6 Hardest Teams to Project for Fantasy Football

Some teams are harder to project because of personnel changes or unique qualities. Here are some of the teams that will be more difficult to nail in 2020.

The Ravens are one of the hardest teams to project

The Baltimore Ravens were a very unique team, making projection for their next season more difficult (Photo by Jevone Moore/Icon Sportswire)

When we sat down to project teams for fantasy football, some teams were a bit easier to project than others. These teams mostly had fairly well-defined player roles, lots of returning players, and the same head coach as last season. But other teams created more questions. This could be because the team was unique in some ways that made finding similar historical teams difficult, or because there were major changes to the team that make last season’s stats less relevant.

More uncertainty isn’t necessarily a bad thing, by the way. It can create upside risk in addition to downside risk. Our general philosophy here is to be more conservative early in drafts by trying to avoid large downside risks, and more aggressive later in drafts by taking chances on uncertain situations.

Here are the 6 hardest teams to project in fantasy football.

Indianapolis Colts

Over the last two seasons, the Colts have gone from the sudden retirement of Andrew Luck at quarterback, to Jacoby Brissett, to now veteran Philip Rivers. That is quite the stylistic shift at the quarterback position, so just looking at last year’s team stats will likely not be very helpful.

In addition to the quarterback change, there are also a lot of unfamiliar faces on offense. The team’s first two draft picks in 2020 were wide receiver Michael Pittman, Jr. and running back Jonathan Taylor. The running back roles are up in the air, as is the wide receiver depth chart behind T.Y. Hilton. Eric Ebron is gone at tight end, and veteran Jack Doyle is now joined by Trey Burton.

With so much change, from quarterback style to the depth charts at other positions, we had to do a little more guesswork. We leaned more on the Colts’ distribution under Andrew Luck as well as the recent Chargers teams with Rivers at QB. The team is also projected to contend for the AFC South title, which suggests that even if there is uncertainty here, there is also opportunity for decent stat production.

Los Angeles Chargers

Speaking of Philip Rivers, the Chargers are also a very difficult team to project now that he is gone. Tyrod Taylor has never averaged more than 30 pass attempts per game in any season he has been a starter, and Justin Herbert also does not project as a high-volume passer as a rookie. So you can likely expect a significant shift in the run-pass distribution compared to recent Chargers’ teams.

Add in that we don’t yet know who the starting quarterback is, plus the reality that both will probably play this year at some point. That makes knowing just how much to downgrade the offensive skill players on the team an uncertain task. The Chargers threw 597 passes last year, and that number seems very unrealistic for 2020. To try to estimate the Chargers’ offensive outlook, we looked for historical comparisons using a blended approach. We took teams with similar win projections to the Chargers (about 7.5 wins), and used a combination of teams that had low volume passers who were good runners (like Taylor) and teams that transitioned from veteran QBs to first round rookies.

Is it perfect? No, but it’s the best we can do with how big a shift is likely coming in Los Angeles.

Baltimore Ravens

The Baltimore Ravens make this list because of just how unique they are. Here’s the full list of teams since World War 2 to score 50 offensive touchdowns and have more rushing yards than passing yards:

  • 2019 Baltimore Ravens
  • 1948 San Francisco 49ers (AAFC)
  • 1949 San Francisco 49ers (AAFC)

Even if you lower the thresholds a bit, you don’t find any teams with this kind of extreme rushing to passing split while being near the leaders in team scoring, since before the 1978 rule changes that made passing so much easier.

Baltimore is the only team to rush for over 3,200 yards in the last 20 years. The only other one to rush for over 2,800 yards was the 2006 Falcons, with Michael Vick, and well, the next year in Atlanta is not real informative on what could happen to the Ravens. There are 12 other teams to rush for over 2,600 yards in the last 20 years. But only two of those teams passed for more than 20 touchdowns, so they aren’t real similar there. And Matt Cassel was the quarterback for the team that had the most passing touchdowns from that group. Cassel and Lamar Jackson should never be in the same sentence again.

So what is Baltimore going to do for an encore performance? Well, we are all just guessing. But we tried to make our guess educated. We looked at what other teams with extreme rushing yard totals did the next year. We looked at how running quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson did a year later in terms of TD rates and yards. Plenty of rushing quarterbacks with spikes in passing touchdowns saw large regression. Others got hurt or missed the next year.

For example, for the 10 highest non-Jackson QB rushing seasons, quarterback rushing totals declined 41% the following season. Those quarterbacks averaged 813 yards in Year 1 and 482 yards in Year 2, and injuries were a big part of that drop. Meanwhile, the quarterbacks with the highest pass TD rates and low pass volume (like Jackson a year ago), saw their pass TD rates fall from 7.7% to 4.7% a year later. Those numbers helped inform our expectations for Jackson (and thus the Ravens’ passing attack) this year.

 

Pittsburgh Steelers

When we last saw Ben Roethlisberger playing a full season, he threw a league-leading 675 passes for 5,129 yards in 2018. Roethlisberger’s injury, and the change to backups Mason Rudolph and Devlin Hodges last year, led to a major downturn in Pittsburgh’s passing stats. Roethlisberger returns this year, but there are plenty of questions about what this offense will look like.

Let’s face it, Roethlisberger is coming back from a significant injury, at age 38, and there’s no guarantee he returns to prime form. He also doesn’t have the same personnel to work with. Antonio Brown is gone from that 2018 season. Le’Veon Bell is gone from the high-scoring offenses before 2018. The offensive line was underrated and one of the best during Pittsburgh’s run from 2014 to 2018. Now, every member of that line is over the age of 30 except for right tackle Matt Feller, who is 28. Left guard Ramon Foster, who played 160 games for the team since 2009, has retired. In short, there are a lot of reasons, besides Roethlisberger’s injury, to think this is an offense that could struggle to return to the form it had a few years ago.

But anything seems in play here. Look at other veteran quarterbacks who missed most of a season to injury and tried to return in their late 30’s, and you range from Rich Gannon and Oakland’s demise, to Carson Palmer bouncing back with an MVP-level season in 2015. This unit could have one last surge together, or things could fall apart and Big Ben could play his final season. Our projection falls in between those two outcomes, with lots of uncertainty on either side.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Touchdown Tom has turned to Tampa Bay. We are going to go out on a limb and say that Tom Brady is not going to throw 30 interceptions like Jameis Winston did last season. But he’s also not likely to wing the ball around and average 8.2 yards per attempt like Winston did with his aggressive style. The Bucs were in a lot of shootouts in 2019. Their win projection is higher in 2020, which also leads to more rushing attempts and a more balanced pass distribution.

Brady’s yards per attempt in New England fell off precipitously last year, from 7.6 in 2019 to 6.6 in 2020. Over the last 8 games of last season, it was 5.9 yards per attempt. Maybe that decline was due to personnel issues in New England. But it’s also possible that we witnessed Tom Brady hitting the age wall. After all, the list of quarterbacks in NFL history to throw at least 300 passes at age 42 or older is … Tom Brady last year.

Brady will have plenty of weapons in Tampa Bay, and the general consensus seems to be that he will bounce back. Nothing, though, is guaranteed with a 43-year-old quarterback.

New England Patriots

The New England Patriots will also be making a significant shift in 2020. Either Cam Newton or Jarrett Stidham will be the starting quarterback, and you could not have a more stylistically different pair. Newton would bring an entirely new dimension to the Patriots’ offense involving a mobile quarterback. We’ve seen head coach Bill Belichick and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels adapt their approach from game-to-game. You could see an even bigger shift here, and it’s hard to determine who that will help. James White was a very good receiving back with Brady, but will that continue in a revamped offense? How run-heavy will they be? The depth chart at wide receiver (behind veteran Julian Edelman) and at tight end is very much an unknown as well.

 

All Articles in the 12 Days of Fantasy Football Series

12 Old Fantasy Football Faces in New Places

11 Depth Chart Battles to Watch

10 Backup Running Backs that Provide Upside

9 Wide Receiver Sleepers to Target

8 Running Back Sleepers to Target

6 Hardest Teams to Project

5 Tight End Sleepers to Target

4 Quarterback Sleepers to Target