Don’t be so quick to write off Keon Coleman as the Bills’ best fantasy football WR (and more heat checks)

With the departure of Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis from the Bills, many targets have been freed up in Buffalo. Rookie Keon Coleman may already be the best interview in the league and is easy to scout, but his 7.3 YPT was second-lowest among this year’s WR prospects, and he was never a target at all throughout university. Khalil Shakir had his moments, but he shot a low target rate of 14.2% last season, even when given a bigger opportunity.

There has been a bit of hype about Chase Claypool, but Curtis Samuel should be considered the favorite to be Buffalo’s top receiver in 2024. He fits in well in Buffalo, bringing a dimension that the Bills offense has desperately needed. Samuel vastly outperformed Jahan Dotson in a hopelessly dysfunctional Washington offense last season, somehow producing five weekly top-25 WR rankings while catching passes primarily from Sam Howell. Samuel is likely to deal with an injury at some point, especially with an expanded role, but he currently appears to be one of the best value WRs in fantasy drafts.

The Bills went heavy after Joe Brady took over last season, but Samuel is still in a good situation to have the best fantasy season of his career.

• In general, I’m a fan of drafting younger players in fantasy football, but I’m making two notable exceptions in 2024, of which Cooper Kupp is one. His performance definitely took a dip last season, when he was clearly playing through injury. But a compromised Kupp still managed to achieve Puka Nacua’s goals when they were on the pitch together, including the goal share in the first reading. Nacua became a true alpha as a rookie and will continue to demand targets, but Kupp enters 2024 finally healthy.

Kupp just turned 31, but fantasy receivers generally don’t show much decline during their eighth year in the league. The Rams led the NFL in yards per game when their offense was fully healthy last season, and Sean McVay is a master at producing WR fantasy points. Kupp is just two seasons removed from posting a 191-145-1,947-16 campaign, but he is available in the fourth round of the Yahoo drafts, along with 20 wide receivers drafted earlier. The Rams have Demarcus Robinson as WR3, Colby Parkinson as TE1 and an RB1 who has suffered multiple injuries in his brief career, so the targets will be extremely condensed.

I rank Kupp as a top 12 fantasy WR.

• Derrick Henry is the other veteran I’m incredibly high on this year. His declining numbers over the past two seasons (when he was still scoring 25 touchdowns) were more a product of a poor Titans offense than Henry’s performance; he remained explosive and ranked top-three in YPC after contact against stacked boxes in 2023. He’s 30 now, but Henry’s touches were limited early in his career, and he also simply constructed differently. Henry’s snap share was reduced to 53 percent last season, but he still led the league in carries for the fourth time in five years on an offense that averaged just 4.9 yards per play.

It’s hard to understate the amount of improvement Henry saw when he left Tennessee for Baltimore in the offseason. Henry has run into more than 120 more eight-man boxes than any other RB over the past three seasons, while Lamar Jackson helped a depleted Ravens RB group score the fourth-most fantasy points last year . Gus Edwards has enjoyed a ton of short-yardage touchdowns, and Henry’s style seems a perfect fit for Baltimore’s offense; his quarry YPC jumped over 3 feet with a shotgun and pistol (5.1 YPC).

The Big Dog will also go from the worst run blocking unit in the league to the best. Henry has averaged almost twice as many 0.5 PPR fantasy points in wins throughout his career, and no team led more than the Ravens last season. Henry averaged 98.4 rushing yards (5.1 YPC) with 65 touchdowns in 59 wins, compared to 49.1 rushing yards (4.0) and just 15 touchdowns in 44 losses during his career. Baltimore is projected to win more than 11 games in 2024. The Ravens would love to give Henry 300 carries on an offense that averaged 28.4 points per game last year, and The King remains motivated.

Henry is my RB6, and I would draft him in the middle of Round 2, even in PPR formats.

• There’s no reason to draft Sam LaPorta with a top-25 pick when you can get Trey McBride three rounds later. Or Dalton Kincaid in Round 5 if you prefer. LaPorta had a superb rookie season, but he wasn’t exactly elite and many fantasy points came from an unsustainable TD rate. LaPorta finished fifth among tight ends in expected fantasy points and ranked 47th overall in fantasy points over replacement per game while being hot in touchdowns. LaPorta is drafted as the Clear Fantasy TE1 despite not being the top target for his own team (which is expected to continue to have one of the lowest success rates in the league relative to expectations).

During this time, McBride was a come out college player, where he scored more than twice as many touchdowns as LaPorta. McBride also recorded a target share of over 20% in 12 straight games after becoming a full-time player in Week 8 last year, a mark LaPorta reached in just six games all season. McBride averaged 11.6 fantasy points (0.5 PPR) in Weeks 10-17 while recording just one touchdown; LaPorta averaged 12.0 points per fantasy game over that span while scoring five touchdowns. LaPorta will continue to benefit from playing in football’s Coors Field (he scored 9 of his 10 touchdowns at home last year despite playing fewer games), but his profile suggests a regression is coming.

There is a solid Tier 1 tight end (although your cut line may vary) worth targeting in this year’s drafts, but ideally it’s a later tier of this group. McBride will certainly lose some targets to rookie Marvin Harrison Jr., but the competition in Arizona after that is clearly worse than Detroit.

I moved McBride to TE1.

• Speaking of Harrison Jr., why is he making more than 55 picks ahead of Malik Nabers in Yahoo drafts? I admit that Arizona’s quarterback situation makes Harrison the favorite to finish with more fantasy points as a rookie, but the odds should be much closer to 50/50 than five rounds of ADP. The young Nabers could even be the best hope.

• Stefon Diggs showed real signs of decline last season and will begin a new offense in Year 10. Diggs’ yards per target on deep balls fell off a cliff in 2023, while his off-target rate remained steady. Shakir has more receiving yards than Diggs over Buffalo’s last 10 games, even though he has seen less than half the number of targets, but Diggs is often drafted ahead of Kupp.

Meanwhile, Tank Dell had a slightly higher target share (22.6%) compared to Nico Collins (22.1), but a big advantage in air yards share (36.0% vs. 25.4 %) in the seven games in which they both played at least 50. % of the snaps. Dell is a legitimate route runner who averaged 10.8 targets, 6.3 catches and 92.3 receiving yards with five touchdowns over his last four games as a rookie.

CJ Stroud is the real deal (and his rookie numbers would have looked even more impressive if he hadn’t suffered multiple concussions), and there’s no chance the Texans finish 19th in PROE again like they did so in 2023. Assuming Dell is fully recovered from his injuries. (which included a shot but fortunately not “TightRope” surgery on his leg), he is a contender to lead Houston in targets this season.

Dell was drafted as WR29 in Yahoo leagues, but I rank him as a top 20 fantasy WR and well ahead of Diggs (WR22 in Yahoo).

BONUS – TV/Cinema Discussion: “Dark Matter” has been an absolute journey, and I can’t wait to see how it ends this week… Watching Al Bundy play the horrible Donald Sterling is a little surreal, but it’s not even the craziest casting from “Clipped”. “Presumed Innocent” is exactly what I’m looking for when it comes to popcorn entertainment. Peter Sarsgaard may be the best villain on TV right now (for his real-life brother-in-law)… Just when I think “The Boys” can’t get any more extreme, he sets a new bar with a scene in the most recent season. It’s no surprise to anyone who watched the highly underrated “Banshee,” but Antony Starr’s acting is legit… “Tokyo Vice” Season 2 is easily one of the best shows in the world. ‘year. It ended well, but it was still disappointing to see it cancelled. I highly recommend it… It’s hard not to like Glen Powell, but Hitman was more good than great. Not really Richard Linklater’s best work, but I enjoyed Patrick Bateman’s scene… I was a fan of ‘Game of Thrones,’ but I can’t get into ‘House’ as much as others of the Dragon.”