If you had said Cooper Kupp would be a No. 1 wide receiver last season, that might have qualified as a bold prediction. If you had said he would have been the No. 1 wide receiver, that definitely would have qualified. 

If you want to understand what makes a prediction bold, that might be as good an example as any. Kupp was a solid WR who had shown top-12 upside before, so thinking he could do that with a QB upgrade wasn't unreasonable. However, he never showed anything like the kind of historic upside he ended up living up to with Matthew Stafford; if you saw even a hint of that coming and made drafting him a priority, you ended up with the most valuable player in Fantasy.

Bold predictions are about planting a flag in the ground, and that's what the Fantasy Football Today team has for you this week. We've been talking about our top bold predictions all week on the podcast, and in today's newsletter I have my five boldest calls for the upcoming season. Spoiler alert: I'm high on Kyler Murray and Christian McCaffrey, but I'm not buying rookie running backs this season. 

Before we get to my predictions, though, let's check out what the rest of the team has to say. Jamey Eisenberg, Dave Richard, and Heath Cummings spent the week writing about their boldest calls, so here's some of what they have to say:

Russell Wilson will be the No. 1 quarterback, Jerry Jeudy, Courtland Sutton will be top 15 WRs, and Saquon Barkley will be a top five running back: "As a rookie in 2018, Barkley was amazing, finishing as the No. 2 PPR running back at 24.1 points per game. He followed that up with a standout second year in 2019, averaging 18.7 PPR points per game. But he missed three games that season with an ankle sprain, and then he suffered a torn ACL in 2020, costing him 14 games. He missed three games again in 2021, and it's hard to trust someone with that injury history. And, let's face it, it's tough to trust any member of the Giants . But I like what new coach Brian Daboll should do for this offense, and The Athletic reports Barkley "is going to catch a ton of passes." The offensive line is better, and Barkley is in a contract year. There's a path to a huge season if Barkley can stay healthy, and I expect him to deliver in a big way."

James Conner will finish as a low-end No. 2 Fantasy RB, Diontae Johnson will not finish as a top-20 WR in any format, and Deshaun Watson will finish outside the top 10 in Fantasy points per game: "We haven't seen Deshaun Watson play a game of competitive football since Jan. 3, 2021. When we see him next, everything about his situation will have changed, and nothing about his past performances should be taken for granted. As things stand now, his receiving corps in Cleveland is the worst he's had -- ever. After Amari Cooper, Watson has the likes of Donovan Peoples-Jones, Anthony Schwartz and tight end David Njoku as the next-best pass-catchers. Even his 2020 squad with Will Fuller as his No. 1 receiver at least had some quality depth."

Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Ronald Jones will both finish as top-24 RBs per game, Brandin Cooks will have a career year and finish as a top-12 WR, and Jalen Hurts will finish the year as QB1: "If you've followed me at all this offseason, you knew this one was coming. In fact, I wrote about it the night of the A.J. Brown trade. Hurts has as much rushing upside as anyone not named Lamar Jackson and the addition of Brown should improve his passing numbers enough to make him a top five Fantasy quarterback with the upside to be No. 1 overall. The most obvious cases to cite when trying to figure out how much Brown could help Hurts as a passer are Josh Allen and Kyler Murray. When I do that, people often scoff because Hurts isn't near as proficient a passer as those two. Well...

And now, here are my boldest calls:

We've seen stretches of that kind of play from Murray before, so we know what it looks like. In the first half of last season, he was hyper efficient as a passer, putting up 17 passing touchdowns in the first seven games, averaging 286 passing yards per game. He put up 30.4 points per game in six-point-per-pass-TD scoring, which is the range you're looking for from a QB1. 

He had a similar stretch in 2020, averaging 33.2 points per game through the first eight. Injuries have been an issue both seasons, but the point is, we've seen it from him before. I don't think he'll rush for 1,000 yards like he was on pace for in the first half of 2020, so the likelier path is for him to remain a big red zone presence on the ground while putting together a full season of high-level passing. 

Missing DeAndre Hopkins (suspension) for the first six games of the season will make it a bit more difficult, but the addition of Marquise Brown gives the Cardinals a more dynamic playmaker in the passing game than anyone they had last season, and if Hopkins can hit the ground running when he returns from the suspension, that could help Murray avoid the second-half swoon for a third straight season. The fact that Murray is currently QB6 in early ADP makes it even easier to buy into the upside. 

Maybe I'm being too pessimistic. After all, there has been at least one rookie RB inside of the top 20 every season since 2011, so history suggests someone will get there in 2022.  

But this looks like an especially underwhelming rookie class for running backs. The first one taken in the NFL draft was Breece Hall to the Jets at 36th overall, followed by Kenneth Walker III to the Seahawks at 41st; James Cook to the Bills at 63rd was the only other back taken in the first two rounds. Those are pretty unappealing landing spots for rookie running backs to land in, and opportunity and team context matter so much at running back. 

Hall has the best chance at locking down an every-down role early on, though second-year back Michael Carter looms as a potential partner who could complicate things. And, while it's not unreasonable to think the Jets could take a step forward offensively, they probably need to for Hall to be much more than just a low-end starter. The Jets produced the 21st-most PPR points by running backs last season with 348 across their roster, but they ranked dead last in Zach Wilson's 12 full games at just 16.4 per. That's in large part due to the fact that Wilson completed just 40 passes to his running backs in those 12 games, compared to 43 in the other five.

Hall can be a viable starter with the Jets, but he'll need to lock down that No. 1 job early and keep Carter at bay while the offense takes a step forward. It might be even harder for either Walker or Cook to get there. Walker is likely stuck in a run-first timeshare with Rashaad Penny on what could be the worst offense in the NFL – more on that later – while Cook is similarly likely to split time with Devin Singletary in what has been another pretty bad offense for running backs in Fantasy. The Bills ranked 22nd in PPR points by running backs in 2021, which was the first time in Josh Allen's four years as a starter where they have ranked higher than 30th. Cook's pass-catching and playmaking chops could help make up for that, except that the Bills ranked 28th in targets to running backs in 2021 despite attempting the fifth-most passes in the league total. 

Rookies are always fun to draft because of the allure of the unknown, but you have to go into every season with the knowledge that patience is usually necessary. Even Jonathan Taylor, arguably the best back in football by his second season in the league, had a frustratingly inconsistent role as a rookie. This year's rookie class at RB doesn't look like a particularly special one from a talent standpoint, and given the landing spots, I'm not necessarily going to make any of them a priority on Draft Day.

This one isn't as bold a take as it might seem on the surface. McCaffrey's last full season saw him score 469.2 PPR points in 16 games, while Taylor scored 377.1 in 17 games in 2021. At their respective bests, McCaffrey has just been a lot better than Taylor. 

Of course, McCaffrey has struggled with injuries over the past two seasons, playing just 10 of 33 games, which is the main reason he's going to be taken second at the earliest in most leagues (usually later, it seems) while Taylor is the near-unanimous No. 1 pick. But to just highlight how much better McCaffrey has been, consider this: In those 10 games, McCaffrey has 24 or more PPR points in seven games, despite leaving two early due to injuries; Taylor has eight such games out of 33 in the same stretch. 

Taylor could take a step forward, or maybe McCaffrey's injury history makes the Panthers more wary about leaning on him quite so heavily, both of which could tilt the scales in Taylor's favor. But based on what we've seen from both, the only case for Taylor comes down to injury risk. That's enough to put him at the top of most folks' draft boards, but there's just so much more upside with McCaffrey. I'm chasing upside. 

Travis Kelce turns 33 this year and already showed signs of decline last season; Mark Andrews is a year removed from averaging 50.1 yards per game and averaged three catches and 34 yards less per game in Lamar Jackson's full games. Those two are being treated like a tier unto themselves at the position, but they aren't without risk to disappoint.

Pitts was a bit of a disappointment as a rookie, but seeing as he just put together a 68-catch, 1,026-yard season as a rookie and he didn't even turn 21 until the second month of the season, that speaks to how high expectations were. And how high expectations should remain. 

He'll be trying to take his big step forward in Year 2 without Matt Ryan, though given how much Ryan's No. 1 target historically struggled to find the end zone – an issue that obviously hampered Pitts last season – that might not necessarily be a significant downgrade to Marcus Mariota. Pitts has a bit more help in the form of rookie Drake London, but he should still be the top option in this passing game after he played nearly all of his rookie season without Calvin Ridley. 

I have every reason to believe Pitts is going to be the top tight end in Fantasy at some point in the next few years, and given that he's going off the board on average about a round and a half after Andrews, he looks like the best bet at the position for a big return. He may just be a first-round pick this time next year. 

I don't have it ranked this way, technically, but only because Noah Fant is TE16 for me. The highest ranked Seahawks player otherwise is DK Metcalf, my WR26; Tyler Lockett is WR35, Rashaad Penny is RB35, Kenneth Walker III is RB36, while Drew Lock is QB32. But this all comes down to that last guy there, because I just really don't have faith in Lock in this offense. Among 32 players with at least 700 pass attempts over the past three seasons, Lock ranks 31st in passer rating, 32nd in completion percentage, 30th in touchdown rate, 27th in interception rate, and 26th in yards per pass attempt.

Lock has been bad, in other words, and the Seattle offense has been one of the most conservative in the league for years, and ran the fewest plays in the league last season. The Seahawks want to play slow and establish the run, and while that worked when Russell Wilson was being one of the most efficient passers in league history, it's a lot harder to get excited about it with Lock at the helm. Metcalf and Lockett have been must-start Fantasy options due to that efficiency, especially with the deep ball, but unless there is going to be a significant increase in pass volume, I think both could be bench options. 

Of course, that run-first approach should help the running backs, right? Except, Penny and Walker seem likely to split work even if Chris Carson isn't able to play due to his lingering neck issues, and neither profiles as much of a pass-catcher. If the passing game is as bad as I think it might be, there aren't going to be many touchdown opportunities for them either, which means you're likely looking at a timeshare in one of the least valuable backfields in the league. 

That's all to say, I think Seattle's offense could be the worst in the league with Lock under center and I have little interest in anyone here for 2022.