Welcome to week 1 of the NFL preseason, where every player is in the best shape of their lives and 100% fully and completely guaranteed a fantasy football escape in 2023.
Just kidding. Kind of.
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Amid an endless amount of training camp hype, there’s a lot of noise to sift through ahead of your imaginative football drafts. Who’s ready for a fantasy breakaway in 2023 versus another one-hit-hit training camp? Here I will break down six players that I nominate for the 2023 All-Breakout Fantasy Football team as potential values ​​in your fantasy drafts.
You could argue that Jones broke out in his 2022 season and delivered an overall QB9 finish – the first top-10 fantasy season of his career. However, I’m here to say that Danny Dimes isn’t quite done with the breakaway he started a year ago in his first season under Giants HC Brian Daboll.
Much of that success was due to the system, which emphasized playing it safe to establish a rhythm, often forgoing the potential of playing deep for the greater good of limiting turnover. It also worked. Jones set career highs in passing yards (3,205), touchdown-to-interception ratio (3.0 – eighth best in the league), and passer scoring (92.5), among other things. Where he really shined, though, was on the ground as one of only five quarterbacks in 2022 to post 700 or more rushing yards—a mini Konami code quarterback, if you will.
Now let’s go back and remember that Jones achieved all of these career highs while finishing last among quarterbacks with an average depth of 6.4 yards (aDOT). Perpetuating that low aDOT was a lack of deep pass attempts, with Jones attempting the second lowest number of throws of 20 or more yards at just 4.9%.
This year, the team traded a third-round pick to TE Darren Waller in addition to drafting WR Jalin Hyatt 73rd overall. Both assets will rock Jones, putting him in talks for a legitimate top-six finish of the season should he take the next step as a passer.
We don’t need to hit you on the head with it, folks. Alexander Mattison is about to break out, even though he’s coming off a 12-foot-per-carry season. In fact, Mattison was generally less efficient than his former teammate Dalvin Cook in 2022 across the board, from yards per attempt to yards after contact per carry and yards per route run. However, there’s no denying that the former third-rounder has definitely made the most of his limited opportunities as the team’s leading back.
In Mattison’s six career games played without Cook, he averaged 25 opportunities (goals and rushes) for 115.5 yards of scrimmage and just under a touchdown per game. That translated to over 20 fantasy points per game in full PPR scoring formats.
Mattison now has the workhorse role for himself on the seventh highest scoring NFL offense of 2022. Buy.
The Bucs have drafted RB Rachaad White with the 91st overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft. Now that he’s played a backup role during his rookie season, it’s officially his job to lose. The team has been released Leonard Fournet earlier this off-season, after serving as the team’s leader for the past three years. Tampa Bay has not yet taken any steps that could pose a real threat to a potential workhorse role for White going into the 2023 season.
Fantasy managers are most likely hesitant to get involved in this offense because of the quarterback’s question marks. After all, a training camp battle between Baker Mayfield And Kyle Trask doesn’t really inspire much confidence. But even if we project some goals to support RB Pursue Edmonds third, there is still some significance here for that early role. In White’s only game without Fournette in 2022, he scored 19.9 fantasy points on a 70% rushing market share, catching nine of nine targets for 45 receiving yards.
White’s inefficiency, averaging only 3.7 yards per try in the regular season, should be attributed (at least in part) to the offensive line – a unit that will block the bottom 10 runs in 2022 – one that is much healthier now. Even if you don’t know his talent, it’s very hard to pass up White as a fantasy breakout in 2023 given the volume he’s likely to see both on the ground and as a receiver.
There are a lot of questions about what this Cleveland offense might look like in 2023, but most of them have to do with what kind of performance we’ll see out Deshaun Watson – not necessarily whether he has the talent around him or not. Elijah Moore, now heading into his third career season after a terrible start with the Jets, has a fresh start.
What Moore lacks at 5’9″ and 178 pounds, he more than makes up for in athleticism, with a 90th percentile or better on the combine in the 40-yard dash, 3-cone, and shuttle drills. His athleticism and movement skills have made him a force to be reckoned with post-capture… even if he hasn’t had a chance to show off that ability until now.
Moore has been the subject of glowing reports during Brown’s training camp – the subject of both coach hype And frequent targets by Watson. Cleveland’s offense has never fallen below 18th in yards and 20th in points scored during Stefanski’s tenure as head coach, and now he has a perfect combination of speed and technique to line up from the lock and maximize yards after the catch.
The former Ole Miss product is heading into a career year with the Browns. The last two seasons? They never happened. Enjoy his current Yahoo ADP at 120.5 while it lasts.
There may not be a better sleeper after the hype than Titans WR Treylon Burks, especially with the signing of Andre Hopkins back in July. While many fantasy football designers saw a lot of potential for Burks heading into Year 2, much of that hype was due to a supposedly monstrous target share, with some withdrawing their confidence now that there’s a bit more competition.
Me? I’m doubling down.
My willingness to buy Burks is pretty straightforward. Where he has excelled historically is in his ability to generate plays after the catch – especially working outside of slots, where he played 77% of his career snaps over his three seasons with Arkansas. The addition of Hopkins to this offense gives the Titans the opportunity to deploy Burks elsewhere.
Perhaps its gargantuan frame (6’2″, 225 pounds) doesn’t scream “lock receiver” but its use there lent itself well to post-capture production I’m buying in now Hopkins gives Burks the luxury of moving around the formation and forms a extra threat to the defense, allowing him to do what he does best: playing in the open field.
Greg Dulcich has posted perhaps the most underrated rookie tight end performance of the 2022 draft class. Dulcich first took the field in Week 6 and went on to score 11 or more fantasy points in five of his 10 active games. Despite the different options at the receiver in WRs Jerry Jeudy, Cortland Sutton (who somehow led the team with 109 goals), and fellow TE Albert Okwuegbunam – most of whom had counted on a breakaway themselves – Dulcich still managed to earn an important role in the attack.
Dulcich posted 411 receiving yards and two touchdowns on 55 targets in his season, but let’s not forget – that was just over a 10-game span. By game, Dulcich ranked 13th among tight targets in goals (5.5), fifth in targeted aerial yards (63.1), and 10th in receiving yards. The Broncos are in a new era under HC Sean Payton, assuming we definitely need to see some improvement from QB Russell Wilson. If we see it, expect Dulcich to join in 2023 as a huge fantasy value at his current ADP of 117.8.
