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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 Buffalo Bills.
For the sake of this article, we won't write about Josh Allen, who is the consensus number one overall quarterback in all fantasy football formats. Instead, we'll focus on a few other polarizing players being heavily discussed in fantasy football circles.
Below, you'll find a fantasy football breakout candidate, a fantasy football bust candidate, and a safe fantasy football pick for the Bills based on early ADP for fantasy football drafts in 2022.
Fantasy Football Breakout: Gabriel Davis
Every offseason, there are polarizing players being heavily debated in the fantasy football community. This season, one of those guys is Gabriel Davis. Whether you’re in or you’re out, everyone seems to have a stance on the Bills’ third-year wideout.
There are arguments to be made on both sides of the fence. The people against Davis and his WR31 ADP (according to FantasyPros) will point to him being a middling prospect, a sub-par athlete, and a guy who couldn’t surpass Emmanuel Sanders or John Brown on the depth chart his first two seasons. However, on the other side of the fence, Davis supporters will see his role down the stretch in 2021 when Sanders was hurt. They’ll also listen to the offseason buzz and realize he’s going to be the unquestioned WR2 in one of, if not the most, prolific offenses in the NFL. I’m one of those supporters, and I’ll tell you why.
Many will simply point to the playoff game against Kansas City when he caught eight passes for 201 yards and four touchdowns on 10 targets. And yes, they’d be right to think Davis is good at the game of football and capable of increased production as a starter this season. But there’s more to it than just that one game. From Week 14 on (six games including playoffs), Davis had a targets per route run (TPRR) rate of 24%. For comparison, Stefon Diggs had a TPRR of 26% during that same stretch. Davis played on about 85% of the snaps and averaged 117 air yards per game. He also saw a whopping 12 red zone targets in those six games. These are elite peripherals if you look at them in a vacuum. Now add in the fact that he plays for the Buffalo Bills, who averaged 37.7 pass attempts and 3.6 offensive touchdowns per game a season ago.
Back in April, here’s what Davis’ former teammate, Emmanuel Sanders, had to say about the third-year wideout heading into 2022:
Fantasy Football Bust: James Cook
The Bills were so close to bringing in J.D. McKissic this offseason, but then he chose to re-sign with the Washington Commanders at the 11th hour. Then one month later, Buffalo took a younger McKissic with the 63rd overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft in Georgie RB James Cook.
Cook wasn't much of a producer in college until his senior season. When he was getting opportunities, they typically came in the form of targets. In fact, in his first three seasons at Georgia, 28.7% of his opportunities were targets. In his senior season, that number dipped down to 22.1% as a result of a relatively large increase in rush attempts. Cook was extremely efficient in college, averaging 6.5 yards per carry and 10.9 yards per catch, but he wasn't a workhorse by any means.
Now fast forward to his situation with the Bills as a rookie this season, where incumbent starter Devin Singletary looks to have a stranglehold on the starting job. According to The Athletic's Joe Buscaglia, "expect Singletary to remain the lead back by playing time, but Cook will have a role." He expects the rookie to play in some two-back sets and obvious passing down situations, but how many of those will there realistically be with the Bills often playing with the lead? In the last three seasons, Josh Allen has targeted his running backs just 5.1 times per game. That's near the bottom of the league. It's possible the Bills decide to split Cook out wide more often than they have with other running backs in the past to add another element to their offense, but that's not likely enough to move the needle on the rookie's fantasy value.
Between Josh Allen and Devin Singletary, there are essentially already two running backs ahead of Cook on the depth chart. As a result, there are unlikely to be enough high-value opportunities for him to live up to his RB40 ADP. Within that range, you could draft Rhamondre Stevenson, Ronald Jones II, Melvin Gordon III, Nyheim Hines, or even J.D. McKissic. All of these guys probably have a better opportunity in front of them than Cook does in his rookie season.
Fantasy Football Lock: Stefon Diggs
As mentioned in the introduction to this article, it would have been a cop-out to discuss Josh Allen as the fantasy football lock on the Bills' roster. He's finished as the overall QB1 each of the past two seasons, and there's no reason to believe he shouldn't be back at the top in 2022.
So instead of focusing on Allen, we'll focus on his unquestioned number one wide receiver, Stefon Diggs. After a monster 2020 season in which he caught 127 balls for 1,536 yards and eight touchdowns on 166 targets, Diggs "cooled down" a bit in 2021, catching 103 balls for 1,225 yards and 10 touchdowns. His 7.5 yards per target was the second-lowest in his seven-year career, but the yards per catch (11.9) was similar to his breakout season the year before (12.1). The biggest reason for him going from WR3 in 2020 to WR7 in 2021 can likely be attributed to Allen's drop in completion percentage from 69.2% to 63.4%. Per PlayerProfiler, Diggs' target quality rating dropped from 6.67 (11th-best) to 5.38 (47th-best) and his catchable target rate dropped from 84.9% (11th-best) to just 72% (69th-best).
Regardless of Allen's accuracy and quality of throws, Diggs is still a lock to average nine or more targets per game this season in an offense that has thrown the football 37.7 times per game the past two seasons. From what he "lacked" in receptions and yardage last season, he made up in opportunity. Diggs was second amongst wide receivers in air yards (1,828) and seventh in deep targets (28), which led to his career-high 10 touchdowns. I mean, just look at how good this guy is:
As his rapport with Josh Allen continues to get stronger, Diggs will continue to put up monster numbers for the Bills. His floor is an extremely safe top-10 receiver, while his ceiling is a top-three receiver in the NFL next to Justin Jefferson and Cooper Kupp. If you like safety and security with immense upside, that's most definitely Stefon Diggs in 2022.
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