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Welcome to our fantasy football Breakouts, Busts, and Locks, a series on RotoBaller where our writers look at three key players on each NFL team. Today, we're talking about the New York Giants.
New York made one big change this offseason, bringing in head coach Brian Daboll. Can he work the same kind of magic he did in Buffalo with Josh Allen on Daniel Jones? Or will 2022 be the end of the line for the often maligned young passer?
Below, you'll find a fantasy football breakout candidate, a fantasy football bust candidate, and a safe fantasy football pick for the Giants based on early ADP for fantasy football drafts in 2022.
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Fantasy Football Breakout: Kadarius Toney
Usually, I'm a fan of talking about advanced metrics and all of that stuff, but with Kadarius Toney, we can't really do a ton of that. He played just 301 snaps as a rookie, and saw action just once after Week 11.
But the story of why I'm high on Toney is really all about one game: Week 5 in Dallas.
In that game, Toney was targeted 13 times, catching 10 passes for 189 yards.
We saw a lot of good stuff in that game from Toney. Not only is he explosive with the ball in his hands, he can show off nifty footwork to create space:
And this video is from a different game, but it still showcases how Toney is such a slippery player. He can find the smallest bits of space and gets yards after the catch.
https://twitter.com/FieldYates/status/1517631382704599041?s=20&t=lH1sbBW-P1X2Hozihm2DOA
The Giants have really lacked this kind of explosive receiver since they got rid of Odell Beckham Jr. Kenny Golladay was supposed to be that guy, but last year suggests that that might not be the case.
So...why not Toney? Sure, there are concerns, like injury concerns and some "maturity" concerns, whatever that means. And there were rumors back in April that Toney could be traded. None of these things are good if we're, you know, predicting a player to break out.
But then you watch the highlights. You see what Toney can do with the football in his hands. And you almost have to take a chance on that, right?
Per Pro Football Reference/Stathead, the list of rookies since 2000 with 150-plus receiving yards in a game is 33 players long. Toney is eighth among those players in yards. Just looking at the top-15 in yardage among these games, we see Ja'Marr Chase (twice), Anquan Boldin, Mike Evans, Rod Gardner, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Odell Beckham, Justin Jefferson (twice), Antonio Bryant and Marques Colston. Those are the hits: guys who went on to have at least a couple good years after. The misses in that top group: Justin Blackmon (whose off-field issues are what derailed his career, not his on-field play), Keelan Cole, and Hank Baskett.
Take the risk. Draft Kadarius Toney.
Fantasy Football Bust: Kenny Golladay
I'm not even putting Daniel Jones here, because there's a 0.0% chance that you're going to draft him. Non-alcoholic beer has a higher percentage of alcohol than the percent chance there is of you drafting Daniel Jones in a normal fantasy league.
Golladay isn't even being drafted like a top-50 player at wide receiver, so I could definitely see an argument that he doesn't belong in this spot because expectations aren't high with him anyway. And that's fine! In fact, if you draft Golladay as the WR57 overall and expect WR57 overall production, you might end up feeling fine about him.
But if you expect Golladay to overperform his ADP...well, I'm not sure about that.
While Golladay was once a promising player in Detroit, he's entering his age-29 season with two disappointing campaigns in a row. In 2020, injury cut his season short, with Golladay playing just five games. And then in 2021, he moved to the Giants and played 14 of 17 games, but was just wildly disappointing. He averaged just 37.2 receiving yards per game.
Could he bounce back? Sure. But when you're brought in to be the No. 1 receiver and you disappoint in the way that Golladay disappointed, your leash is probably pretty short. And it wasn't just like bad QB play was what killed him. Per PlayerProfiler, the QB rating when targeting Golladay was 73.1, which ranked 97th among receivers. It was 93.8 when targeting Sterling Shepard, 75.3 when targeting Darius Slayton, and 89.8 when targeting Toney. Golladay was disappointing relative to not just the whole league, but to his fellow Giants receivers as well.
Fantasy Football Lock: Saquon Barkley
Saying there's a "lock" in this Giants offense is actually a bit of a stretch, because Saquon injury issues are a concern.
But if he stays healthy, drafting Barkley at his current ADP (end of the second round in a 12-team league) is a no-brainer.
Barkley averaged just 45.6 yards per game last year in 13 games, down from 77.2 when he was last healthy in 2019. In 2019, he averaged 16.7 carries and 5.6 targets per game. Last year, he averaged 12.5 carries and 4.4 targets. The drop in Barkley's usage definitely contributed to the drop in his overall numbers.
And look: his per play numbers weren't really better. He was 21st among running backs in yards created per touch per PlayerProfiler. 47th in yards per touch. 65th in true yards per carry. There's really not a way to slice it with Barkley to make 2021 look good.
So...why is he my lock?
Because of value. Barkley had a bad year. He could have another bad year in 2022. But he's also a 25-year-old running back who was the RB6 by points per game in half-PPR in 2019, one year after he was the RB2. The ceiling with Barkley is so high, provided he can stay healthy. Has that been a serious concern? Sure!
But when someone who has top-five upside at his position is being drafted as an RB2, that's the kind of thing you hammer. Draft Saquon. Understand that it's risky, but also understand that with how he keeps being pushed down draft boards, you're getting a player whose mix of upside and value is off the charts.
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