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The Chiefs kept the offseason exciting by trading Tyreek Hill to Miami. In his wake, they added JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling and drafted Skyy Moore.
Now, every fantasy football manager is spilling over stat sheets and film reels to try to figure out the proper play to profit off the new situation. Count me amongst them.
Here we go.
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Fantasy Football Breakout: Mecole Hardman
Among the Chiefs receivers, there is bound to be one who finishes as a WR1 or WR2 but goes in the draft at WR3 or later. The hard part is picking who it’s going to be. It’s a guessing game. There’s a little glimmer of hope to like—and a lot to question—about each of them.
Skyy Moore comes in as the promising rookie who commanded a 36.7% target share his third year at Western Michigan, but he didn’t face high-quality competition and he appears to lack elite physical gifts. JuJu Smith-Schuster has recorded 1,426 yards in a season...but that was the 2018 season. His yards/route run have decreased every single year of his career—to a low of 0.88 in his injury-shortened 2021.
Mecole Hardman offers the best value for your bet. He has increased his targets, receptions, and yards in each of his three seasons. He goes into the season already knowing the Chiefs' offense and having a rapport with Patrick Mahomes.
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Mahomes has averaged 347.4 yards per game in the five games he’s played without Tyreek Hill. In those five games, four of which took place in Mecole Hardman’s rookie season, Hardman averaged 54.2 yards per game and scored two TDs. For a season, that would be 921 yards and seven TDs. That would have been good ranked as the #26 WR in standard format last season. You can imagine his numbers might be higher now that Hardman has made progress since his rookie year and the Chiefs go into the season knowing they have to plan for Hill’s absence.
Skyy Moore might have a top-10 finish if he goes off. He also might flop. Same with JuJu. It’s hard to imagine a top-10 finish by Hardman, but he has a higher floor. Given that each of them is a shot in the dark, I would take Hardman in the 15th round (of standard and 0.5 PPR) before I would take JuJu in Round 7.
Fantasy Football Bust: JuJu Smith-Schuster
The #9 WR of 2018 comes to Kansas City with much hype. He’s going as the #34 WR, in the early seventh round, in full and half PPR on Sleeper drafts. He’s going even higher, at 55.3, in Underdog’s best ball drafts.
At this point, he is not much of a discount relative to where he was last year. He hasn’t done much lately to justify this high expectation. In fact, he has gotten worse every single year of his career in key metrics. His yards/route run decreased from 2.17 to 0.88. His contested catch rate fell from 55.6% to 40.0%. His yards/reception has nosedived from 15.8 to 8.6. Yes, he was injured for most of last year, but an average of 25.8 yards per game is only 439 on a full season.
Patrick Mahomes is an obvious upgrade over Ben Roethlisberger, but even Smith-Schuster’s old teammates Diontae Johnson and Chase Claypool both were able to surpass 800 yards in Big Ben’s final two seasons. The WRs he’ll be competing against for snaps and targets, Mecole Hardman and Marquez Valdes-Scantling, are equivalent to Johnson and Claypool, respectively, in PFF WR grade.
Fantasy Football Lock: Travis Kelce
With so much changing at WR, Patrick Mahomes might lean towards what is stable. Travis Kelce has caught 90 or more passes for over 1,100 yards in each of the past four seasons. Going back six seasons, he has always caught more than 80 passes and gained over 1,000 yards.
Now he will be age 33, and there are concerns that he is running into his inevitable decline. His yards/route run fell below 2.00 for the first time in five years, to 1.84. But that’s still the fourth-highest of all active tight ends.
If Kelce does decline, it will be gradual, and he is still guaranteed to be a top-12, if not top-five, TE this year. Any decline in efficiency he sustains will be made up for by an increase in volume. When Hill missed four games in 2019, Kelce averaged 87.8 yards/game, 11 more than he has in games with Hill.
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