Fantasy Football ‘23: Players that are Hard to Rank
Is the NFL’s Oldest QB Still a Top-10 Option?
(Published June 30, 2023)
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With July rapidly approaching, I decided it was time to put together my first full set of redraft player rankings for the 2023 season. It was fun taking that first stab at the tiers and lists, but the same thing happens every year - a handful of players crosses me up. I struggled to rank certain players because of the wide range of their possible outcomes this season. If any of these players really hits, and ends up performing at the highest point of that range, he could be a league-winner (and a tremendous value at the price you’ll pay to get him). On the opposite end, most of them are early to mid round players (in the case of the QBs listed, that’s certainly true in a Superflex league), which means that if you take one or more of these guys and they come up snake eyes, it could be an anchor around the neck of your fantasy team.
The reasons for the wide range of outcomes vary from player to player, and as training camp and the preseason unfold, the task of handicapping the 2023 season for some or all of them should get a little easier. But for now, these are the players that have me scratching my head.
Note 1 - I haven’t ranked unsigned players like DeAndre Hopkins, Dalvin Cook, Ezekiel Elliott, and Leonard Fournette, and won’t discuss them in this column, even though they’re clearly hard to rank at the moment. I based my initial rankings on NFL rosters and depth charts as they stand today. For example, I ranked the Miami RBs without regard to whether the team might sign Dalvin Cook. I’ll adjust my rankings as needed between now and the start of the season.
Note 2 - There are some players whose availability is in question, which makes them hard to rank as well. Kyler Murray and Javonte Williams (among others) fall into this category. I’m not going to say too much, for now, about these players. Obviously, we’ll learn more as the summer unfolds. This column is focused more on players who as of now are expected to be available Week 1.
Note 3 - all Expert Consensus Rankings (ECR) listed below are for Half-point PPR.
So without further ado, here is my current list of head-scratch players for 2023.
Watson Was a Perennial Top-5 QB. How to Rank Him Now?
Deshaun Watson
Current ECR: QB11; Current Pigskin Papers Ranking (PP): QB13.
After not playing for all of 2021 and much of 2022, Watson returned to action in Week 13 last year. He started slow and didn’t exactly light it up. He was the QB14 over the 6 weeks he played, a far cry from what we grew accustomed to early in his career. Watson came into the league in 2017 and his finishes in 2018-2020 were consistent, and consistently excellent: QB4, QB5, and QB5. Can he return to that level this season? Maybe. The experts have him ranked as a borderline QB1. The biggest positive you can take from last season is that Watson finished strong, with his best 2 games coming in the final 2 weeks of the season where he averaged a good-not-great 21 fantasy points per game. He’s also in what should be a very good situation to produce. The Browns have a top-tier O-Line (PFF rates them #2 overall, behind the Eagles), a star RB in Nick Chubb, a solid and proven WR1 in Amari Cooper, and some nice options beyond those 2. He’ll get in a full training camp, with all of the distractions mostly in the rear-view mirror.
Regardless of what you think about Watson and his conduct, the fact remains that he logged 3 seasons as an elite fantasy QB before his transgressions took him off the field. Will I be surprised if Watson ends up performing right around his ECR (a fringe QB1), or worse? No, I won’t. But I also won’t be surprised if he’s the QB 5 or 6 this year.
Aaron Rodgers
Current ECR: QB15; Current PP: QB12
Rodgers is another QB who some fantasy players will bet on for a return to elite production in 2023, after he fell off last season. Right now, Rodgers is ranked as a high-end QB2. Rodgers played through a thumb injury last year, but that wasn’t the only issue that hampered him in a year where he dropped all the way to QB13, and only had one weekly finish as a top 10 QB. Those were both all-time lows for him, outside of seasons where he missed multiple games. The Packers shipped off Davante Adams before the 2022 season and for the first time in a very long time, Rodgers didn’t have a proven, veteran WR1 to throw to. The Green Bay offense looked out of sync for most of the season as Rodgers struggled with a young and unproven WR group.
After 18 seasons in Green Bay, the break-up finally happened and Rodgers is now the starting QB for the NY Jets. Oddly enough, it’s not the first time a 39-year old future Hall of Famer has left Green Bay to become the Jets’ signal-caller. I wasn’t sure how it would go when Brett Favre went to the Jets in 2008, and I’m perplexed now as well. Rodgers is moving from the NFL’s smallest market to its largest, but if there’s one player who might not be impacted by that, it’s the outspoken Rodgers. Or it all could go horribly wrong in the fishbowl. We’ll see, and as someone who lives in the area, I’m not looking forward to the drama. Still, the bigger issue is the first change of scenery in A-Rod’s career, coming in his 40 year-old season. When he has stayed healthy, Rodgers has almost always turned in a top-10 fantasy season, with quite a few of those in the top 6, and it’s easy to forget that he led the league with 48 TD passes and a 70.7% completion rate in 2020, while winning the first of 2 back-to-back league MVP awards at ages 37 and 38. The Jets have emerging second-year stars in WR Garrett Wilson and RB Breece Hall (who is returning from a torn ACL), and they brought in a couple of former Packer safety blankets (Lazard and Cobb) for Rodgers as well. It looks like a good situation for the 4-time MVP, albeit in a much stronger division and conference than the one he left. I’ve got Rodgers ranked a little higher than the experts, but his age and new situation are definitely concerns.
The Riddle of Ridley - Can he Rise Again in Jacksonville?
Calvin Ridley
Current ECR: WR21, PP: WR24
Ridley presents one of the biggest fantasy riddles of this season. I know - Ridley, riddle. But stick with me for a second, because it fits. We haven’t seen Ridley play since early in the 2021 season. Mental health concerns and then a gambling suspension kept him off the field for about the same amount of time that Watson was out of football. That kind of lengthy absence from the game matters. Ridley also finds himself attempting a comeback on a new team. There are certainly red flags here, but on the positive side, Ridley is an outstanding talent who has proven he can produce. Plus, he’ll be teamed up with an ascending young thrower in Trevor Lawrence in an up-and-coming offense that’s got a number of other very good weapons to take the pressure off. Ridley doesn’t have to be the 1A on this team, and can still eat plenty in a complementary role. He’s very intriguing as a high-end WR2 in fantasy.
In Ridley’s last full season (2020), he was a classic year-3 breakout WR, putting up great numbers across the board and finishing as the WR4. It looked certain that he was on his way to becoming one of the game’s elites. Those who used a high pick on Ridley in 2021 got crushed when he only suited up for 5 early-season games. Mental health is serious business and hopefully Ridley’s problems are behind him, and he’ll make the best of a new start. But that’s no guarantee, and as a result of that and other variables, the range of outcomes is wide. Personally, I’d much rather take Christian Kirk (current ECR: WR28, PP: WR21) a couple of rounds later.
Denver’s Offense Will Try to Rebound Under Sean Payton
The Denver Broncos
Last year I listed one entire team in this column (the 49ers) and I’m doing it again this year with the Broncos. I really had trouble ranking all of the fantasy assets on this team. Last off-season, the Broncos made one of the biggest moves in the league when they brought in Russell Wilson, and it went bad in a hurry. Well, with the stink of the 2022 season still fresh in the mile high air, the Broncos again went big this past-offseason, trading for and signing new HC Sean Payton.
Can Payton turn things around? Well, you’d think so. His track record is excellent, as he almost always had a very competitive team, not to mention a top offense, in New Orleans. He also had Drew Brees. Russell Wilson has been a high-end fantasy producer for most of his career, and at age 34 he should still have some good football left. But make no mistake: last season was very ugly, and the Nathaniel Hackett/Russell Wilson experiment was a disaster. Russ was the QB20 through Week 16, and since he was drafted as a QB1, he sunk as many fantasy teams as almost any player. He’s also not the only question mark on the offense. Javonte Williams is coming back from a serious knee injury, and Sean Payton tends to rotate his backs, so the backfield usage is hard to predict. The WR corps has Tim Patrick back from injury and doesn’t have a clear pecking order. Will Jerry Jeudy finally live up to expectations and emerge as a borderline WR1/WR2, or will he again disappoint? Will Courtland Suton ever be a big producer again? I have no idea how to rank the Denver WRs. They all make me a little queasy. Second year TE Greg Dulcich might be the safest pick on this offense.
Will Pitts Continue to Frustrate Fantasy Managers in 2023?
Kyle Pitts (current ECR: TE6, PP: TE9) - Your guess is as good as mine with this former top-5 pick. As one of many who took Pitts at his top 4 TE ranking last season and got burned (that’s putting it nicely), I’m very wary of buying in again and especially since the Falcons still don’t have anything close to a proven QB to get him the ball, and figure once again to be one of the most run-heavy teams in the NFL. He’ll run lots of routes and get lots of targets, but will it translate to him being the TE prince that was promised? So far, it hasn’t, plus he’s coming off of an injury that mercifully shut down his flailing 2022 season. The Falcons have used top 10 picks on skill position players in 3 straight drafts - so maybe this is the year that Arthur Smith’s offense explodes. Who knows? I know Pitts should be ranked somewhere in the top 10 on talent alone, but I had trouble placing him.
Others:
David Montgomery (current ECR: RB26, PP: RB28) - Jamaal Williams led all RBs in red-zone carries and rushing TDs last season. That’s what you’re hoping for if you draft Montgomery, who will find himself in a complementary role to first-round pick Jahmyr Gibbs.
Aaron Jones (current ECR: RB14, PP: RB16) - Jones is a supremely talented all-purpose back, but he’s also going to be 28 this season, will be playing without Aaron Rodgers for the first time, and his 4-year streak of catching at least 45 passes is definitely in jeopardy. They’ve also got A.J. Dillon, who figures to get plenty of run also as they switch to a Jordan Love offense.
Davante Adams (current ECR: WR7, PP: WR9) - There is no denying the talent, and those who took Adams last year got rewarded, as the move from Green Bay (and Rodgers) to Las Vegas (and Carr) didn’t hurt his production at all. Adams finished as the WR2. This year, there’s more reason for concern. Jimmy G doesn't have Carr’s deep arm, and there are questions about his health and how ready he’ll be (foot) for the start of the season. The Raiders have very little behind him. This could be the year where Adams finally dips, because of the QB situation. Or maybe Adams truly is “QB-Proof.”
D.J. Moore (current ECR: WR20, PP: WR24) - Moore is a top-15 WR talent who has been fairly consistent throughout his career. He has at least 1,100 yards or 7 TDs in 4 straight seasons. The issue has mainly been the inconsistency of the QBs charged with getting him the ball. If you lost count of the QBs that he played with in Carolina, you aren’t alone. Now he gets a fresh start in Chicago, but it’s hard to know what to expect in terms of target volume. The Bears should again be very run-heavy, and while Justin Fields is improving as a thrower, he isn’t there yet. Moore also has plenty of competition for targets in Claypool, Mooney, Kmet and the running backs. He’s a little tough to rank.
Kadarius Toney (current ECR: WR40, PP: WR32) - JuJu made this column last year, and Toney makes it this year for many of the same reasons. Travis Kelce will again be the clear passing option 1 on this team, and boy is he easy to rank. This team has the best QB in the league and one of the best offensive minds of the modern era in HC Andy Reid, so surely there is value to be had as the Chiefs’ top wideout, and Toney could easily be that guy. Or he could play 100 snaps all season, or anything in between. No outcome would surprise me for this former first-round pick who has flashed but has yet to find his footing in the NFL. The good news is that he’s not pricey, for now. But even still, how do you rank a guy with this wide of a range? Answer: you guess.
A few others who gave me a hard time when I did my first set of rankings are Deebo Samuel, Damien Harris, and most of the prominent Year 2 WRs outside of Garrett Wilson. Hey, nobody said it was easy, and this is why they pay us the big bucks.
DH
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