But it doesn't make it any less challenging.
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