We are less than one week away from the kickoff of the 2024 NFL season. We’ve had a full offseason of nonstop best ball, high stakes, and home league drafts. We’ve drafted hundreds — and in some cases thousands — of teams. The RotoViz Staff has prepared their boldest predictions that will define the 2024 fantasy football season.
Michael Dubner
At Least One Seahawk in Every Draft
Zooming Out: The Offensive Situation
Coming off a fairly disappointing year, the Seahawks have moved on from the archaic Shane Waldron offense and are anticipated to have a revitalized offense under new offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, who helped the prolific Washington Huskies offense make a National Championship appearance. For a full deep-dive on the new-look Seahawks offense, Shawn Siegele’s JSN manifesto is a must read.
Zooming In: Individual Player Values
RB: Either Kenneth Walker is the best Dead Zone RB with the potential to be a second-round pick in 2025 or Zach Charbonnet is a 2024 Zero RB Countdown hero.
WR: D.K. Metcalf’s price makes him the most difficult Seattle pass-catcher to draft, but I also don’t want to miss out on the Freak Score king with 15 touchdown upside. Jaxon Smith-Njigba is set to explode as a Year-2 breakout candidate. At age-32, Tyler Lockett’s decline in efficiency puts him at risk for falling off a cliff, but that’s more than baked into an ADP as WR56 despite coming off five-straight seasons as the WR33 or better.
TE: Noah Fant has been fools gold to start his career, but the receiving threat appears to finally have a clear path to a full time role, and is one of the few late round TEs in 2024 with upside.
QB: If this offense is clicking as much as I expect, Geno Smith could be the key to unlocking the late round QB in 2024.
The 2024 Seahawks are my prediction for the 2023 Texans where the entire offense was underpriced. With the power of stacking, we only have to get one thing right in order to get multiple things right.
The Seahawks Onslaught is very doable with their ADPs distributed throughout the draft. Bonus points if you layer in Week 17 Bears bring backs increase your expected value in the Week That Matters Most.
Blair Andrews
Tyjae Spears Will Score 250 PPR Points
Spears’ ADP is held in check by Tony Pollard’s arrival. But this is a situation we might look back on with amusement, as the breakout signals for Spears were so apparent. Among RBs who haven’t yet had a breakout season, no player evaded more tackles in the receiving game, and only one player picked up more receiving yards after contact. He also excelled as a rusher. Among players with at least 50 carries, only five had a higher evasion rate. Only Jaleel McLaughlin forced missed tackles at a higher rate.
In fact, Spears was the only player last year to have at least a 10% broken tackle rate, a 10% forced missed tackle rate, and to average at least 4.2 yards per carry. Spears’ peripherals especially stand out when you compare them to his new, more expensive teammate.
It shows in the rushing game too.
Of course, the Titans brought in Pollard for a reason — they don’t intend to sit him, and even if he is soundly outplayed by Spears, he’s unlikely to disappear entirely. Yet Derrick Henry got almost to 250 when sharing the field with Spears (who was himself above 150), on a workload with fewer high-value touches. There is likely to be room for Pollard and Spears to combine for well over 400 points, and if Spears is the one getting most of the receiving work — and doing the most with it — he’s got a path to take the lion’s share of the value.
Couldn’t Pollard consolidate the Henry role, but with more receiving work? If we learned anything from 2023, it’s that Pollard is not Henry.
On nearly 300 more snaps and 36 more high-value touches, Pollard’s fantasy scoring output fell more than 20 points behind Henry’s. In Tennessee’s offense, we should expect Pollard’s snaps, total touches, and high-value touches to fall dramatically. Meanwhile, given his skill with the ball in his hands, Spears’ touches — including his high-value touches — should increase.
Unlike Henry, Spears doesn’t need 300 touches to get to 250 points. He averaged about 1 PPR point per touch in 2023. Improved TD luck and increased opportunity could get him close to the 250 mark even without a Pollard injury, and the upside beyond that is immense.