Assessing a fantasy assets’ ceiling or floor in any given year is difficult because those marks change throughout careers. Doug Baldwin had never topped 825 yards or five touchdowns in a season before he exploded in 2015, but now both of those totals look like the floor or even a sub-floor projection for Seattle’s No. 1 receiver. A talented receiver with a healthy target share, DeAndre Hopkins looked poised to rack up 1,000-yard seasons for the foreseeable future, but he failed to jump that seemingly low bar last year. In more philosophical terms, everything has never happened until it does, so assuming a player cannot reach a certain ceiling or fall below a certain floor simply because they have not done so in the past is not the best way to approach upside and downside conversations.
That said, past performance is a generally good indicator of future results, and drafting a player well above their previously demonstrated ceiling without a good reason to expect a breakthrough does not make much sense. On the other hand, a great way to find value is to draft the non-exciting players who tend to fall to or near their floors. Looking at this year’s early ADP, there are plenty of players who fit the bill in both categories.
*All ADP information found at fantasyfootballcalculator.com
Running Back
Devonta Freeman – 10 Overall, RB6 – Ceiling
It is odd to say Freeman’s current ADP is his ceiling considering he finished as the RB6 last season and the RB1 the year before that, but there are some mitigating factors to consider. First of all, his top of the heap point total in 2015 (244) looks more like the average RB4 finish over the past five seasons and was actually the lowest final score for the top back since at least 2000. In fact, Freeman scored just 14 fewer fantasy points last year than his RB1 campaign and still finished 96 behind
David Johnson. Also, what we saw from Freeman last year was elite per-touch efficiency (.82 points per touch) which was a full tenth of a point higher than the year before. Freeman is an exceptional running back on a great team, but repaying his draft value will require him to maintain that level of efficiency or see more opportunities in an offense which will likely regress from their historic pace of last season and has a great second option in
Tevin Coleman. Perhaps that will happen, but even then he will just be returning his draft cost.
Christian McCaffrey – 33 Overall, RB16 – Ceiling
McCaffrey is a great player who is going to a fantasy monster in the future, but he is currently being drafted as if he is the only guy in Carolina’s backfield who is going to get touches.
Jonathan Stewart is not going to disappear, and that puts a cap on the opportunities McCaffrey will see this season without an injury. Over the past three years, Carolina running backs have averaged 406 touches a season. Even with the added targets McCaffrey will bring to the position, that means he will need to see nearly 50 percent of the total backfield touches to reach 200, and he would need to average .78 fantasy points per touch at that workload to reach the five-year average of the RB16. Both of those scenarios are possible, but they are at the high end of what we can expect from McCaffrey as a rookie. On the other end of the spectrum, Stewart and his current RB42 ADP looks like a floor play with upside.
Danny Woodhead – 88 Overall, RB36 – Floor
At running back the concept of a floor is more fluid than other positions because of the frequency of injury, and that is certainly true of Woodhead. Still, his current ADP is likely below his full-health floor. Viewed by some as a traditional “third-down back,” Woodhead has actually been a red-zone fixture throughout his career, racking up 148 red-zone opportunities and 32 touchdowns in 82 games with the Patriots and Chargers. That prorated pace puts him over six touchdowns a season, and while Baltimore’s backfield was not prolific last year, the running backs did combine for 10 scores. Considering his usage to this point in his career, Woodhead should both see a large chunk of those scores and help to increase the final total, making the 96-point bar he needs to jump to return RB36 value seem pretty low.
Wide Receiver
Brandin Cooks – 27 Overall, WR11 – Ceiling
It seems odd to call this Cooks’ ceiling because he has hit almost exactly the WR11 point threshold two seasons in a row, but he faces a different situation in New England than the one he left in New Orleans. First of all, he is heading to an offense which throws the ball more than most but still lags well behind the Saints. Even if
Tom Brady’s prorated numbers are substituted in for last season, the Patriots would have attempted almost 100 fewer passes than the Saints and would have averaged 53 fewer attempts over the last five seasons. That might not seem like a lot, but for a player who would hope to see around 20 percent of the targets that represents about 10 opportunities. Of course, Cooks was not a 20-percent guy last year with
Michael Thomas stealing work, and it is not a given he can get even close to that target share with
Rob Gronkowski,
Julian Edelman,
Chris Hogan, and
Malcolm Mitchell on the field. That means he will need to be more efficient with his work to remain in the WR1 tier, but he was already the fourth-best per-target scorer among the top 50 receivers last year. It is possible he gets the targets or is even more efficient playing with the best quarterback in history, but it feels like a ceiling bet.
Willie Snead – 76 Overall, WR32 – Floor
The main beneficiary of Cooks’ departure from New Orleans was Snead, but it does not seem like the drafting public has caught on yet to how valuable the Saints’ No. 2 receiver usually is. Both Cooks and Thomas finished in the top 10 last year, Snead was the WR33 in 2015 with almost no red-zone involvement and
Ben Watson stealing 110 targets, and
Marques Colston was the WR31 and WR27 as the second option behind
Jimmy Graham in 2014 and 2013 respectively. Moreover, the second option has averaged 110 targets over that span while Snead has averaged 1.1 fantasy points per target over his career without scoring a ton of touchdowns. That workload with his baseline efficiency would easily put him at his current draft slot, and there is the upside for more if he is able to find his way into the end zone.
Pierre Garcon – 99 Overall, WR39 – Floor
Robert Woods is an honorable mention in this category because he is in basically the same situation as Garcon even if at a lower level because drafting Garcon or Woods is a bet on volume. There have been 190 wide receiver seasons with at least 100 targets in the last five years. Of those seasons, just 32 have not finished in the top 40 at the end of the year (16.8 percent). If the target number is raised to 125, for which Garcon is close to a lock, that number drops down to three. Barely being drafted inside the top 40, that makes Garcon a solid floor play, and that is without considering he was targeted 181 times playing in a strikingly similar situation under coach
Kyle Shanahan in Washington. To be frank, there is no reason for Garcon to be coming off the board this late. He is a great value.
Tight End
O.J. Howard – 116 Overall, TE11 – Ceiling
Hunter Henry’s eight touchdowns may have skewed expectations for rookie tight ends, but it is important to remember his TE11 finish is the exception and not the rule. Before Henry, the last rookie to finish even in the top 15 was
Tim Wright in 2013 –
Travis Kelce was the TE9 in 2014 after sitting out his rookie season – and they are the only two to do it since
Rob Gronkowski and
Aaron Hernandez both managed the feat in 2010. Point being, tight ends rarely make fantasy contributions in their first season, and Howard does not even have a clear path to targets.
Cameron Brate was too good last season, especially in the red zone, to just disappear while
Mike Evans and
DeSean Jackson are going to be the primary targets. Perhaps he can reach these ADP heights if he gets the targets, but that is a perhaps layered in an if which seems unlikely to happen.
Eric Ebron – 154 Overall, TE15 – Floor
Selling Ebron as a floor player is not particularly difficult. He has finished as a top-15 tight end each of the last two seasons despite missing five total games and being hurt in others,
Anquan Boldin, who was major competition for targets both between the 20s and in the red zone, is gone, and his targets share when healthy last year (16.7 percent) would have been good enough to put him right under 100 targets, which is an important plateau for tight ends. Just three tight ends in the last five seasons have seen 100 targets and not finished in the top 15. Ebron has already proven he can match this ADP even missing games with terrible touchdown production, so it is perfectly reasonable to expect him to pay off this draft cost with the upside for a lot more.
Quarterback
Derek Carr – 70 Overall, QB6 – Ceiling
Carr’s ceiling may not even be this high, but to be fair we will act like QB6 is a possibility. That said, even reaching that height would require Carr to suddenly throw more, score some rushing touchdowns, or improve on his already very good passing touchdown numbers. The first seems unlikely for a team with playoff aspirations who should see positive game scripts, the second seems unlikely considering his two career rushing attempts inside the 10 and with
Marshawn Lynch ready to take over
Latavius Murray’s goal-line role, and the third seems unlikely considering the Raiders were already the seventh-highest scoring team in the league last year. And, it is important to note, even if he is able to do some of those things while improving his week-to-week consistency, he would just be returning equal value at his current draft position. Carr is a good quarterback who may very well lead the Raiders to a Super Bowl in the near future, but short of a
Matt Ryan-esque magical season (9.3 yards per attempt, 7.1-percent touchdown rate), he just does not profile as an elite fantasy quarterback.
Matthew Stafford – 120 Overall, QB15 – Floor
Stafford’s ADP is among the most confusing. No one seems to care that he has finished 12th in per-game scoring each of the last two seasons and had a 20-game run from when OC
Jim Bob Cooter really was able to take over until when he hurt his finger against Chicago last season in which he was a top-six fantasy quarterback. Over that stretch, he completed 68.3 percent of his passes, threw for 270 yards a game, and tossed 40 touchdowns against just seven interceptions. He also has averaged 131 yards on the ground and 2.2 rushing scores over the last five seasons. Stafford has proven his upside with Cooter calling the plays, and he would need to take a pretty large step back to not return value at his current ADP.
