The road to fantasy glory is paved with league-winning performances. The bike lane and shoulders are littered with the best attempts at the same that didn’t materialize. Fantasy managers must take chances to roster who they believe to be league winners. The tricky part is they often aren’t those can’t-miss first-round picks. Just last season, Cooper Kupp won the triple crown, and Deebo Samuel redefined what an offensive skill player looks like…from the middle rounds. Cordarrelle Patterson vaulted fantasy teams into the stratosphere early on…from the waiver wire. Even Jonathan Taylor emerged as the RB1 in 2021 as a second or third-round pick from the dreaded “RB Dead Zone.”
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Football is a wildly unpredictable sport, and fantasy football leaves managers on full tilt mode from September through February. “Just draft the optimal lineup; full of players who score lots of points and stay healthy.” If I could snap my finger and conjure the 2022 Fantasy MVPs, it would look something like this:
Do we know what type of NFL quarterback Lance will be? Sort of, but the sample size is minuscule. What we do know is that Lance is built like Cam Newton with a stronger arm and will operate in the Kyle Shanahan offense that made the woeful Jimmy Garoppolo look decent. Everyone who is fading Lance as a top-10 fantasy QB is citing his inconsistency as a passer. The man threw zero interceptions in his last full season of football. Nobody has ever been that efficient at any level of football, let alone as a dual threat in college with FCS-level WRs.
I have been steadfast in my belief that Lance will completely transform this offense and expand the passing game beyond what it could even dream of with Garoppolo at the helm. Boundary passes? They’re back. Downfield bombs and second-layer crossers that don’t hang receivers out to dry? Yes, and yes. Sprinkle in even a shred of pocket presence and great rushing ability, and you have a young signal-caller with QB1 overall in his range of outcomes. Keep rostering non-mobile QBs and pray they pass for a billion yards and a gob of touchdowns. They would need to in order to outscore Trey Lance in fantasy this year if he stays healthy.
Along the same lines as Marshall Faulk, LaDainian Tomlinson and Christian McCaffrey, Swift has the skillset to achieve 1,000 yards rushing and receiving in the same season. I believe he will come very close to accomplishing exactly that in 2022. Swift has already set the milestone as his goal this season, with no pushback from head coach Dan Campbell. Detroit is setting up to be a surprise winning team in 2022 (or at least one that is easy to root for), and Swift will be a main focal point.
One of last year’s league winners, Amon-Ra St. Brown, came from the Lions while Swift was injured. Until then, Swift was pacing for nearly 1,500 scrimmage yards. He hadn’t even eclipsed a 75% snap share the first five weeks of the season with Jamaal Williams sharing the load. Once Detroit handed the reigns to Swift on a full-time basis, he was nearly unstoppable. The seven targets he saw on a per-game basis when healthy is rarified air for an NFL RB. The scary part is the Lions could have easily given him even more. They certainly have intentions to do so in 2022.
Preseason fantasy football chatter is a hurricane of hypotheticals. What if Kyle Pitts was in Travis Kelce‘s role in KC? What if the Cowboys gave Tony Pollard a Deebo Samuel role in their offense? What if Justin Jefferson was running routes in the same system as Cooper Kupp? The last one came true this offseason when the Vikings hired former Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O’Connell to be their new head coach. Mike Zimmer’s archaic blithering is replaced with one of the most innovative offenses in NFL history; an offense that just produced a historic triple crown WR season from Kupp and a Super Bowl.
Jefferson is better than Kupp. He has more tools in his belt and is still ascending, even after producing the most receiving yards over his first two seasons in NFL history. His target competition is still good but on a steady descent. Of every possible player with first-round ADP this year, Jefferson has the safest floor and the highest ceiling. I wouldn’t even blink if he produced 150 receptions for 2,000 yards and 20 touchdowns in 2022. He has the potential, the QB, and finally, the supporting scheme to launch him into legendary status. I can’t wait to tune in.
If not for some very untimely dropped passes, Marquise Brown would have been a WR1 last season. This was even more impressive with Lamar Jackson missing five games due to injury. His 145 targets were a career-high and registered a top-12 target share of 26.7%. Hollywood has been traded to Arizona, leaving behind a void on the outside for the Ravens. Jackson arrived in camp looking bulked up and ready to go nuclear. Enter Rashod Bateman to answer the call in the Baltimore passing game. The crazy part is he’s better than Brown.
The Minnesota Golden Gopher missed rookie training camp with a hernia injury and didn’t get his first NFL game action until Week 6. Bateman finished as WR69 and only scored one touchdown. Now that the negatives from 2021 are on the table, let’s examine why Bateman will be a fantasy MVP this season. The first reason is his immediate excellence as a true X-receiver. Bateman ran the most challenging route tree for an NFL WR as a rookie who missed camp. According to Reception Perception (RP), he excelled in that role from the word go.
Bateman gained separation at a near-elite level, charted by RP in the 74th percentile versus man coverage, 85th percentile versus zone, and 81st percentile versus NFL-level press coverage. No wonder he earned a 15.8% target share in only 10 healthy games. Bateman will have the speed to go vertical more often this season in Brown’s stead, along with all of the necessary tools to be a target monster for an offense that returns a QB with staggering touchdown efficiency. Apart from stud TE Mark Andrews, none of Bateman’s competition for passing targets strikes any fear into defenses whatsoever. He is the mid-round WR to break the mold in 2022.
Kyle Pitts (TE – ATL)
Speaking of molds, Kyle Pitts wasn’t formed in one. The Unicorn, or as Robert Saleh described as a “Create-a-Player on Madden,” is primed to ramp up a legendary reign of terror upon NFL defenses this season. The 6-foot-6 and 240-pound “tight end” who runs a 4.4 40 and only lines up as a wide receiver will have a complimentary receiver to draw top coverage away from him for the first time in his life. Even as a 20-year-old rookie TE in 2021, Pitts produced a 1,000-yard receiving season. Through the toughest coverage every defense could muster to contain him, the young Florida Gator led all NFL receivers in yards per route run when in outside alignment (Scott Barrett).
Who was the best outside WR in the NFL last year? Technically it was Kyle Pitts
YPRR (Routes Out-Wide)
1 Kyle Pitts (2.95)
2 Deebo Samuel (2.86)
3 Justin Jefferson (2.78)
4 Davante Adams (2.56)
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43 Travis Kelce (1.55)
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53 Mike Gesicki (1.41)
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Last/89 Demarcus Robinson (0.57)— Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) May 19, 2022
Now, add in the presence of alpha stud WR Drake London to the Falcons offense. Pitts stands to be freed up to move all over the field in different formations. He faced coverage from linebackers or safeties on only 51% of his snaps last season, which was the fewest among starting TEs in the NFL. To remind you, this was a 20-year-old NFL rookie. Pitts was also inexplicably taken off the field by Arthur Smith in the red zone, which contributed heavily to his heartbreaking touchdown total. Smith has already spoken out about Pitts’ role in the offense for 2022. “Last year he was just barely scratching the surface of what he will be…we will be able to move things around a lot more (this season).” Translation? Pitts has TE1 upside in spades, but it should not surprise anyone in the football world if he produces equivalent stats to a top-5 wide receiver in 2022. How happy would you be if you drafted the WR5 in the third or fourth round? Ecstatic? That’s why I’m reaching for Pitts as early as the second round. I need him on my fantasy team.
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If you want to dive deeper into fantasy football, be sure to check out our award-winning slate of Fantasy Football Tools as you navigate your season. From our Start/Sit Assistant – which provides your optimal lineup based on accurate consensus projections – to our Waiver Wire Assistant – which allows you to quickly see which available players will improve your team and by how much – we’ve got you covered this fantasy football season.
