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?
Jacksonville Jaguars Team Preview
Most 5-11 teams won’t find much solace during the ensuing offseason, but the Jacksonville Jaguars aren’t most teams. After a 3-13 campaign in 2014 saw Jacksonville finish as the worst scoring offense in all of football, the Jaguars took their first step toward relevancy in 2015, mostly thanks to second-year quarterback Blake Bortles. After having a rookie campaign with 11 touchdowns and 17 interceptions, Bortles threw 35 touchdowns, the third-highest total since the merger for a second-year quarterback.
Yes, the optimism is high in Jacksonville for 2016. The team’s 31st-ranked scoring defense will need to improve, but the Jaguars have added three elite defensive talents in Dante Fowler, Jalen Ramsey, and Myles Jack. For the first time in a while, the Jaguars are moving in the right direction. Vegas agrees, as the projected total of 7.5 wins for the Jaguars is the team’s highest preseason win total in over five years.
The continued maturation of Bortles, as well as that of young wide receivers Allen Robinson and Allen Hurns, will be crucial to the Jaguars’ success in 2016. It’s the fourth year of the Gus Bradley era, and the time for success is now.
Quarterback
Blake Bortles
2016 for Bortles was incredibly encouraging from both a developmental and DFS standpoint. Bortles’ accuracy issues continued — he failed to complete even 60 percent of his passes for the second straight year — but his newfound ability to get the ball downfield made his subpar accuracy bearable. His 6.1 yards-per-attempt average in 2014 was second-worst in the league, but his improved 7.3 yards/attempt in 2015 was good for 15th.
Bortles’ improvement resulted in a fantastic DFS season. According to our Trends tool, he averaged an elite Plus/Minus of +6.82 on DraftKings during the 2015 season:
Bortles’ average expected points will likely not be as low in 2016, as his average salary will almost certainly be higher, but there is reason to believe that he will still be able to meet expectations consistently. Bortles’ 4.93-second 40-yard dash isn’t fast, but he’s still capable of picking up rushing yards. Since entering the league in 2014, Bortles is fifth among all quarterbacks with 729 rushing yards. His 24.3 rushing yards/game average is identical to that of Alex Smith. While Bortles needs to work on his bad habit of fumbling (he ‘leads’ all quarterbacks in fumbles since 2014), his extra rushing production gives him a high floor.
The fifth-best quarterback in 2015 in average DraftKings points per game, Bortles attempted more passes inside the 10-yard line than any other quarterback. That feat might not be repeatable in 2016. New running back Chris Ivory will almost certainly take away some of Bortles’ red-zone pass attempts, as Ivory led the league in rush attempts inside the 5-yard line last year. And with fewer pass attempts close to the goal-line, Bortles is unlikely to throw for 35 touchdown passes this year.
Bortles’ 2016 schedule opens with a stretch of soft opponents. Until the Jaguars travel to Kansas City in Week 9, Bortles will not face an opponent with a 2015 Opponent Plus/Minus higher than 17th. This first-half slate includes the Ravens in Week 3, the Bears in Week 6, and the Titans in Week 8: All of them finished 2015 ranked in the bottom eight in average quarterback fantasy points allowed per game.
Chad Henne
In eight NFL seasons, Henne has been painfully mediocre. His career average of 5.8 adjusted yards/attempt is uninspiring. In Henne’s defense, he has had two years with Brandon Marshall and six years with Ted Ginn, Davone Bess, and Cecil Shorts. If forced to start some games, Henne will have the best receiving duo of his career in Robinson and Hurns, but he’s still just a guy with fewer than two touchdowns in 39 of his 53 career starts. Henne will need a quarterback-friendly matchup to be relevant in 2016, and overall his presence under center would be massively negative for his receivers.
Running Back
Chris Ivory
It’s a given that more carries for any running back is a good thing. In 2015, Ivory took this idea to a new level (per the RotoViz Game Splits App):
Ivory in total averaged 11 more fantasy points per game when he hit the 20-carry threshold. Of course, he might not hit that threshold that often in 2016. Ivory is expected to be the starter and relied upon regularly, but T.J. Yeldon is a more complete back and will undoubtedly take touches away from Ivory. With a predicted 55/45 split in carries, Ivory will get his chances but likely will not be a true workhorse unless Yeldon and Denard Robinson both are out.
Where Ivory could shine in 2015 is in the red zone. Ivory has finished each of the past two seasons in the top three in rush attempts inside the opponent’s five-yard line. To say that the Jaguars have struggled to run the football in this area would be a massive understatement. In 2015, Yeldon, Robinson, and Toby Gerhart collectively produced exactly zero yards on 14 carries inside the five-yard line and punched the ball into the end zone just twice. Expect Ivory to get the first crack at curing the Jaguars’ goal-line woes. He could find himself as a weekly low-end RB1 option depending on how the carry distribution shakes out.
T.J. Yeldon
Yeldon’s 2015 yearlong Plus/Minus of +3.86 was certainly encouraging for the rookie, but last year he saw 15-plus touches in 75 percent of his games. That’s probably not going to happen this year. He could certainly be a productive runner in a more limited role, but his lack of explosion is concerning and limits his potential. In seven of 12 games last year, Yeldon didn’t have a play over 16 yards, a fact consistent with his slow 4.61-second 40-yard dash.
Additionally, Yeldon scored just two touchdowns on the season, suggesting that he’s more of a finesse back and less of a power back, despite his 6’1″ and 226 lb. frame. A good receiver for a back of his size, Yeldon had a solid fantasy floor last season because of his three receptions per game, but in 2016 his upside will be capped because of Ivory, even if he somehow sees the majority of touches among the running back corps. Last year, he couldn’t score touchdowns. This year, he won’t get the opportunity to try to score.
Denard Robinson
Shoelace is now in his fourth season as a full-time non-quarterback, and the results have been underwhelming. A career average of 4.1 yards/carry is a bit low for someone supposed to be an all-around playmaker, and the Jaguars seem to know it, as they scaled back his workload last season. In 42 career games, Robinson has just four with more than 15 carries. He has actually done well in those games, averaging 97.25 rushing yards and a touchdown per game. But the Jaguars don’t care.
With Ivory now on the roster, D-Rob is likely to see fewer than the 67 carries and 30 targets he saw last year.
Jonas Gray
Just for fun:
It’s great that Gray proved in that one game that he is capable of having an elite fantasy performance. The problem is that Gray has been a below-average running back for the other 15 games of his career. The Patriots love to run all over the Colts and based on Gray’s career it’s safe to say that his one shining moment may have had more to do with his team at the time and the opponent than his own skills.
Of course, on the off chance that Gray finds himself likely to get 37 carries in any given game this season against any given opponent, feel free to roster him.
Wide Receiver
Allen Robinson
On a fantasy points-per-game basis, Robinson has opened his career with top-10 all-time positional production, and in 2015 he had a very high season-long Plus/Minus of +6.19 on DraftKings, reaching his salary-based expectations 75 percent of the time:
The ability to be consistently great may be Robinson’s best fantasy attribute. Just twice in 2015 was Robinson held to fewer than 50 yards receiving. The first instance came in Week 1 against Josh Norman and the Panthers. The second came against the Colts later in the season — and A-Rob made up for this poor performance with a touchdown. On the strength of 9.4 targets per game, Robinson last year submitted an 80-reception, 1,400-yard, 14-touchdown campaign that ranked seventh among wide receivers in average DraftKings points per game.
If there’s a concern with Robinson’s game, it’s that his red-zone production may be inflated. Robinson turned 22 red-zone targets into 12 touchdowns in 2015, and inside the 10-yard line he converted 15 targets into eight touchdowns. Both of these touchdown totals were No. 1 in the NFL, and while Robinson’s 6’2” and 220 lb. frame makes for an ideal red-zone target the odds are high that his touchdown total will regress in 2016. The Jaguars probably didn’t sign Ivory so that he could watch the team throw the ball to Robinson at the goal-line.
Still, A-Rob is likely to be a weekly WR1 this year. In any game, he has the true potential to score multiple touchdowns.
Allen Hurns
Hurns is another Jaguar with a great season-long Plus/Minus (+5.65) on DraftKings, but basically that just means that DraftKings undervalued the entire offense for most of 2015. Hurns isn’t in Robinson’s league as a player, but he has still been able to produce as A-Rob’s wingman, last year submitting a 64-1,031-10 stat line that would make a lot of No. 1 receivers jealous. In 2015, Hurns surpassed 15 fantasy points six times, four of them coming in games in which Robinson also crossed that threshold. Hurns can produce even when A-Rob doesn’t do poorly. Historically, there’s a lot of meat on that bone.
It’s worth noting that Hurns’ dominance in 2015 was almost strictly on the road, where his Plus/Minus of +11.85 coincided with the Jaguars’ 1-7 road record. If anyone on offense suffers from the Jaguars’ improved defense in 2016 it might be Hurns.
Hurns joined a solid group of wide receivers to have over 1,000 yards receiving in their second seasons, and the Robinson-Hurns combo could prove to be even more effective in its third year. Hurns is locked in as a WR2 with the ability to put up points in a hurry (career 14.9 yards/reception average).
Rashad Greene
Greene’s 2015 stat line is something you might expect from a team’s third tight end. With 19 receptions for just 93 yards (and two touchdowns), Greene had a 4.9 yards/reception average that ranked dead last among all receivers with at least 30 targets in a season since 2000.
Greene’s average combine numbers and 5’11” and 182 lb. frame don’t offer much hope that his rookie season was an aberration, but we shouldn’t write off Greene just yet. 2015 still saw him provide a spark to the Jaguars’ return game (including this 73-yard punt return touchdown), and Greene’s collegiate 14.2 yards/reception as Jameis Winston’s go-to receiver in Florida State’s pro-style offense is very encouraging. With Robinson and Hurns occupying opposing defenses, Greene has the opportunity to be an undervalued (even if inconsistent) DFS contributor in 2016. It’s just a question as to whether he truly has the ability.
Marqise Lee
At one point, the Jaguars valued Lee more than Robinson, drafting Lee with the 39th pick and A-Rob with the 61st pick of the 2014 draft. Lee has never surpassed 75 yards receiving in any game of his two-year career, which is immensely disappointing considering that in 2012 he won the Bilentnikoff Award (given to the top receiver in college football). And he was great in college, averaging over 82 receptions, 1,200 yards, and nine touchdowns in his three seasons at Southern California.
But his style of play, combined with his smaller size and average athleticism, simply may not be conducive to NFL success. It might be easy to assume that Lee’s primary problem is that he hasn’t had sufficient opportunity to establish himself — but Lee has still failed to do much even in his nine career starts. And in his five career games with eight or more targets, he still hasn’t done all that well:
Don’t expect a big change from Lee in 2016.
Arrelious Benn
It has been three years since the former second-round pick played in an NFL game, but Benn is back. Healthy for now, Benn has once again impressed during offseason workouts. His career 14.6 yards/reception is exactly what the Jaguars offense could use . . . it’s just unlikely that the Jags could actually use him, as he’s rarely healthy and, when healthy, rarely good. He did have three receptions of 50-plus yards in his first two seasons — way back in 2010-11 — so if he still has his speed then he could contribute to the offense as an occasional field stretcher. But even then he’s unlikely to contribute as a DFS asset.
Bryan Walters
In 11 games of action in 2016, Walters turned 32 receptions into 368 yards and a touchdown. It was his first season with more than six receptions. Turning 29 in the middle of the 2016 campaign, Walters is a journeyman from Cornell who’s on the team because he’s smart and a good special teams player. If he sees 45 targets again in 2016, that won’t be a good development.
Tight End
Julius Thomas
It turns out that maybe Peyton Manning had a little something to do with Thomas’ rise to stardom. After back-to-back seasons with 12 touchdowns in 2013 and 2014, Thomas totaled just five touchdowns in 12 games in 2015. What changed? The quarterback throwing him the ball. Last year in Jacksonville, he had seven targets inside the 10-yard line in 12 games. In 2013 and 2014 combined, he had 17 such attempts in 27 games. On a per-game basis, Thomas was targeted similarly when near the goal-line. Here’s the difference: With Manning, he caught 82.3 percent of these passes. With Bortles, 42.9 percent.
In two years as Manning’s go-to tight end, Thomas averaged 5.63 targets per game. With Bortles last year, he averaged 6.67 targets per game. Thomas doesn’t have an ‘opportunity’ problem. He has a ‘Bortles’ problem. For Thomas to improve in 2016, he will need Bortles either to improve or to target him enough to compensate for his inaccuracy. Otherwise, he’ll just be what he is now: An explosive but inconsistent DFS asset.
Marcedes Lewis
The 32-year-old Lewis started 16 games in 2015 as the Jaguars’ blocking tight end but failed to make an impact at any point as a receiver. Even when Thomas was out the first four games of the season, Lewis did almost nothing: He had literally no catches in three of those games. A google news search for Lewis brings up more hits about his girlfriend, Olivia Pierson, who, by the way, matched Lewis in touchdowns last season. Yeah, Lewis once had 10 touchdowns in a season . . . around the same time that people watched Glee.
Two-Minute Warning
Here’s what’s important about the 2016 Jacksonville Jaguars: Bortles and Robinson have been statistically great to this point in their careers, Ivory and Yeldon will be splitting carries, and Hurns and Thomas will both be viable yet volatile, unless Bortles becomes a better passer. It’s not a given that Bortles will improve: He still led the league in interceptions and sacks last year.
If he does improve, even just a little bit, he and the rest of his teammates are likely to provide DFS value again in 2016.
