Throwing In the Towel: NFL Teams to Avoid in Fantasy

As we inch closer to the NFL trade deadline, teams are putting the final push into mid-season evaluations of their second-half direction points. Good teams are buyers and bad teams are sellers. We know this, but how bad does a team have to get to completely avoid in fantasy?

There are obvious cases like the Jets which have been miserable since the season started, therefore, we will refrain from looking over them. With the playoffs out-of-reach for certain teams, there may be unfortunate moves made towards acquiring the quarterback of the future or keeping players healthy for a playoff push next season. Just to clarify, this is mostly speculative rather than predictive. Every situation is fluid and things can zag as fast as they zigged. Most everyone is just doing their best to properly contextualize the information in front of them.

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Jacksonville Jaguars

With quarterback Gardner Minshew out of commission, things will get real ugly REALLY fast down in Jacksonville. Not because Minshew is great or even very good but just due to how bad their backups are. Mike Glennon, a known commodity, is a relic of the past as a tall, statuesque QB who crumbles when faced with a modicum of pressure. Glennon will presumably take over in the meantime and the case of Minshew returning is more if than when. The Jaguars are sitting midway through the season with just one win and potentially staring down a franchise QB in the 2021 Draft with Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields and Trey Lance set to go top-five.

Thus far in 2020, Gardner Minshew has been in the middle-of-the-pack for quarterback time to throw at 2.77 seconds per attempt. This statistic is certainly boosted by Minshew's mobility which allows him to navigate in and out of the pocket to throw. Among QBs with at least 100 passing attempts this year, Minshew possesses the eighth-worst sack rate. Jacksonville's offensive line ranks 29th in adjusted sack rate according to Football Outsiders meaning. The discrepancy between the OL ranking and Minshew's ranking indicates that the next QB is in trouble if he is not mobile.

If something were to force Glennon out of game action, the Jaguars seem to like rookie QB Jake Luton and might want to give him a look. Unfortunately, Luton is not much of an NFL QB prospect. He was solid in the PAC-12 last year but lacks arm strength and mobility. His ball-placement is atrocious and if pressured, he will be fazed. Maybe he has been developed enough over the past year to mitigate his deficiencies but I doubt that and even though the Jaguars are full of talent at the skill positions, it will be hard to hide the flaws of Luton and also Glennon.

Gardner Minshew has not been bad in 2020, he just has not been good which is good enough reason for replacement given that QB is the most important position on the field and it would behoove the Jaguars to put themselves in the best position possible to attain one in 2021. This is a blatant tank-job regardless of how you break it and the Jaguars offense as a whole might go down with the ship.

It will be very, very difficult to justify starting any of D.J. Chark, Laviska Shenault, and Keelan Cole in the short-term while we see just how bad the QB situation looks. Of course, any amount of volume can solve a receiver's woes with poor QB play but my fear is that those throws are either thrown out of bounds or to the other team with how much pressure there will be on the new QB(s).

James Robinson is the only startable Jaguars skill player moving forward and even then, expectations should be massively lowered. Robinson's been the workhorse in that backfield all year and should continue to be so as long as he does not catch any nicks or bruises along the way. Unfortunately, the TD ceiling that was present throughout the first half of the season should be lower as he found the end-zone six times through the first seven games.

Also, his efficiency is bound to take a hit with a new, worse QB under center. His volume should remain steady, if not increase, as to take the pressure off whoever is under center; the hope should be that he is utilized like 2019 Leonard Fournette in the passing game as a safety valve near the line-of-scrimmage. Robinson played 90% of the snaps in Week 7 with Chris Thompson out of action but with Thompson off of the COVID list, the split should go back to something around 70-30 as it was before.

New York Giants

The Giants are in such an odd position, arguably the worst in the league. They just drafted a quarterback in the top-6 last year and do not really have much of an offense around him to get a clear view on what or how good he is. Jones showed major flashes throughout the 2019 season with his mobility and downfield touch. However, this season, there's hardly been anything to get excited about outside of his rushing production these past two weeks. You can blame Jason Garrett, you can blame the Saquon Barkley injury or poor offensive line, it does not matter at the end of the day because a turnaround looks out of reach this year.

The Giants should be obvious sellers at the deadline given the state of their team at crucial positions but given how miserable the NFC East is, however. they will likely retain a good chunk of the roster to make a "playoff-push" before an inevitable first-round exit at the hands of a competent roster (if they were to take the dismal division).

The lone bright spot for them has surprisingly been their defense which had been disgusting for several seasons leading up to 2020 but is now 19th in DVOA with a handful of studs across each level. James Bradberry has been a shut-down corner all season, Blake Martinez has become the best linebacker to don Giants blue in over a decade, and the Leonard Williams trade from 2019 is looking like a very solid deal. Kudos to Dave Gettleman on this front but he still looks to have whiffed egregiously on their fourth overall pick, Andrew Thomas who had the makings of the "safest" offensive tackle in the big-four of Thomas, Mekhi Becton, Tristan Wirfs, and Jedrick Wills, yet that turned out to be false as the rest have shined and Thomas has flopped.

This is where it gets tough for Giants in fantasy. The defense is not bad enough to leak points early on, which keeps the team's offensive game-plan balanced, rather than forcing them to throw and create fantasy value across the board. Jones is 11th in pass attempts this season which seems VERY low given that they don't have Barkley available as an excuse to keep the ball on the ground. Jones also possesses the 7th-worst sack rate and his 7.3 aDOT is tied for 6th-worst in the NFL. The Giants are not being forced to throw often or even as deep as they were last year where their atrocious defense kept them far out in games needing big plays. Jones's aDOT is around a yard lower than last season (8.4) also, his receivers are creating nearly a full yard less in YAC per reception (5 last year, 4.2 this year). Jones has no 300-yard games this season whereas he had five in 2019.

This is just a tough situation to reap fantasy value from and could be even worse moving forward unless the offense finds a spark. Darius Slayton's been much less reliable than last season. The oft-injured Sterling Shepard has missed half the season and finally offered a fantasy-viable performance in Week 7. Golden Tate is in the same boat as Shep as he started the season off extremely slow (possibly due to a preseason hamstring injury) and finally came to life last week. Evan Engram has a lower aDOT when targeted than Jason Witten last season despite being one of the most athletic TEs in the NFL and the run-game as a whole is a mess with Devonta Freeman, Wayne Gallman, and Dion Lewis sucking the life out of one another.

Daniel Jones will remain the starter throughout the season just for the sake of evaluation/investment, leaving this offense in some odd limbo of viability. However, if something were to happen to Jones,  dump your Giants faster than Gettleman refusing to trade down.

New England Patriots

Sitting at two wins and four losses with a quarterback who is recovering from a COVID diagnosis is not an ideal position to find oneself in. The Patriots Defense is ranked 25th in DVOA after losing several key pieces in the offseason (Dont'a Hightower, Kyle Van Noy, Danny Shelton, Duron Harmon, and Elandon Roberts) to free agency and pandemic precautions.

Cam Newton has regained his mobility and is seemingly recovered from the foot injury that ailed him last year but his arm looks shot. Whether that be due to COVID or wear-and-tear after a decade-long career of taking brutal hits and post-shoulder surgery, it does not matter, because the fact of the matter is he is not looking like a capable NFL QB right now. While the Patriots' offensive line has been fantastic as per usual, the weapons are mediocre. Julian Edelman has been hampered by a knee injury and is now out for the foreseeable future, last year's first-round pick, N'Keal Harry, is still developing, James White is emotionally recovering from a family tragedy and the rest of the skill corps is not exactly promising.

The lone bright-spot moving forward may be Damien Harris but even that depends on when/if Sony Michel returns to regain his early-down grinder role. Michel looked decent in a few games this year but Harris is the shiny new thing which has been exciting to watch in two of his three participatory games this season. On 33 carries, Harris is averaging 5.4 yards-per-carry and has 26 receiving yards after catching both of his targets.

It is not impossible that the Patriots move on from Newton on his cheap one-year deal and opt to tank the rest of 2020 with Stidham at the helm in an attempt to find their QB of the future at the top of the 2021 Draft. While I may believe that is unlikely, there are rumblings that the Patriots are looking to call the season after Week 8 depending on the result.

If that were to happen, outside maybe James White in PPR, it is difficult to envision much value elsewhere for the rest of the season.

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