Now or never: Produce or get cut loose
Miles Sanders and Josh Jacobs could be on the hunt for new teams without a big 2022.
Offseason transactions mean very little in the world of a redraft fantasy football player. But in dynasty, one NFL transaction can dramatically impact the long-term value of a guy you thought was a key piece to your team.
(That’s why dynasty players really shouldn’t look further than a year or two down the road unless they’re in a full rebuild, but that’s a story for another time).
All four of these guys have had up-and-down careers to varying degrees. And they all need to produce in 2022, or they risk their teams moving on to greener pastures. And if that happens, who knows what happens to their long-term dynasty outlook.
Mecole Hardman, WR, Chiefs
We’ll start with probably the most inconsequential player on this list in Hardman. Despite landing with the best quarterback in the league in Patrick Mahomes, Hardman has yet to find his footing in the NFL.
The third-year pro out of Georgia has yet to break 800 yards receiving, and his yardage career-high (693) in 2021 was offset by scoring a measly two touchdowns. He’s never finished higher than WR54, a mark he hit in the 2020 season.
But the opportunity is finally there for Hardman to carve out a big role on the Chiefs and on fantasy football teams in 2022.
The Chiefs sent Tyreek Hill to the Dolphins in the spring for a bevy of draft picks. The Chiefs didn’t replace Hill with a star, opting to go young with rookie Skyy Moore and cheap with JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling.
Remember, Hardman was drafted in 2019 when it was unclear if Tyreek Hill would be a member of the Chiefs after this audio was leaked.
With Hill still in the fold, there wasn’t a natural fit for Hardman in the Chiefs’ offense. Hardman is no Hill, but he possesses many of the same strengths. With Hill gone and no superstar on board as a replacement, Hardman has a chance to be the top deep threat on a team with Mahomes at quarterback.
Valdes-Scantling and Moore are the only two receivers under contract for the Chiefs past this season. Should Hardman fail, the deck is cleared for KC to remake their receiver room. A successful season likely earns Hardman a starting spot in 2023 for the Chiefs and your fantasy team.
Rashaad Penny
This one is obvious, but the obvious ones still need to be discussed.
A quick glance at the 2021 fantasy football scoring leaders shows a pretty meh season from Penny. Nine games played, 10.4 points per game and RB47 on the season. But let’s refresh your memory.
Penny didn’t appear in a game until Week 7, and he didn’t even play more than 40% of the team’s snaps until Week 13. But once he did, he carried fantasy teams everywhere to league titles. He averaged 17.9 points per game and was the RB1 from Week 13 on, finally showing the promise that got him drafted in the first round of the 2018 NFL Draft Nearly half of his 1,572 rushing yards came in 2021. His six rushing touchdowns topped his total of five in the previous three seasons.
So how did the Seahawks reward their former first-round draft pick for the best stretch of his career? They drafted Kenneth Walker III to team up with Penny, who signed a one-year contract.
Given Walker’s talent and Penny’s struggles to stay healthy and produce in the NFL, his days may be numbered in Seattle. But perhaps Penny can win rush-happy coach Pete Carrol over by putting together the first complete season of production in his career? Or maybe last year was just a flash in the pan, and Walker will quickly ascend to the top of the depth chart.
Unless he stays healthy and produces this season, 2022 will be the last year Penny enters a season with a legitimate shot to lead an NFL backfield in touches.
Miles Sanders
Any running back on an expiring contract is a prime candidate for this list, but especially one that has also underperformed relative to expectation like Sanders has. The fourth-year back has vastly underperformed his fantasy football draft position each of the last two seasons for various reasons, and it’s likely he’s going to need a career season in 2023 for the Philadelphia Eagles to keep him around.
It’s always tricky when an underperforming running back is playing for a coach who didn’t hand pick him to be part of the offense, but that’s exactly the situation we’re looking at between Sanders and second-year coach Nick Sirianni.
Sanders didn’t score a single touchdown (rushing or receiving) last year despite over 900 total yards and more than 150 total touches. That trend is bound to reverse this year, but it will take more than that to make me feel good about his longevity in Philly.
Sanders played just 53% of the snaps last season, equal to his rookie season when he started the year splitting duties with Jordan Howard. He managed just 34 targets and 26 receptions a year ago, both of which are career lows. This sure looks like a situation where the head coach didn’t trust the running back with a very big workload.
And there wasn’t much reason to, as Sanders sported an Expected Points Added (EPA) of -22.2, which ranked 146th in the NFL last year.
He hasn’t topped 200 receiving yards since he had 50 receptions for 509 yards in his rookie. I (correctly) made the argument that production was just as much about opportunity as ability, but I do believe Sanders can and must find a happy medium there. Stay tuned to the podcast for my Sanders predictions for 2022.
This could be more than Sanders’ last chance to prove himself to the Eagles. This may be his last chance to prove he’s worthy of a lead-back role in the NFL.
Josh Jacobs
This one hurts to type. But the difference here is this is less about on field performance and more about whether Jacobs’ performance is valuable enough for the Raiders to pay him at the low end of the elite running back pay range. He’s underperformed, but it’s been more about health than ability.
The team is already paying Derek Carr, made a huge investment in receiver Davante Adams and declined Jacobs’ fifth year option. None of those things provide much confidence that Jacobs will be back in 2023.
While it’s true the team could have picked that option up if it was a top priority to have Jacobs in the fold in 2023, it’s worth noting that the option being declined doesn’t mean the Raiders would have no interest in investing in Jacobs. Jacobs’ fifth year would have been a cap hit of just over $8 million compared to $3.8 million in 2022. That decision makes sense in the context of Jacobs’ career, which has been hampered by injuries.
It’s going to take Jacobs’ most productive and healthy season of his career to keep the back in Vegas beyond 2022 even though he’s topped 1,000 yards twice in three years. I still believe he’s one of the 12 most talented running backs in football and capable of putting up that kind of season IF he can stay healthy. But even if he does have a great year, the Raiders drafted his presumed replacement in Zamir White. Jacobs' future could be as much about how good White is and whether he’s a worthy starting running back for the team in 2023.
Jacobs is a good enough player that it’s likely playing on a new team wouldn’t drastically change his fantasy value. None of us would have expected Melvin Gordon to be in a 50-50 timeshare in his first season after leaving the Chargers, either. Jacobs’ long-term fantasy value is one of the most intriguing dynasty storylines of the entire season.