“You have to take your own bold approach, and if you do you will be rewarded with success. Or calamitous failure. That can happen too.”
In these columns, I’m running through all 32 NFL teams and making a bold fantasy football and/or statistical prediction for each one. When January comes around I’ll either be really, really ridiculously good-looking or I’ll end up losing my 308 Twitter followers 😥 Please don’t draft your fantasy team based on these, or do, I don’t care. Anyways, up today we have the AFC West:
San Diego Chargers
The Chargers are going to bolster a lineup with two 1,000-yard wide receivers in 2015. Third year wideout Keenan Allen looks poised to bounce back from a sophomore slump, while the vet Stevie Johnson will look to get back to the God-Fearing Stevie Johnson of old.
Neither guy is a stranger to the 1,000 yard club. Allen, a year removed from his 1k campaign, is reportedly having a much better offseason, having dropped weight to improve his burst off the line and has focused in on his work ethic, gaining praise from multiple team officials and players. Johnson, 29, left San Francisco after an uneventful 435-yard, three touchdown season. Johnson posted 1,000+ yards receiving in back-to-back-to-back years from 2010-2012, combining for 23 touchdowns over that span. His last couple seasons were injury plagued and forgetful, but Johnson seems to have found new life in this San Diego offense. Philip Rivers pointed Stevie out as one of the guy he’s most excited about joining the offense. Rotoworld labeled Johnson as “a sleeper to lead San Diego receiving in the season’s first month.”
Both wideouts get a big boost in value and targets without Antonio Gates in the lineup for the Chargers first four games. 60-70 catches and 1,000+ yards looks very attainable for the duo.
Denver Broncos
Demaryius Thomas will catch 18 touchdowns in 2015. It’ll be the highest receiving touchdown total since 2007, when Randy Moss caught 23 of them wearing a Patriots uniform.
If you’re goal is to find a receiver more heavily targeted in the redzone than Demaryius Thomas, don’t hold your breathe. He saw 39 redzone targets in 2014 and is arguably the most important player to any team in the NFL in that part of the field. Julius Thomas is gone which means so are 15 redzone targets and 9 redzone touchdowns. In the four games Julius Thomas was sidelined last season, Demaryius drew, on average, 12 targets per game and scored four touchdowns. I’d expect plenty of J-Thomas’s redzone looks to go towards D-Thomas in 2015, his 6-foot-3, 230lb size makes sure of that. He’s 27-years old and still in the prime of his career coming off three consecutive 1,400+ yard seasons and double-digit touchdowns, 35 in total.
Sure, Peyton looked rusty rounding out last season, but D-Thomas actually said this offseason, “I know you’re not going to believe this” but Peyton has “more zip” on his passes this offseason than he did in 2014. In my opinion, Peyton still has one more year of elite quarterback play left in the tank, which means so does Thomas. They’re an elite offense and the 6-foot-3, 230lb freak athlete otherwise known as Demaryius is the best playmaker and most dominant weapon around the endzone.
Kansas City Chiefs
Last year, my bold prediction had Jamaal Charles finishing outside fantasy’s top 5 running backs, so I’m not going to do that again, even though I could (he finished as RB7 by the way). I’d like to go in the direction of Travis Kelce, but I think that’s already a little played out this offseason by just about every fantasy article I’ve read thus far. Plus, he’s ranked as my number three fantasy tight end, so there’s not much room for boldness here.
Let’s go in the direction of newcomer Jeremy Maclin. As the only legitimate outside threat in Kansas City, the $55-million man will score more fantasy points in 2015 than the entire WR corps of the Chiefs did, combined, in 2014. That number would be 156.6 fantasy points. Maclin smashed that number (192.9) in Philly last season under Chip Kelly. The transition from the high-flying Eagles to the stupidly conservative Chiefs will damper Maclin’s ceiling, but remember, the former Missouri Tiger has four Andy Reid-led seasons under his belt. Under Reid and while sharing targets with DeSean Jackson, Maclin was able to best that fantasy number once. Now in KC, he’ll get the majority of outside looks on a team that badly needed a playmaker after going the entire 2014 season without a single WR touchdown. Maclin hauled in 85 of 86 catchable balls last season, earning him the lowest drop rate in the entire NFL, while Alex Smith was second in the NFL in accuracy percentage only behind Drew Brees, according to PFF.
The Chiefs are supposedly looking to open up the field a bit more this season and take a few more chances downfield. If this prediction holds, Maclin could be a ridiculously good value at his current ADP of 70 (WR26).
Oakland Raiders
My last bold prediction is gonna go with a team outlook. The Raiders finished 2014 with a 3-13 record, tying Jacksonville for the third worst record in the NFL. As of this writing, Vegas has Oakland’s over/under win total at 5.5. I’m going to say they smash the line, finishing as an 8-8 football team.
There’s no way around it, they were bad last year. Really bad. They started the year off 0-10 and for a minute it looked like they might go 0-16. But they found their footing during the latter part of the schedule finishing the season off on a respectable 3-3 run, so there’s some momentum entering the 2015 season.
This will be Derek Carr‘s second season under center so he should be more comfortable with their system and with the NFL game speed. Admittedly, he was pretty terrible in 2014, but the Raiders added a bunch of useful weapons around him like stud rookie Amari Cooper, Michael Crabtree and Roy Helu in the backfield. Latavius Murray, although I’m not Colorado high on him, is definitely an upgrade from the run situation of a season ago and should provide more stability to the offense. Oakland’s offensive line is slowly turning into a positive for the team following successful development of 2014 rookie Gabe Jackson, a couple of additions through the 2015 draft and the signing of arguably the most coveted free agent center in Rodney Hudson.
Khalil Mack, who had a tremendous rookie season, will look to anchor a defense that struggled mightily in 2014. The Oakland organization hopes to see a quick ROI on free agent signings Dan Williams, Malcolm Butler and Curtis Lofton. They also used three consecutive draft picks on linebackers in an attempt to add depth to the position.
Overall it was a solid offseason for the Raiders. They added a nice blend of veterans to a team that already had a solid group of young players on the verge of blossoming. A tough schedule might hold them back from earning anything tangible, but at least they’ll be able to hold their own against their competition.
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