Just two days ago, we had our first Sunday without NFL football since the 2023 season kicked off. It’s officially time to turn the page to 2024, scout this year’s crop of rookies, and, if you’re like me, do some early Best Ball drafts.
However, I don’t want to forget 2023 too quickly. Fantasy players, and I am guilty of this myself, have a tendency to obsess over every tiny little detail during the season … just to promptly forget about those details by the time next year’s draft rolls around. All of the hype, injuries, usage numbers, and narratives often find themselves condensed into just a number or two: At most, your 2024 draft cheat sheet will have a player’s 2023 ranks in total points and points per game.
On some level, this makes sense: At the end of the day, all that matters is points. But do we really believe that all those narratives and trends we cared about so much just a few months ago become irrelevant? I don’t think so. To that end, I am going to be looking back at the 2023 season, team by team, remembering some of the season’s biggest narratives. Luckily, I have a source of plenty of narratives all in one place, as some lunatic was kind enough to provide write-ups of every single game played on a Sunday in 2023.
Before I kick things off with the first (second, I don’t know how I messed that up) team in alphabetical order, the Falcons (who certainly had their fair share of narratives in 2023), I want to establish a couple of ground rules. First, especially this far in advance of the actual season, I’m not going to bother talking about fringe players. Even though Van Jefferson, Jonnu Smith, and Taylor Heinicke each had some fantasy relevance and earned mentions in my in-season coverage of the team, I’m not going to discuss them here. I’m going to focus only on players who currently have ADPs in the top 200 of early Underdog Best Ball drafts. I’m sure I will end up making exceptions, but I’m my own editor, so no one can stop me. Second, I’m going to use Half-PPR, both because this is the format used by Underdog (the only reliable source of ADP at this stage of the year) and because it is the superior format. I’m also not going to include the anomaly that is Week 18 in any of my analysis, so remember that a full season will only be 16 games.
I think that’s all the background info out of the way, so let’s jump right into things with a look Beyond the Box Scores of the 2023 Atlanta Falcons season.
Quarterback
Desmond Ridder
The Box Scores
- Total Points: 172; QB22
- Games Played: 14
- Points Per Game: 12.3; QB34
Beyond The Box Scores
- Full Games Played: 11
- Points Per Full Game: 15.1; QB26
If you want an idea of how Ridder’s 2023 season went, I only discussed his fantasy value once in 17 editions of BTBS during the season, despite the fact that he was a starting NFL quarterback for essentially the entire season. That lone mention came in Week 7, as he had put together a solid three-game stretch of fantasy performances … he proceeded to get benched for Taylor Heinicke halfway through the next game and only recorded one more top-15 QB finish the rest of the way. It is also worth noting that Ridder looks better if you remove the three games in which he played less than half of the Falcons’ snaps. But again, the reason he missed those snaps is he was benched for Taylor Heinicke.
Takeaway
Technically, I’ve already broken my own rule here, as Ridder is currently going undrafted in most early Best Ball drafts for an ADP of 240 (the last pick of an Underdog draft). But I couldn’t just not have a quarterback section, even if the Falcons don’t have a quarterback. Still, everyone assumes Ridder will not be the Falcons’ starting QB in 2024, and I certainly agree, making him undraftable in fantasy.
Running Back
Bijan Robinson
The Box Scores
- Total Points: 194.7; RB12
- Games Played: 16
- Points Per Game: 12.2; RB20
Beyond The Box Scores
- Full Games Played: 15
- Points Per Full Game: 13.0; RB17
Bijan Robinson is one of those rare players who had an in-season narrative so strong that it is undoubtedly going to affect his 2024 ADP. That narrative was simple: former Atlanta Head Coach Arthur Smith misused Robinson’s generational talent, resulting in his underwhelming fantasy output. On some level, this is just true: I mentioned Robinson’s lackluster usage no fewer than six times in my weekly write-ups. Despite being a consensus top-five (or at least top-10) talent at the position, Robinson finished the season 26th in rush share (41%) and an absurd 57th in his share of goal-line carries (20%). On the other hand, he did finish third among all running backs with a 17% target share. All of these numbers are also slightly deflated by Week 7, in which Robinson infamously “played” but was essentially totally sidelined by an illness.
Takeaway
I’m split on this one. On the one hand, the narrative that Bijan wasn’t utilized to his full potential is definitely true, and I wouldn’t expect him to finish outside the top 15 RBs in points per game again in 2024. If Raheem Morris and Zac Robinson bring a Kyren Williams-level workload with them from LA, Robinson will probably be the RB1 overall. On the other hand, Tyler Allgeier isn’t going anywhere, and a whole lot of extra usage is already baked into Bijan’s current RB3 ADP. At the end of the day, I lean towards buying the narrative and being in on Robinson. Other Falcons scored nine rushing TDs in 2023, including seven from within the 10-yard line. If Robinson can claim five of those, that’s 30 extra points, which would have made him a top-five running back in total points in 2023. If the Falcons’ offense takes a step forward with a new QB and he sees more between-the-20s usage as well, watch out.
Tyler Allgeier
The Box Scores
- Total Points: 123.7; RB34
- Games Played: 16
- Points Per Game: 7.7; RB43
Beyond The Box Scores
- Full Games Played: 16
- Points Per Full Game: 7.7; RB43
Allgeier briefly looked like he might have flex relevance as the Falcons’ preferred early-down and especially goal-line back. But my last in-season blurb on him, in Week 3, pretty much sums up how that ended:
Tyler Allgeier has seen his snap share and rush share decrease with each week, hitting new lows of 31% and 39% on Sunday. He saw three carries inside the five in Week 1, scoring two of them, but the floundering Falcons’ offense has generated just one such attempt over the last two weeks … which went to Bijan Robinson. Any hope we had that Arthur Smith’s Stone Age offense would allow Allgeier to be more than a handcuff is pretty much gone.
Allgeier did manage back-to-back top-15 weeks to finish the season in Weeks 16 and 17, but they were both essentially the result of just one big play (a 31-yard TD rush and a 75-yard TD reception). He averaged just nine carries on a 27% snap share in the Falcons’ final 10 games of the season.
Takeaway
Heading into 2024, Allgeier is a handcuff, but a high-end one. We know he can produce when given a workload, and it seems unlikely he will have any competition for the lead back job if Robinson were to miss time. I don’t hate him at his current RB50 ADP, as long as you aren’t expecting any standalone value.
Wide Receiver
Drake London
The Box Scores
- Total Points: 133.8; WR40
- Games Played: 16
- Points Per Game: 8.9; WR46
Beyond The Box Scores
- Full Games Played: 15
- Points Per Full Game: 9.0; still WR46
There was lots of complaining about London’s usage during the 2023 season, but it wasn’t as bad as Twitter would have you think. London had a very respectable 89% route participation rate in his healthy games and finished the year 26th in target share, although that corresponded to just 32nd in total targets thanks to the Falcons’ low-volume passing offense. But those targets obviously didn’t turn into production: He had more games under 5.0 fantasy points (four) than inside the top-20 WRs (two). It’s tempting to blame poor quarterback play, but London’s 73% catchable target rate was actually very slightly above average given his 11.7-yard ADOT. The main problem was actually London’s touchdown production, as he finished with just two TDs (outside the top 100 in the league) on 14 red zone targets (30th among WRs) … maybe that we can blame on his QBs? It’s also worth noting that London ranked 23rd among WRs in PFF grade, so the idea that his talent and individual performance were better than his production does carry some weight.
Takeaway
Like Bijan, London (ADP WR27) is clearly benefiting from a belief that his talent will shine through in a new offense with a new quarterback in 2024. There’s also a very similar argument to be made that London just needs some more touchdowns to skyrocket up fantasy leaderboards. But even if we give London the same five TDs (30 points) we gave Robinson, he would still have ranked outside the top 20 WRs in 2023 … and that’s a lot of free TDs to get. With that said, WR27 is by no means a terrible price to pay for a talented WR who will still be only 23 years old and almost guaranteed to have the best quarterback of his NFL career. I’m probably going to be slightly lower than the consensus on London when all is said and done (especially if that QB actually arrives and his price goes even higher), but not by much.
Tight End
Kyle Pitts
The Box Scores
- Total Points: 107.1; TE13
- Games Played: 16
- Points Per Game: 6.7; TE17
Beyond The Box Scores
- Full Games Played: 16
- Points Per Full Game: 6.7; TE17
This is one where we don’t even really have to go beyond the box scores to see the problem: Pitts’ TE13 rank doesn’t look that bad, but his 6.7 Half-PPR points per game sure does. Like London, Pitts was a victim of Atlanta’s low passing volume, finishing 10th in target share but 13th in total targets among tight ends. Unlike London, Pitts didn’t have a consistent role. In fact, Pitts’ usage was so inconsistent that I think he may have been the single player I covered the most in this column during the season, with a whopping 13 mentions. Of them all, the single sentence that sums up Pitts’ season the best came in Week 4: “Kyle Pitts defies all fantasy logic.” Pitts’ usage fluctuated, and his scoring fluctuated, but they didn’t seem to be particularly related:
Pitts had great usage early in the season but no production to show for it. Then he had two solid outings in Weeks 5 and 6 … on his worst usage of the season. Pitts’ usage and scoring were more correlated late in the season, but he still alternated between weeks with good participation and weeks with awful participation, seemingly at random. This is without even getting into the fact that I found myself questioning whether Pitts himself was the problem. It is worth noting that Pitts’ 70% catchable target rate was the lowest among all tight ends, but that can be explained by the reason fantasy managers still love Pitts so much: He isn’t really a tight end. Pitts’ 12.0 ADOT was by far the highest among qualified TEs, and he ran 85% of his routes from either the slot or out wide. He also was asked to pass block just 10 times all season.
Takeaway
I have honestly no idea what to make of this. On the one hand, everything that makes Pitts so enticing as a fantasy option was still present in his 2023 usage. On the other hand, running all your routes as a WR isn’t going to help if you only have a 70% route participation rate. And I’ve found myself doubting the assumption that the former fourth-overall pick is an elite talent in each of the last two years, while his PFF grades have trended down accordingly (to be fair, there’s potentially a valid injury explanation for his struggles). At the end of the day, I think I can’t get away from Pitts’ tantalizing upside. Even with 2023’s sudden explosion of young, talented receiving tight ends, Pitts (who is still just 23 years old!) has the highest ceiling of any of them. At his current ADP of TE11, I’m willing to get hurt again.
