From now till Thursday, September 1 — the day of the final preseason games — FantasyLabs is releasing our 2016 team previews: 32 previews in 32 days. Are you ready for some football?
Atlanta Falcons Team Preview
Through the first five weeks of 2015, Atlanta was 5-0: 4-0 against the NFC East and 1-0 against the ‘top’ team in the AFC South. At the time, that seemed impressive. In retrospect, it’s obvious now that they were undefeated due to the hand they were dealt. The Falcons unsurprisingly lost eight of their next 11 games, failing to finish above .500 for the third consecutive season. Normally, 8-8 would be something to build on in the next season, but the Falcons were gifted the easiest schedule in the NFL and still weren’t able to come away with a winning record. And wins won’t be so easy to come by this year.
In their first six games alone, Atlanta faces three defenses (Denver, Seattle, Carolina) that finished top-five in Football Outsiders’ Weighted Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) metric last year and one defense (Oakland) that should be much improved on that side of the ball. There are matchups along the way — home against San Francisco and New Orleans — that should allow them to move the ball with ease, but even those are far and few between. It’s clear that this season won’t be nearly as easy as the last one. You know, the one in which they still struggled.
Quarterbacks
Matt Ryan
Through the first four games of 2015, Ryan averaged just over 300 yards passing per game with six touchdowns to two interceptions. That seems really good, but Ryan couldn’t even match the salary-based expectations that FanDuel implied for him (per our Trends tool):
Week after week, his salary dropped. Still, Ryan averaged a -4.75 Plus/Minus at FanDuel over the next 12 games. The results were slightly better at DraftKings (-1.35 Plus/Minus in that span), but only because his salary nearly reached the minimum there.
There are some signs that perhaps at times Ryan was unlucky last year. For instance, 5.3 percent of Ryan’s red-zone passes were intercepted, whereas he threw interceptions on only 2.2 percent of all other attempts. With a career interception rate of 2.4 percent, he is likely to see an improvement in the red zone this season. Even just a few more touchdowns would make a difference.
In Week 1, Ryan is outside of the top 10 in quarterback salary on both sites. If his price stays low, some of his negative numbers revert to the mean, and someone besides Julio Jones becomes a consistent receiving option, then he has a chance to provide some DFS value.
Matt Schaub
Schaub has come full circle: Once again he’s in Atlanta serving as a backup to a franchise quarterback. Schaub’s uncanny ability to throw touchdowns to the opposing team has made him the laughing stock of the NFL, but over half the teams in the league could do much worse than having him as their No. 2. (Just ask the Cowboys.) He threw for 540 yards and completed 65 percent of his passes in two starts for Baltimore last season, proving that he can probably hone in on Julio and give him the vintage Andre Johnson treatment if he makes some spot starts.
Running Backs
Devonta Freeman
It was around this time last year when everyone made it a point to pass continuously on Freeman in season-long fantasy drafts. In April of 2015, the Falcons drafted Tevin Coleman in the third round with the intention of making him their lead back, and Freeman’s rookie season the year prior had been disappointing: He averaged only 3.8 yards per rush, and 55.3 percent of Freeman’s carries resulted in no more than two-yard gains.
And in Week 1 Coleman received 20 carries and logged 15 more snaps than Freeman. Their situations pretty much stayed the same in Week 2 — Coleman received nine of Atlanta’s first 11 carries against the Giants — until the rookie exited early and was ruled out with a rib injury for a few weeks. The next five games were all Freeman needed to solidify his place atop Atlanta’s depth chart.
Freeman recorded 825 scrimmage yards in that span, averaging just over six yards per touch. Week 7 was the last time he eclipsed 100 yards rushing in any outing, but the number of touches he continued to receive (especially as a receiver) made Freeman a consistent cash-game commodity. For example, Freeman averaged 19.6 carries and 2.9 yards/carry over the last five games of the season. Despite his obvious struggles with efficiency, he still averaged the fourth-most DraftKings points among running backs over that time.
Freeman’s salary is No. 6 among backs at DraftKings and No. 5 at FanDuel in Week 1. Some DFS players may pass on him immediately at that price, but his floor is still higher than most players at his position. Even if he weren’t able to meet salary-based expectations, he would probably still finish each game pretty close to them. Unfortunately, five of the first six defenses he faces (Buccaneers, Raiders, Panthers, Broncos, Chargers) will limit his ceiling in tournaments. In fact, Atlanta’s entire schedule this year will limit his ability to reach his weekly Upside. Unless his salary declines throughout the season, it will often be the case that, despite being a decent option in cash games, he will be too expensive for tournaments on account of his low ceiling.
Tevin Coleman
Being drafted relatively early wasn’t the only reason that Coleman was named Atlanta’s No. 1 back as a rookie. It was all part of the Falcons’ plan to mask the deficiencies in their offensive line. Coleman was an explosive runner at Indiana in 2014, when he as a junior became only the third player in Big 10 history to rush for 2,000 yards in a single season. That, as well as his blazing 4.39-second 40-yard dash, is why the Falcons believed that he could flourish in offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan’s zone-blocking scheme, in which one cut up the field could lead to a touchdown at any point. That was the plan, anyway. Freeman’s performance changed that.
This season, the same coaching staff that drafted Coleman would like to decrease Freeman’s carries in order to keep him fresh for 16 games. That still makes Coleman, who rushed for 392 yards and averaged 4.5 yards per carry in 12 games last season, an important part of the Falcons’ offensive plans. He won’t receive enough touches to be used in cash games, but because of his speed and playmaking ability he won’t need many touches in the first place to have a chance each week to outperform his salary. And if Freeman struggles to open the season — something that isn’t out of the realm of possibility given the defenses he’ll face early in the campaign — then Coleman might start to see more touches. And even just 10 touches each week would be enough to make Coleman a DFS asset with a lot of upside.
Terron Ward
Ward’s lone bright spot came in Week 4, when he rushed for 72 yards against Houston. His role as Atlanta’s No. 3 back speaks to how little depth the Falcons have and how important it is that Freeman and Coleman stay healthy. Ward isn’t horrible at pass protection and was actually a pretty decent receiver last year in limited action, but his plodding running style led to an average of only 3.3 yards per carry last year. Lesser backs have done alright in a zone-blocking system when no one else has been available to run the ball — but if the Falcons need to give more than 50 touches this year to Ward they will be in trouble. His upside is pedestrian.
Yes, I just used the word ‘pedestrian’ to describe a runner. And I meant it.
Gus Johnson
Ward may be cemented as Atlanta’s No. 3 back, but Johnson is undoubtedly the stronger runner of the two. He’s slow (4.70-second 40-yard dash) and burly (5’10” and 215 lbs.), but he made a name for himself at the NFL combine last season by bench-pressing 225 lbs. 26 times. He also put together a great resume before leaving Stephen F. Austin University for the draft in 2014, setting eight school records and being named a Walter Payton Award finalist.
Johnson will compete to stay on Atlanta’s 53-man roster with an injury-prone Brandon Wilds, who has South Eastern Conference experience but has never been a workhorse and likely won’t stay healthy long enough to make this an actual competition.
Wide Receivers
Julio Jones
What’s there to say about Jones that everyone doesn’t already know? En route to leading the league with 1,871 receiving yards last season, Jones was the only wideout targeted 200 times. He tied Antonio Bryant for the league lead in receptions (136) and accounted for 40.8 percent of Ryan’s passing yards, an obscenely high percentage.
It may not seem like there’s room for Jones to improve, but he didn’t score nearly as many touchdowns as he should have, especially given his 6’3″ and 220 lb. size. For instance, last year on 203 targets he scored ‘only’ eight touchdowns — the exact same number he scored as a rookie in 2011 on 95 targets. Additionally, even though only six players received more targets than he got in the red zone, 19 players had more red-zone touchdowns receiving. By simply shedding an extra tackle here and there near the goal-line, Jones could catapult himself to double-digit scores in 2016.
The good news is that he can stay priced at $9,400 at DraftKings ($9,000 at FanDuel) beyond Week 1 and still exceed salary-based expectations even if his touchdowns don’t increase. If they do, he’ll be that much better.
Mohamed Sanu
Roddy White’s absence leaves 70 targets and 950-plus snaps available. In joining the Falcons this offseason, Sanu might’ve been vastly overpaid (five years, $32.5 million), but Atlanta was desperate to find a receiver to complement Jones. The question now is whether Sanu can actually provide support.
White accrued only eight red-zone targets in 2015 despite leading Atlanta’s receivers in snaps. As a point of comparison: Jones and Freeman finished with 13 and six more. Justin Hardy, who logged 599 fewer snaps than White, recorded only two fewer targets than Roddy inside the 20-yard line. Sanu didn’t accomplish much as a slot receiver in four seasons with the Bengals, but he couldn’t possibly be worse than White in the red zone. Over his career, Sanu has turned 40 red-zone targets into eight touchdowns. Last year, White converted his eight such targets into one touchdown.
With the Bengals, Sanu was often overshadowed by A.J. Green, Marvin Jones, Jermaine Gresham, and Tyler Eifert. His best season came in 2014, when all four were constantly riddled with injuries, allowing Sanu to record career highs in targets (98), catches (56), receiving yards (790), and receiving touchdowns (five). Since Jones entered the league, White has averaged 130.9 targets per 16 games. Even if Sanu gets only 100 targets this year, he should be able to submit a campaign rivaling or surpassing his best season in Cincinnati.
And if Jones suffers an injury, then Sanu should be able to put to shame the 2013 campaign of Harry Douglas, who served as the team’s ‘lead’ receiver when both Jones and White combined to miss 15 games. On 132 targets, Douglas had an 85-1,067-2 stat line. On that number of targets, Sanu would have a shot at scoring 10 touchdowns.
For the time, though, Sanu’s salary is a little too high to provide value. He’s $5,800 at FanDuel and $5,100 at DraftKings in Week 1. If he costs less by the time the Falcons play in New Orleans in Week 3, then maybe he’ll be viable in tournaments.
Justin Hardy
Given how little Leonard Hankerson and Nick Williams offered as Atlanta’s No. 3 receiver, it’s astonishing that it took until Week 8 for Hardy to receive playing time. He averaged four targets and took part in at least 55 percent of the Falcons’ offensive plays in seven of their final nine games. He’s entrenched as their No. 3 receiver in 2016, but that position doesn’t offer much stability.
On top of that, Hardy is small and slow compared to the prototypical NFL receiver. He’s theoretically a Jones or Sanu injury away from becoming Atlanta’s second receiving option, but even that might not matter unless his salary across sites stays close to the minimum.
Nick Williams
Williams recorded at least 22 snaps in three games before Justin Hardy was activated. Once that occurred, Williams’ snaps diminished. Atlanta still sees him as a potential slot/possession receiver, but he should be no higher than fourth on any depth chart. He’s ultimately a special teams player who caught 17 passes in 14 games last year and has a name that sounds like it should belong to the lead singer of a ’90s boy band.
DFS players can forget his name.
Eric Weems
Weems is a lock to make Atlanta’s 53-man roster because he’s a great special teams player. As for his role on offense, he’s now 31 years old and has never been much of a factor on offense since college. At his age, he seems unlikely to becoming a receiving threat. His best offensive campaign was in 2014, when he turned 11 targets into 10 receptions for 102 yards and two touchdowns. Last year he had one target.
The best chance Weems has at contributing is if he takes over return duties and then somehow becomes the No. 3 or No. 4 receiver. In other words, he should stick to special teams.
Tight Ends
Jacob Tamme
Tamme averaged seven targets and nearly 54 yards in his first eight starts in 2015. The next seven games provided much bleaker results. His play fell off completely, as shown by his average of 32 yards and 6.24 DraftKings points in that span. He’ll start 2016 as Atlanta’s No. 1 tight end, but don’t expect him to take part in 67 percent of the offensive plays again. The 31-year-old doesn’t have the ceiling of Austin Hooper, the team’s third-round pick this year.
Austin Hooper
It shouldn’t take too long for Hooper to steal meaningful snaps from Tamme. He’s already a comparable blocker and, as head coach Dan Quinn said, will be used primarily as a receiving option due to “the ability for him to break off in the option routes.” That’s where his speed and agility will come in handy.
Hooper hauled in 34 catches for 438 yards and six touchdowns last season at Stanford. And at his size (6’4” and 254 lbs.), Hooper could plausibly be used as a red-zone option immediately. Stanford may have morphed into a tight end factory in the last few years, producing respectable professionals such as Zach Ertz, Levine Toilolo, Coby Fleener, and Jim Dray, but rookie tight ends historically don’t make an impact. Only seven first-year tight ends have recorded 500 yards receiving in the last decade.
So even if Hooper does develop into a first-year red-zone threat, we shouldn’t expect too much from him as a total player.
Levine Toilolo
Pro Football Focus ranked Toilolo as the No. 15 pass-blocking tight end last season. He’s an important part of Atlanta’s offense without actually being any sort of threat to Tamme and Hooper. For instance, Toilolo caught seven passes total in 16 games last year. Even a rookie tight end could do that. It’s always possible that he could steal a couple of red-zone targets from Tamme and Hooper. Otherwise, he’s like a garter snake: Kind of annoying, basically harmless.
Two-Minute Warning
Between the tougher schedule and being favored in just three of their first 15 games, the Falcons’ 7.5 win total seems like a best-case scenario. They ultimately still lack playmakers around Jones, but at least their No. 1 receiver is one of the best in the business. Whether Dan Quinn can improve the defense in his second year as head coach is another story. If he can, and if their offensive line — now featuring Alex Mack, who at his best is one of the top centers in the league — can rally around Kyle Shanahan once more, then maybe the Falcons stand a fighting chance at the Wild Card. But probably not.
