Fantasy Football Player Notes

Zay Flowers is very talented and worth the first-round pick the Ravens spent on him in 2023, but the nature of the Ravens' offense works makes Flowers an inconsistent fantasy performer. There were eight games last season in which Flowers had six or fewer targets. There were also eight games in which Flowers finished with fewer than 40 receiving yards.
The problem is that the Ravens ran the ball on 52.5% of their offensive snaps this year. Only the Eagles were run-heavier. That probably won't change much this year with Lamar Jackson at quarterback and Derrick Henry at running back for Baltimore, so we should probably expect more inconsistency from Flowers in his third NFL season.

The oft-injured Rashod Bateman didn't miss a game last season for the first time in his four-year NFL career. Not surprisingly, he put up the best numbers of his career, finishing with 45-756-9. Bateman averaged only 4.2 targets per game but averaged 16.8 yards per catch and 10.5 yards per target. He had more than his fair share of big plays, with 11 catches of 20 or more yards, and four catches of 40 or more yards. It's hard to see Bateman significantly boosting his target share with Lamar Jackson spreading the ball around to multiple pass catchers, and with the Ravens so run-heavy. But Bateman's encouraging 2024 performance makes him a worthy bench stash.

DeAndre Hopkins, at this stage of his career, offers more real-life veteran/locker-room appeal than fantasy production. Last year, he was a part-time player for both Tennessee and Kansas City, never eclipsing a 65% route share in any week. In ten games, he had less than a 55% route share, so we have to evaluate what he did from a per-route basis only instead of the raw counting or market share metrics. Among 112 qualifying receivers, he ranked 52nd in separation and 36th in route win rate (per Fantasy Points Data). Among that same sample, he was 47th in yards per route run and 32nd in target per route run rate. He'll have some random spike weeks because of the potency of Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore offense, but they'll likely be tough to predict and not consistent enough to make him anything more than a headache flex option.