| | | | Monday, July 12, 2021 | | In last week's Fantasy Football Today Newsletter, I gave you my biggest rankings risers since our post-draft update back in May, a list that included, among others, Ryan Tannehill, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, and Jerry Jeudy. If you missed that, make sure you check it out here, because I also answered some pretty interesting questions from our readers that you might find worthwhile. | | I also wanted to include some rankings risers from Jamey Eisenberg, Dave Richard, and Heath Cummings in that email, too, but I couldn't get them in there in time. Hey, it's that time of year, folks are on vacation, and it happens. So, before I get to my picks for 10 players who have fallen in my rankings since May, here's the rest of the FFT team's biggest risers and fallers in the rankings: | | Rankings Risers | | Jamey: Ryan Tannehill and Myles Gaskin Dave: Javonte Williams and Adam Trautman Heath: Mike Davis and CeeDee Lamb | | Tannehill and Gaskin were risers for me as you saw in Friday's newsletter, and while Williams isn't directly moving up much for me, he might as well be -- you'll see why shortly. And Trautman is definitely someone to make sure you circle on your cheat sheets as a late-round option at tight end, because he was drawing positive reviews in minicamps and could be the No. 3 option in the Saints passing game. | | Rankings Fallers | | Jamey: Miles Sanders and Julio Jones | | Dave: Mike Davis and Dallas Goedert | | Heath: Matt Ryan and Brandin Cooks | | No surprise with Ryan and Jones falling, though I agree with the former a lot more. It's fascinating that Heath has Davis rising while Dave has him falling. I don't think Davis has moved very much at all for me, but I'm probably closer to Dave, in that I'm pretty pessimistic about him. Every year, there are veteran running backs who everyone agrees aren't that good who get pushed up into the No. 2 RB discussion solely because they are projected to be the starter and get starter touches, and those backs often don't provide a good return on investment. There just isn't much job security there, and the projected touches are all they have going for them. | | My fallers will be below, but before I get to that, I want to let you know that all this week on the Fantasy Football Today podcast, we'll be talking about positional tiers, beginning with quarterbacks on Monday. Tiers are important because they can help you figure out when is the right time to wait on a position and when you need to make a move to ensure you don't fall behind the pack at a key position. | | | | I'll be doing a newsletter every day this week starting Tuesday with analysis of Dave's QB tiers, along with some excerpts from the podcast discussions, so keep an eye out for that, and make sure you email Chris.Towers@CBSInteractive.com to get your questions answered about each position or anything else this week. | | And now, here's who has been dipping in my rankings lately: | | Rankings fallers | | Quarterbacks | | Matt Ryan (QB26) - It certainly feels too low. Ryan finished as QB14 last season in points per game, but he lost Julio Jones and will likely throw the ball quite a bit less than his league-leading 626 attempts (at least on a 16-game pace) with new coach Arthur Smith in charge. Ryan will still be in the top half of the league in passes, I'm sure, and the addition of Kyle Pitts should help soften the blow of losing Jones. But there's no question that losing Jones hurts, especially for a quarterback who doesn't have a big margin for error for Fantasy because he never runs the ball. There isn't much separating Ryan from the mid-range of No. 2 quarterbacks, so his overall rank isn't as damning as it seems, but he's squarely a low-end No. 2 QB for me now. Justin Fields (outside of the top-32) - I want Fields to start the season, and he would be a top-15 QB for me if he did start. Or once he does. Assuming he does. The Bears have reiterated that they signed Andy Dalton to be the starter, and it doesn't sound like it's really a competition in camp. I think Fields will get the chance before long, but I don't think I would draft him in a single-QB redraft league with 12 teams right now. There are just too many talented quarteracks to take one who you won't be able to use for who knows how long. | | Running backs | | D'Andre Swift (RB15) - I've had Swift all over the place this offseason. He was a top-10 back in the first run of rankings prior to free agency, and then I moved him as far down as RB18 as I tried to find the right balance of touches between he and Jamaal Williams. He's RB15 now, and I think the floor isn't much lower than that -- he'll be an effective pass catcher no matter what, which should make him a useful No. 2 RB at the very least. But I'm a bit more pessimistic on the ceiling now, partially because of Anthony Lynn's comments referring to Williams as his "A" back, but much more because of how bad this offense could be. Splitting work in a bad offense makes it tough to have No. 1 RB upside, regardless of how talented the back is. Melvin Gordon (RB24) - I'm not out on Gordon, as I still have him higher than the consensus and I think he'll be a very good starter for at least the start of the season. But I'm taking the likelihood of him ceding the job to Javonte Williams sooner rather than later much more seriously than I was initially. It's not necessarily that there has been any concrete news to change my position as much as it is an acknowledgment on my part that there's a pretty good chance Gordon might lose a lot of value as the season goes on. He's still a good target in the sixth-round range, especially if you're going zero- or light-RB early because you should have time to find his replacement, but just know you'll need to. Travis Etienne (RB25) - Etienne is going to play a significant role for the Jaguars, but it sure sounds like it's going to be less as a traditional running back than we might have thought when he was first drafted. Something I've tried to remind myself a lot of is that the Jaguars have said they would have taken Kadarius Toney if he had been there when they drafted Etienne, a signal that the pick was a lot less about James Robinson than it was about just getting another playmaker on the field. Etienne will get plenty of carries, but I've gone from expecting him to eventually emerge as the lead back to thinking he'll be more of a complementary piece as the offseason has gone on. | | | | Wide receivers | | Allen Robinson (WR16) - I'm lower on Robinson than the consensus (WR12). I just have some concerns about what the Bears passing game is going to look like the more I think about it. It seems likely Dalton is going to open the season as the starter ahead of rookie Fields, and while he's a decent enough backup, I'm not sure he's much of an upgrade on the Mitchell Trubisky/Nick Foles combo from last year. Robinson was 13th at the position in points per game last season, so maybe that's not such a bad thing, but that was on the strength of a ton of volume -- the Bears threw the ball 614 times. I'm guessing they're going to throw a lot less than that in 2021. Either Dalton plays well enough to keep the job, in which case they're probably playing well enough that they don't need to throw as much as they did, or they switch to Fields, which probably means they aren't throwing as much as they did anyway. I think Fields is going to be awesome, but I'm not sure he's going to be great for the 28-year-old Robinson's value. He's a rock-solid No. 2 WR for any team, but I'd feel a bit underwhelmed with him as my No. 1. Neither has happened in a draft yet. D.J. Chark (WR40) - I'm definitely below the consensus on Chark, too. I think he's good, but I'm not sure he's great, and I'm not sure he necessarily stands out in what might be a somewhat low-volume Jaguars offense. I currently have him projected to be the team's No. 1 receiver, but just five targets ahead of Marvin Jones and 11 ahead of Laviska Shenault . We did see Chark put up a 1,000-yard season in 2019, but we also saw him fade pretty badly down the stretch (795-yard, five-touchdown pace in the second half of the season) and then struggle to do much in 2020. Yes, the QB play should be better than it has been in a long time in Jacksonville, but so too is his competition. I think Chark should have a fine season, but I'm probably less likely to draft him at his current cost (WR31) than either Shenault (WR42) or Jones (WR52). Corey Davis (WR43) - I was actually pretty excited for Davis when he first signed with the Jets. Sure, it probably wasn't going to be a great offense, but he figures to be the top target, right? Well, I'm less sure of that now than I was back in May, given the glowing reports we've seen about Elijah Moore coming from Jets world. I still have Davis projected to be the team's top receiver, but it's less an Alpha situation than I initially projected. It's entirely possible Davis does end up the clear top option, or that he and Moore dominate targets enough for both to be starting-caliber options, but while I do think Davis is actually a pretty nice value at WR50 in ADP (128.7 overall), I wouldn't trust him as anything more than bench depth right now. | | Tight ends | | Logan Thomas (TE8) - I haven't necessarily moved Thomas down a ton, though he did fall below Dallas Goedert in my most recent update. I'm just growing increasingly skeptical about his chances of repeating his 2020. Thomas benefited from an unusually high target volume late in the season, as he saw 50 targets over his final five games, compared to 60 in the first 11 games. Maybe he just took a big step forward, but that also coincided with Washington throwing the ball 42.2 times per game in that stretch, compared to 35.5 in 11 games before that. I do expect the passion game in Washington to be better than it was overall, but Thomas is probably the third-best option in this passing game, and I expect it will be tougher to get to 100 targets this season, even with that 17th game. Thomas is an excellent athlete who could take another big step forward, but I need to see it before I buy in any more. Robert Tonyan (TE19) - It's not particularly tough to make the case against Tonyan, but it's worth noting that, 10 years ago, he might've been drafted as a top-five player at the position coming off his 11-touchdown season in 2020. After all, he's still got Aaron Rodgers as his quarterback, right? Well … maybe! But even if Rodgers does walk back his trade demand in time for the start of the season, Tonyan's TE10 price is too steep. He had those 11 touchdowns on just 59 targets, and I don't see a particularly good reason to think that volume is likely to increase this season -- he had 35 in his final nine games, including the playoffs, a pace of just 62. He was right around a 60-65% snap share nearly every week, including the playoffs, and if his role didn't increase when the games mattered most, why should we assume it will happen in 2021? Tonyan will need outlier touchdown production, and it's not like Rodgers has consistently provided that for his tight ends -- Jimmy Graham had just five on 149 targets over two seasons with Rodgers before Tonyan's breakout. | | | | | | | | 24/7 Sports News | | Be the Commish or Join a League | ✔Scores & Highlights
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