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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 Jacksonville Jaguars.
Jacksonville enters 2022 in a weird place. The team should have used last year as the first year of a rebuild, with No. 1 pick Trevor Lawrence leading the way. But the Urban Meyer debacle basically wiped away last season and means the team is entering the first year of another rebuild.
Below, you'll find a fantasy football breakout candidate, a fantasy football bust candidate, and a safe fantasy football pick for the Jaguars based on early ADP for fantasy football drafts in 2022.
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Fantasy Football Breakout: Trevor Lawrence
Trevor Lawrence was the most hyped quarterback prospect in recent memory after his stellar career at Clemson. But his first NFL season was of a hype-down.
Lawrence started all 17 games for the Jaguars and led the NFL in interceptions, tossing 17 of them. He completed 59.6% of his passes for 3,641 yards and threw just 12 touchdowns.
Part of the issue was that Lawrence was being put out on the field with barely any talent around him. His top target, Marvin Jones Jr., is a really solid player. But beyond that, he was throwing to some questionable talents. Laviska Shenault Jr. had 100 targets. Laquon Treadwell finished third on the team in targets. There was also that whole Urban Meyer thing going on.
Per PlayerProfiler, Lawrence ranked 32nd in yards per attempt and 31st in adjusted yards per attempt. He was 28th in accuracy rating and 32nd in true completion percentage. Not good.
But you can also see a few signs that really how the supporting cast deserved blame. He led the NFL in passes dropped. His receivers averaged 2.78 yards after catch per target, which PlayerProfiler says ranks 83rd among quarterbacks. I'm not sure how that's possible.
But the Jaguars added some players this offseason, signing Christian Kirk, Zay Jones, and Evan Engram. That's a huge upgrade. The Jaguars have a tight end with potential for the first time that I can remember. They have the super-productive Christian Kirk. They have Jones, who was really good down the stretch for the Raiders last year. And Travis Etienne, who missed his whole rookie season, will be on the field, providing Lawrence with a nice receiving option out of the backfield.
The Jags will still be bad this year. But the offense is competent enough that Lawrence will get that "decent starting quarterback who is forced to throw a bunch because his team is always behind" boost that once made Blake Bortles a QB1 in consecutive seasons. Lawrence is currently being drafted like a low-end QB2. Gobble him up at the value.
Fantasy Football Bust: Laviska Shenault Jr.
Shenault saw more targets in his second NFL season, but it didn't lead to much of an increase in production. Despite getting targeted 21 more times than he did as a rookie, Shenault had just 19 more yards in 2021 and five fewer touchdowns, finishing with 63 catches for 619 yards and no scores.
And now, the Jaguars have added multiple receiving options this offseason who should take opportunities away from Shenault. He was getting outsnapped by Laquon Treadwell at times last season—now imagine adding Kirk and Jones to the mix, plus having Jamal Agnew back, who really came on strong at times last year.
Plus, there's the fact that Shenault took 52% of his snaps from the slot last season, per PlayerProfiler. Kirk took 49% of his snaps there. Both of these guys ideally play inside and considering Kirk is clearly the winner of the two in the talent department, I'm just not sure what kind of snaps will be available for Shenault.
I've seen Shenault usually ranked just a few spots behind his teammate Marvin Jones Jr., which is wild to me because Jones is going to have a much better season. If I'm looking for a WR6 on my fantasy team, I'd much rather take a shot on someone like Nico Collins or Terrace Marshall Jr. than on Shenault, who should see fewer targets in 2022 than he did last year. And if he wasn't impressing that much with his 2021 opportunity, then I'm not sure that the overall upgrade to the offensive production that Jacksonville will have this year will really do much to lift Shenault. Does he see 85 targets and produce around what he did on 100 targets last year? Maybe, and there's some value in that, but if that's his ceiling??? Yeah, I'm going to avoid him.
Fantasy Football Lock: Christian Kirk
The Jaguars signed Christian Kirk to a four-year, $72 million contract. You don't do that unless you foresee them having a key role on your team.
Kirk had usually been the third option in Arizona. Last year, he was third among the team's receivers in snap rate and while he led the team in targets, that was only because DeAndre Hopkins played just 10 games, and A.J. Green was just nine targets behind Kirk despite playing in one fewer game.
In 2020, the same story. Third among the team's receivers in snap rate. Second in targets, but only by seven over Larry Fitzgerald, who played in one fewer game. Kirk had 16.29% of the team's targets that season. He was at 18.07% of the targets last year.
I'd expect his target share to look closer to 20% this year. Factoring in some expected progression for Lawrence, we're thinking what for Kirk: 120 targets? That's what Marvin Jones had for this team last year as the No. 1 receiver.
Kirk is being drafted as a low-end WR4 right now. If he's getting 20% of the Jags targets, he's outproducing that number. There's no reason he should be drafted after guys like Robert Woods and Chase Claypool right now. Draft him a few spots above his ADP and feel good about it.
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