Our own Sam Ryner recently dug into previous wide receiver breakouts in order to understand and better predict future breakout candidates. Andrew Erickson and Derek Brown took to the task as well, sharing their candidates on a recent fantasy football podcast. Let’s take a look at one player they identified as a potential breakout WR1 candidate for 2022: Darnell Mooney.
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The case for Darnell Mooney to be the next WR1 breakout
Darnell Mooney 2022 Fantasy Football Outlook
Darnell Mooney is poised to take another step forward this season. Last year his 1.72 yards per route run (40th, minimum 50 targets per PFF) won’t blow you away, but the inherent volume he’s walking into and Justin Fields taking another step forward will be the tide to help fantasy gamers raise “ships.” Last season in the five games without Allen Robinson on the field, Mooney averaged 9.6 targets and 78.2 receiving yards per game. The yardage mark would have been the seventh-highest mark. Mooney’s median is a low-end WR2 or high-end WR3, but if he garners more than 11 red-zone targets (38th) he received last year, he could vault even higher.
– Derek Brown
FantasyPros Staff Consensus 2022 Redraft Fantasy Football Rankings
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