2017 NFL Fantasy Preview: Washington Redskins

This fantasy preview is part of a preseason series by FantasyLabs Editor-in-Chief Matthew Freedman. Other pieces in the series are available on our Fantasy Football Preview Dashboard.

In May 1999, Daniel Snyder purchased the Redskins for $800 million. In his first year of ownership, the team went 10-6, claimed a division title, and won a playoff game. Everything was great. The next year, though, head coach Norv Turner started 7-6 — and was fired midseason. Since then, Snyder has employed Marty Schottenheimer (2001), Steve Spurrier (2002-03), Joe Gibbs (2004-07), Jim Zorn (2008-09), Mike Shanahan (2010-13), and now Jay Gruden (2014-present). Not one of them has led the team to more than 10 wins in a season, advanced past the Divisional Round, or stayed with the team for more than four years. The Redskins are coming off back-to-back winning campaigns, but they missed the playoffs last year and are yet to win a playoff game or reach double-digit wins under Gruden, who’s entering his fourth year. For Gruden, 2017 is about making the playoffs, hopefully winning a postseason game, and not getting fired.

Play-Calling Tendencies

A respectable quarterback at Louisville, Gruden was undrafted in 1989 and never did more in the NFL and Canadian Football League than spend some time on practice squads. After playing with the Barcelona Dragons in 1991, Gruden caught on with the Tampa Bay Storm in the Arena Football League and led the team to four titles in five years (1991-95), winning the league’s Most Valuable Player award in 1992. After more time with the Dragons (1995) and Storm (1996), Gruden retired as a player and started coaching.

After one season (1997) as the offensive coordinator of the Nashville Kats, Gruden was hired as the HC of the Orlando Predators, a position he held for four years (1998-01) before he resigned so he could play quarterback for the team. During his two years (2002-03) playing for the Predators, he also worked as an offensive assistant for the Buccaneers, who had recently acquired his brother Jon as HC via a blockbuster trade with the Raiders. After the 2003 season, Gruden permanently retired from playing and joined the Bucs staff on a full-time basis, serving as an assistant until Jon was fired after the 2008 season. In 2009 Gruden was the OC under HC Jim Haslett for the Florida Tuskers of the United Football League, and then in 2010 he became the HC and general manager and led the team to the UFL Championship Game.

In 2011, Gruden finally got his shot to oversee an NFL offense, as Bengals HC Marvin Lewis hired him as coordinator. In his first year Gruden transitioned the team away from a vertical Air Coryell attack to a short-passing West Coast system, and over his three years (2011-13) with the Bengals he helped them draft the right players for his offense:

• 2011, 1.04: A.J. Green, wide receiver
• 2011, 2.35: Andy Dalton, quarterback
• 2012, 3.83: Mohamed Sanu, wide receiver
• 2012, 5.166: Marvin Jones, wide receiver
• 2013, 1.21: Tyler Eifert, tight end
• 2013, 2.37: Giovani Bernard, running back

By the time he left for the Redskins in 2014, he had transformed an offense that was 22nd in points (2010) to a unit that was sixth (2013), gifting Dalton with a top-five fantasy season along the way. With the Redskins, Gruden has been similarly impressive: The year before he took over, Washington  was 23rd in points; over the last two years, 10th and 12th. Perhaps more impressively, the Redskins have been top-10 in yards per play each of the last three seasons.

Although Gruden has an Arena League background, you wouldn’t know it by looking at his offenses. Under Gruden, the Bengals had an average neutral pace of 11.3 (out of 32), and they skewed toward the run, finishing top-10 in rushing attempts in two of three seasons. And although the Redskins have skewed toward the pass, ranking eighth in pass/run ratio last year, over the last three years they’ve on average been 26th in neutral pace (Football Outsiders). Gruden doesn’t call plays as if he’s still quarterbacking the Storm.

In fact, for the last two seasons Gruden hasn’t called plays at all. After his first year with the team, he turned over play-calling duties to OC Sean McVay, who was hired as the Rams HC this offseason. Although quarterbacks coach Matt Cavanaugh has been promoted to OC, Gruden will call plays. This is still very much Gruden’s offense with Cavanaugh running the day-to-day operations and advising on game day. Nevertheless, it’s worth noting that quarterback Kirk Cousins has done exceptionally well in his two years under Cavanaugh’s tutelage and that Cavanaugh has excelled in a variety of situations:

• 1996 (49ers): Quarterbacks coach for Steve Young
• 2000 (Ravens): Super Bowl-winning OC
• 2003 (Ravens): OC for Jamal Lewis’ 2,000-yard rushing season
• 2005-08 (Univ. of Pittsburgh): College OC for future NFL backs LeSean McCoy, Rashad Jennings, and LaRod Stephens-Howling
• 2013 (Bears): Quarterbacks coach for Josh McCown’s ‘breakout’ season

The loss of McVay shouldn’t be discounted, but Gruden’s experience with calling plays and Cavanaugh’s experience with Cousins should enable this year’s offense to look a lot like last year’s.

2017 Roster

Of course, the offense won’t be exactly like last year’s, given that the team is without two 1,000-yard receivers:

• QB: Kirk Cousins
• RB: Robert Kelley/Matt Jones –> Kelley/Samaje Perine
• RB: Chris Thompson
• WR: Pierre Garcon –> Terrelle Pryor
• WR: DeSean Jackson –> Josh Doctson/Ryan Grant
• WR: Jamison Crowder
• TE: Jordan Reed/Vernon Davis
• LT: Trent Williams/Ty Nsekhe
• LG: Shawn Lauvao
• C: Spencer Long
• RG: Brandon Scherff
• RT: Morgan Moses

A three-year underachiever at Florida, Jones predictably bombed as a pro after being selected in the third round of the 2015 draft. He was part of the team’s cuts this weekend and is now with the Colts. He’ll be replaced by the fourth-round rookie Perine, who was incredibly productive at Oklahoma. Gone are the aged Garcon and Jackson, who for the last three years formed a competent if not exciting duo at wide receiver. Fresh off a 1,000-yard season with the Browns, Pryor will look to absorb some of Garcon and Jackson’s targets as will Crowder, who could play more in two-wide sets. The team hopes that the 2016 first-rounder Doctson will be able to contribute this year after playing in only two games last year. On the offensive line, continuity is king. The Redskins return all five starters from last year’s unit, which was third with a 3.9 percent adjusted sack rate and sixth with 4.57 adjusted line yards per carry (Football Outsiders). For a team that lost it’s OC and top wide receivers, the Redskins are in good shape.

While the defense itself hasn’t undergone devastating turnover, Gruden is now on his third defensive coordinator in four years: Haslett (2014), Joe Barry (2015-16), and Greg Manusky (2017). A linebacker with the team in the first Gibbs era, Manusky was promoted from linebackers coach after Barry was dismissed. Before last season, he had been a DC for nine straight years: 49ers (2007-10), Chargers (2011), Colts (2012-15). It’s good that Manusky plans to keep the same 3-4 scheme in place. It’s #notgood that the defense has been 28th in yards allowed each of the last two seasons:

• DE: Chris Baker –> Jonathan Allen
• NT: Evander Hood
• DE/DT: Ricky Jean-Francois/Cullen Jenkins –> Stacy McGee
• OLB: Ryan Kerrigan
• MLB: Mason Foster –> Zach Brown/Foster
• MLB: William Compton
• OLB: Preston Smith/Trent Murphy –> Smith
• CB: Josh Norman
• CB: Bashaud Breeland
• SCB: Kendall Fuller
• SS: Duke Ihenacho/Donte Whitner –> Deshazor Everett
• FS: DeAngelo Hall/Will Blackmon –> D.J. Swearinger/Hall

A first-round rookie with the ability to line up at end or tackle, Allen is expected to replace Baker opposite McGee, who signed a five-year, $25 million deal this offseason after earning an 81.8 Pro Football Focus grade last year in abbreviated action. Brown, another offseason addition, is expected to send Foster to the bench after his solid season in Buffalo. Still, the Redskins have PFF’s No. 27 front-seven unit entering the year. Norman is solid in the secondary, but Breeland was horrible in 2016 with a 48.0 PFF grade. Hall is on the Physically Unable to Perform list with a torn ACL, and the other three safeties who played the most snaps last year are all on the street. Swearinger is an upgrade with his 87.1 PFF grade, but it’s uncertain how he and Everett will function together. The defense should be better than it was last year, but with a new DC and five new starters it might struggle.

Be sure to keep an eye on our NFL Matchups Dashboard as well as our NFL News feed to see how these units take shape and to track any injury updates.

Notable Players

In Cousins’ two seasons as the starter, this offense has been top-six in net yards per pass attempt. As long as Cousins is himself, this unit should be good.

Kirk Cousins, QB

In his second year as the starter, Cousins was magnificent. Year over year, the offense improved from 17th in yards to third, 10th and 11th in yards per play and drive to second, 11th in points per drive to sixth, 14th in plays per drive to fourth, and 12th in drive success rate to sixth. Much of this offensive improvement was directly linked to the team’s shift to a pass-heavy offense. In 2015 the Redskins were 20th in pass attempts; in 2016, seventh. In 2015, Washington relied on the running back duo of Alfred Morris and Jones to grind the ball for 346 carries at a ridiculous 3.6 yards per carry (YPC). As we head into the 2017 season, ALF and Jones are no longer on the team. This offense belongs to Cousins — sort of.

For the last two seasons, Cousins has been in a feud with the front office, which itself has been in disarray over the last couple of years — which isn’t a surprise with Snyder as the owner. After a strong fourth-year 2015 campaign in which he completed a league-high 69.8 percent of his passes for 4,166 yards, Cousins wanted the security of a long-term contract. The Redskins, though, weren’t sure he deserved to be paid like a franchise quarterback — and so they gave him the franchise tag and a top-five one-year salary. Cousins didn’t like it, but he dealt with it and had a great season, completing 67.0 percent of his passes for 4,917 yards, giving him the NFL’s fourth-most yards passing (9,083) since 2015. For the second year in a row, he was a top-eight fantasy quarterback. Naturally, the team once again gave him the franchise tag, forcing him to play on a one-year deal and publicly blaming him for not signing the low-ball long-term offer they made. Although his salary is 120 percent higher this year than last, he has no long-term security in the event of a career-ending/altering injury — which has been known to happen to Redskins quarterbacks: Joe Theismann and Robert Griffin III nod in agreement.

I don’t like to walk down Narrative Street, but it’s possible that in this environment Cousins could struggle. He is without his OC and two 1,000-yard receivers and playing for an organization that won’t treat him the way every other team wants to treat a franchise quarterback. With the receiving options Cousins has, he could easily finish as the No. 1 fantasy quarterback this year — his nine rushing touchdowns over the last two years don’t hurt, and he should have positive regression from his 4.1 percent touchdown rate in 2016 — but there’s an underappreciated risk that this situation in Washington will end poorly. That said, he’s still undervalued at his average draft position (ADP) of 91.8 in DRAFT best ball leagues.

Here’s something intriguing: While most quarterbacks underperform against divisional opponents, Cousins over the last three years has done better (per our Trends tool):

• Division (14 games): 21.43 DraftKings points per game (PPG), +4.84 Plus/Minus, 71.4 percent Consistency Rating
• Non-Division (24): 19.59 PPG, +3.58, 54.2 percent

What’s more, Cousins has done better in divisional play under circumstances that are normally suboptimal: As an underdog and/or on the road. Brace yourself:

• Underdog (9): 24.79 PPG, +8.91, 100 percent
• Road (7): 24.99 PGG, +8.56, 85.7 percent
• Road Dog (6): 26.33 PPG, +10.18, 100 percent

The sample is small, but it’s suggestive. If there’s a clutch gene, Cousins has it. And here’s the best part: As a divisional road dog, Cousins has had an ownership rate in large-field guaranteed prize pools of just 1.3 percent.

This year FantasyLabs users can review ownership trends across GPPs of various buy-in levels with our DFS Ownership Dashboard, which is reason enough to subscribe to FantasyLabs. Monitor our Vegas Dashboard to see how the market views the Redskins when they are on the road against divisional opponents. Be sure to study our DFS Contests Dashboard throughout the season to see how contrarian Cousins stacks are, and consult our Correlations Matrix to get a sense of Cousins’ best stacking partners. If you want to stack Cousins with any of his receivers, do it with our Lineup Builder.

Right now Cousins has the seventh-highest implied odds at +1,400 to lead the league in passing yardage. Relative to the field, he’s discounted.

Rob Kelley, RB

Amazingly, Fat Rob held off the rookie Perine to keep the starting job. Although he produced like a low-end RB2 by the end of 2016 — he averaged 13.13 DraftKings PPG and a +3.96 Plus/Minus in his nine starts — he wore down near the end of the season, averaging just 3.21 YPC across the last month on 14 carries per game. Of course, it would make sense for him to slow down: He was a first-year player, and perhaps he was hitting the rookie wall. An undrafted player out of Tulane, Kelley has good size (5’11” and 226 lbs.) but is mythically unathletic with a second percentile SPARQ-x score (PlayerProfiler). In college he never carried the ball even 100 times or had more than 420 yards and three touchdowns rushing. He was a strong receiver with a 46-340-4 pass-catching campaign as a sophomore, so he has legitimate three-down potential if the Redskins choose to make him a workhorse. That said, they probably won’t. Last year in his nine starts he played only 52.6 percent of the offensive snaps. With Thompson and now Perine on the roster, Washington has little incentive to make Kelley more than the early-down and goal-line back in a committee. Of course, in this offense that role still has a lot of value.

Samaje Perine, RB

Perine is one of several fourth-rounders who could crush in 2017. Although he failed to overtake Kelley in training camp, Perine could still do to Kelley what Kelley did to Jones in the middle of last season. If Kelley’s late-season subpar YPC returns in 2017, Perine will get the opportunity to show what he can do. As a three-year player at Oklahoma, he did a lot despite splitting touches with Joe Mixon. Although Perine isn’t a great athlete (4.65-second 40), he’s big (5’11” and 233 lbs.) and in the mold of grinders Jordan Howard and Carlos Hyde. Turning 22 in September, Perine broke OU’s all-time record for most career rushing yards in only three seasons, and he had one of the best true freshman seasons of all time in 2014, when he rushed for 1,713 yards and 21 touchdowns on 263 carries in 13 games. If he gets the opportunity to be the lead back, it seems likely that he won’t be any worse than Kelley.

Chris Thompson, RB

Selected in the fifth round in 2013 out of Florida State, where significant injuries prevented him from ever sustaining lead back duties, Thompson was an afterthought for the first two years of his career, but since 2015 he has been a regular contributor, playing 31.1 percent of snaps two years ago and then 45.9 percent last year. Thompson over the last two seasons has turned 110 targets and 103 carries into 1,161 yards, 84 receptions, seven touchdowns, and 8.3 DraftKings PPG. Although he’s more of a receiver than runner, Thompson has proven himself to be a strong change-of-pace rusher, averaging 5.5 YPC for his career and ranking eighth in breakaway run rate at 7.4 percent. With his size (5’7″ and 192 lbs.), Thompson isn’t likely to see a large increase in rushing volume, but he was eighth among all backs last year with 1.14 fantasy points per opportunity. Thompson doesn’t need a lot of touches per game to outperform his ridiculous 202.4 DRAFT ADP.

Terrelle Pryor, WR

On the one hand, Pryor had a great season last year, ranking seventh in air yards (818), 12th in targets (141), and 13th in target share (25.3 percent) in just his first full season of playing time as a receiver. On the other hand . . . his season wasn’t that great: He was 74th in fantasy points per target (1.50) and 81st in Production Premium (-9.7, PlayerProfiler). His inefficiency was partially due to playing with a rotating crew of five quarterbacks who completed just 59.6 percent of their attempts for 3,693 yards and 15 touchdowns, so he will enjoy a significant upgrade in Cousins — but it’s also possible that Pryor was inefficient because he’s still learning how to play receiver.

Pryor was ninth among wide receivers last year with his 81.8 percent contested catch rate, and he has great size (6’5″ and 232 lbs.) and athleticism (4.41-second 40) — but what happens if he’s neither highly efficient nor heavily targeted? He’s likely to get many (if not all) of the targets that went to Garcon last year. He could even get some of D-Jax’s former targets. The problem is that Cousins has never been someone to lock onto a receiver under Gruden. Here’s how he’s targeted his three top receivers on a per-game basis over the last three years:

• Reed (28 games): 7.86
• Garcon (38): 7.00
• Jackson (30): 6.23

Last year Pryor averaged 8.8 targets per game. Pryor has massive upside — he could finish 2017 as the No. 1 fantasy receiver — but Garcon’s target total already has built into it the history of Reed and Jackson’s missed games. What if Reed stays healthy for the full season? What if Crowder assumes Jackson’s targets and plays all 16 games? Even though he was a target magnet in Cleveland, Pryor might not get many more targets than the steady 105-114 Garcon has gotten each of the last three seasons.

Already 28 years old, Pryor has underappreciated risk at his 39.5 DRAFT ADP. He’s an upside pick — but the proponents of #HedgeLife might feel better about fading him in seasonal leagues and then rostering him regularly in GPPs. He deserves portfolio exposure, but a season-long investment at his acquisition cost might be too much.

Jamison Crowder, WR

Last year Crowder ran 75.3 percent of his 547 routes out of the slot on his way to 12.97 DraftKings PPG with a +2.83 Plus/Minus and 68.8 percent Consistency Rating. A top-10 slot receiver with his 1.55 yards per route run (YPRR, PFF), Crowder throughout his career has been at his best on a per-game basis without Jackson:

• With Jackson (24 games): 5.1 targets, 3.6 receptions, 42.2 yards, 0.29 touchdowns
• Without Jackson (8): 6.8 targets, 5.0 receptions, 54.8 yards, 0.25 touchdowns

Notice that in the half-season’s worth of games D-Jax missed over the last two years, Crowder averaged more targets than Jackson himself averaged when playing. To this point in his career, Crowder has already served as the DeSean target replacement. It won’t be a stretch for him to match Jackson’s 100 targets from last season. With his small size (5’8″ and 185 lbs.) and slow speed (4.56-second 40), Crowder isn’t the deep threat that Jackson is, but he doesn’t need to be to get his market share. A prolific producer at Duke before entering the NFL as a fourth-round pick — he had 1,000-plus receiving yards in each of his last three seasons, scoring as a receiver, runner, and returner — Crowder has the potential to be a surprising producer. He led the team with seven touchdowns and 16 red-zone targets last year. He offers value at his 65.8 DRAFT ADP.

Josh Doctson, WR

After running just 25 routes in the first two weeks of his 2016 rookie campaign, the first-rounder missed the rest of the season due to Achilles’ strains. While there’s little that can be gleaned from such a small sample, it’s worth noting that Doctson had two targets inside the 10-yard line in his two games played. Although the Redskins might use more 12 personnel packages this year with the reemergence of Davis, they will likely still use three-wide sets often enough to give their third receiver fantasy relevance, especially since Cousins tends to spread the ball around. A stud at Texas Christian, J-Dox averaged 101.9 yards and 1.1 touchdowns receiving per game in his two final collegiate seasons, earning the highest PFF receiving grade in college football as a senior and leading the 2016 draft class with his 4.07 YPRR. With good size (6’2″ and 202 lbs.) and athleticism (86th percentile SPARQ-x score, PlayerProfiler), Doctson has the ability to emerge as a contributing member of the offense by midseason. If there are people looking to sell him in dynasty leagues, I’m looking to buy. He missed some preseason action with a hamstring issue and as a result is being treated liked the team’s No. 4 receiver, but he should be working in three-wide sets sooner rather than later.

Ryan Grant, WR

College teammates with Kelley, Grant was a fifth-round pick in the 2014 draft. Primarily a special teams player to this point in his career, Grant is ostensibly the third receiver at the moment, but he seems unlikely to hold off Doctson. Grant had back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons to end his college career, so he’s not without talent, but Doctson scored more touchdowns in his two final seasons (25) than Grant has in his eight college and professional seasons combined (23). Smaller (6’0″ and 199 lbs.) and less athletic (20th percentile SPARQ-x) than Doctson, Grant is almost certain to be a nonfactor this year if Doctson is healthy.

Jordan Reed, TE

Over the last two years, Reed on a per-game basis has been every bit the player Rob Gronkowski has:

• Gronk (23 games): 16.37 DraftKings PPG, +1.64 Plus/Minus, 56.6 percent Consistency Rating, 13.4 percent ownership
• Reed (26): 16.22 PPG, +4.93, 57.7 percent, 8.1 percent

Reed has never played a full NFL season, this preseason he’s had to deal with a toe injury that seems likely to linger into the season, and he’s had six verified concussions since college. He’s a massive injury risk, so a redraft investment in him is speculative, but he’s a great GPP option, especially in a stack with Cousins, who since 2015 has 290.9 yards and 1.81 touchdowns in games with Reed; 253.0 and 1.17 without him.

Vernon Davis, TE

Have I mentioned that Reed is an injury risk? Davis is 33 years old, but he has a strong history of production (57 career touchdowns), and last year in his first season with Washington he played on 63.4 percent of the offensive snaps, starting 12 games. He’s Reed insurance. In the four games Reed missed last year, Davis averaged a 3.5-46.8-0.25 line on 4.5 targets. As insurance goes, that’s not great, but it’s something.

2017 Futures

The Redskins are +6,600 to win the Super Bowl, +3,300 to win the NFC, and dead last at +550 to win the NFC East. If you believe Washington has a good chance of hitting at least eight wins, you might want to consider taking action on the division, which the Redskins won Cousins’ first year as the starter. If you want to touch the Super Bowl and conference props, you’re braver than I am.

Gruden has only the 18th-highest implied odds at +1,800 to be the first coach fired this season. Given who his owner is, that feels low. Over the last two years, Gruden is just 19-14 against the spread (including playoffs), but he’s 14-7-0 ATS as an underdog. Additionally, games with the Redskins are 22-11-0 on the over. Their offense with Cousins is getting the job done.

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In researching for this piece I consulted Evan Silva’s excellent Redskins Fantasy Preview at Rotoworld and relied on data from Pro Football Reference, Pro Football Focus, Football Outsiders, Football Perspective, PlayerProfiler, Team Rankings, The Power Rank, NFL.com, and the apps at RotoViz as well as the FantasyLabs Tools and Models.

Ian Hartitz contributed research to this article.