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?
New England Patriots Team Preview
Another year, another AFC East division title for New England. The 12-4 Patriots combined their perennial top-five scoring offense with the league’s 10th-ranked scoring defense on their way to their seventh straight division title. Major offseason storylines for the Patriots included signing former Bears tight end Martellus Bennett and trading defensive end Chandler Jones to Arizona. Oh, and quarterback Tom Brady is suspended for the first four games of the season.
The loss of Brady hasn’t changed Vegas’ outlook on the 2016 Patriots, as their 10.5-win total is tied for the highest in the league. Don’t ask head coach Bill Belichick about the Patriots’ Week 5 starter, but DO ask who the Patriots’ best fantasy options are for this season, because there are quite a few.
Quarterback
Tom Brady
Regardless of the decision process behind it, Brady will miss the first four games of the 2016 season (as of the writing of this article). It’s tough to predict if Angry Tom will play any differently after returning from his suspension, but if 2014 and 2015 are any indication Brady should save his best performances for Foxborough:
As our Trends tool shows, Brady recorded a Plus/Minus of +4.87 at home on DraftKings over the past two seasons, compared to a Plus/Minus of -0.14 on the road. This is a significant difference, as Brady’s actual point totals for his Home/Away splits represent two entirely different players. At home, Brady’s average of 23.88 fantasy points per game would have been good for the second-highest fantasy point average in 2015 among all quarterbacks. His road average of 18.61 fantasy points per game would have ranked just 23rd. (It is worth noting, though, that over the last 10 years Brady’s home/road splits have been nearly even at 24.31 pts. vs. 23.92 pts., per the RotoViz Game Splits App.)
Potential road issues aside, there is no reason to expect a drop-off in Brady’s 2016 fantasy performance. For most 39-year-old quarterbacks, a regression would be expected, but Brady has gotten only better in each of the past three seasons. He has to fall off at some point, but why 2016 in particular should be the year he declines is impossible to say.
Brady should have a fun first week back against a Cleveland defense that last year ranked 29th in average fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks, but after that Brady has a fairly difficult schedule. Dates with top-three defenses Cincinnati (Week 6), Seattle (Week 10), and Denver (Week 15) highlight Brady’s 10-game stretch that features just one defense ranked lower than 19th in 2015 average quarterback fantasy points allowed. Still, Brady has one of the highest weekly floors in the NFL thanks to his consistency: He threw for three-plus touchdowns or 300-plus yards in 9 of 16 games in 2016. He’ll be a strong DFS option every week.
Jimmy Garoppolo
In his two NFL seasons, Garoppolo has thrown just 31 passes, completing 20 of them for 188 yards and a touchdown. Most of the 2014 second-rounder’s ‘hype’ comes from his preseason performances as well as the idea that Belichick is an evil genius who can turn anybody on the planet into a productive fantasy option: Matt Cassell was a top-10 fantasy quarterback in 2008 after all. Garoppolo has indeed looked good (albeit conservative) in his brief preseason performances. Most notably, a 28-for-33 performance against the Saints in 2015 saw Garoppolo average 8.2 yards per attempt. Granted, that game was in the preseason and he hasn’t been all that good.
A quick news search of Garoppolo points out that he’s “wise beyond his years” and “has Tom Brady’s approval.” Maybe all of that is true, but trusting Garoppolo to make a large fantasy impact in his four starts is showing a lot of blind faith in Belichick and the Patriots’ receivers. Garoppolo has shown enough that we shouldn’t expect him to be a train wreck, but keep in mind that Brady has been the only Patriot to start at quarterback since 2008. Week 2 (Miami) and Week 4 (Buffalo) are Garoppolo’s best matchups, but it’s anyone’s guess as to how Garoppolo is likely to do.
Jacoby Brissett
Impressive in his preseason debut, Brissett is a larger, slightly more athletic version of Garoppolo. Unlike Garoppolo, Brissett is a rookie with limited collegiate production to his name. Brissett’s running ability (over 900 career yards rushing in college) could help Brissett’s transition to the NFL, but it will likely be at least a couple of years before Brissett is able to provide any type of fantasy value.
Tight End
Rob Gronkowski
The most productive fantasy tight end of all time on a points-per-game basis, Gronkowski has revolutionized the position — and DFS pricing. Nearly 50 percent more expensive than the tight end with the second-highest salary on DraftKings in Week 1, Gronk almost always costs a pretty penny to roster, but he has made the investment well worth it over the past two seasons:
A Plus/Minus of +4.86 (and his 73.3 percent Consistency) demonstrates just how dominant Gronkowski is. The Patriots No. 1 receiver, Gronk rarely left the field during his 15-game 2015 campaign. The presence of Bennett as the team’s second tight end is more likely to take snaps from Patriots wide receivers than from Gronk himself. Don’t overthink this. Gronk is just 27 years old and has missed just two games combined over his past two seasons: He is locked in as the TE1. Paying up for him might not always be the ideal move when constructing rosters, but in a vacuum he is almost always worth the money invested in him.
Martellus Bennett
Bennett finds himself on his fourth NFL team despite being a successful NFL player. A 6’7” and 248 lb. beast, the Black Unicorn posted a Plus/Minus of +2.28 in his injury-shortened 11-game 2015 season, and in 2014 was the No. 4 tight end in the NFL in DraftKings scoring. He could do very well under the direction of Mr. Belichick, the president of the two-tight end club.
With Patriots beat writers reporting that the team may play both Bennett and Gronk on up to 80 percent of the team’s snaps, the Patriots may finally have the tight end to replace Aaron Hernandez. A strong athlete, Bennett isn’t as agile as Hernandez, but he’s substantially bigger and basically just as fast. Because of his sound blocking skills, he actually might offer more versatility than Hernandez did.
In the two-year period in which he and Hernandez were both integral parts of the offense, Gronk was actually more productive with Hernandez than without him:
Remember how I mentioned that Gronkowski is the No. 1 tight end ever in average fantasy points per game? Well, Hernandez is No. 5. Two tight ends can absolutely dominate together in New England.
Bennett has the chance to be the Patriots’ No. 2 receiver if Edelman’s foot gives him issues, and it would almost be surprising if Bennett didn’t top his career high of six touchdowns in 2016.
Clay Harbor
Harbor has never had more than 292 yards and two touchdowns in a season, but he is a more skilled receiving threat than these numbers indicate, as he has caught 68.1 percent of his career targets for 7.1 yards per target. For comparison, Bennett has a 66.4 percent catch rate for 6.9 yards per target.
Additionally, Harbor is an elite athlete, with a SPARQ-x rating of 137.5, which puts him in the 95th percentile for all tight ends. For reference, Gronk and Bennett’s SPARQ-x scores are just 112.9 and 104.9. In the event of a Gronk or Bennett injury, it’s likely that the offense may shift away from some of the two-tight end sets, but Harbor does possess some nice potential if the Patriots decide to give him some action in his first year with the team. It doesn’t hurt that he’s versatile enough also to play H-back and fullback.
Running Back
Dion Lewis
The latest Patriots running back to come from absolutely nowhere to become a fantasy asset, Lewis averaged just over 12 touches per game in his injury-shortened seven-game 2015 season, but he did not disappoint. A Plus/Minus of +7.36 was the result, and Lewis’ season average of 17.31 DraftKings points per game was good for sixth at the position.
Sadly, the reality for the 5’7” and 193 lb. Lewis is that he may not be able to handle a full NFL workload. Per Jim McBride of The Boston Globe, Lewis has had a second knee surgery stemming from his torn ACL suffered in November. Lewis’ timetable to return is unknown, but because the surgery is a “clean-up” it appears that Lewis may miss only six games or so instead of 16.
Even if Lewis does return in 2016, reports indicate that he may have a smaller workload in the hope of preserving him for the playoffs. This isn’t much of a surprise: Last season Lewis went from receiving over 70 percent of the team’s running back carries and targets in his first two games to crossing the 40 percent threshold just once in his remaining five games. Of course, because he was getting so many targets he was able to stay so productive.
Assuming that Lewis’ last five games are a better indication of what we can expect his role to be in 2016, we can still expect a healthy Lewis to do well as a fantasy asset (he averaged a Plus/Minus of +4.24 and an average of 16.08 fantasy points in these games), but his value as usual will mostly derive from his receiving ability (he averaged just over five carries per game in his final five games). The key word in that last, long sentence was ‘healthy.’
LeGarrette Blount
Remember how much fun rookie year LeGarrette Blount was? Man, 2010 was so si-zick.
Anyway, as for Blount’s current situation, he should feast now that Lewis is out with an injury, right?
Last year, Blount was actually better with Lewis than without him. Blount’s in-split numbers are inflated due to his three-touchdown performance against the Jaguars in Week 3, and Blount was also dealing with a hip injury during the latter part of 2015 when Lewis was out, but the point is clear: Blount and Lewis coexisted in 2015 well enough. Both averaged over 12 fantasy points per game through the Patriots first eight games. Blount might be actually get more more opportunities in an offense that features a good pass-catching back who can move the chains and extend drives.
Regardless, Blount’s ability to accumulate carries and score touchdowns makes him an important piece of this offense. Blount will likely be the goal-line back in 2016, and he has scored seven touchdowns in his last 16 attempts inside the five-yard line. Exactly how often Blount will be utilized in 2016 is somewhat of a mystery, but Blount still has the ability to rack up fantasy points regardless, thanks to his touchdown upside.
And if he becomes a true two-down grinder who gets a lot of touches in the absence of Lewis, there are certainly worse things.
James White
White is the Patriot’s back most likely to benefit from Lewis’ absence, but White doesn’t have Lewis’ upside. In 2015, White had more receptions than he did rushes, which makes sense: White’s 2.5 yards/carry was sixth-worst in the entire NFL among all running backs to get at least 20 carries.
Still, White was able to post a season-long Plus/Minus of +3.27 thanks to six total touchdowns and a respectable 410 receiving yards on 40 receptions. And in the last five games of 2015, he averaged 5.6 receptions for 63 yards per game. It’s unlikely that White would ever be THE featured back in New England, but he has a decent chance of replicating his 2015 performance as a poor man’s Lewis as long as the real man’s Lewis is out.
Brandon Bolden
After receiving more than six touches just once through week 12, BB v.2.0 ended 2015 as the Patriots’ lead back. Bolden failed to do much with his 13-plus touches per game in that stretch, averaging just 7.28 fantasy points in Weeks 13-16. Primarily a special-teams player who has been with the Patriots for four years, Bolden lacks great straight-line speed, but he is still a big-bodied runner who is agile and can catch the ball (65.7 percent career catch rate).
Still, Bolden has failed to average more than 3.3 yards per carry over the past two seasons. At best, he’s an uninspiring version of BenJarvus Green-Ellis, and that’s if he gets playing time. At worst, he makes the roster because of his special-teams value and he prevents someone more intriguing from actually making the team.
Tyler Gaffney
Entering his third year in the league, Gaffney is yet to see an NFL carry because of season-ending injuries in each of the past two preseasons. The last time he was played in a regular season game, Gaffney was a senior at Stanford, racking up 1,709 yards rushing along with 22 total touchdowns back in 2013. Gaffney’s career 5.1 yards/carry is concerning at first glance (as is his senior-year reception total of 15), but Gaffney is a 5’11” and 220 lb. guy who can run a 40-yard dash in under 4.50 seconds.
An electric preseason debut saw Gaffney rack up 64 yards rushing, including a pretty 44-yard touchdown run. We know that we shouldn’t let one preseason run shape our opinion of a player, but Gaffney certainly appears capable of playing in the NFL. It’s just a question of whether he can stay healthy and make the Pats’ roster.
Wide Receiver
Julian Edelman
It appears that Edelman’s recent injury scare was nothing, but the fact remains that Edelman has missed 16 games over the past four seasons. The seven games Edelman missed in 2015 were especially painful for fantasy owners, as Edelman’s nine-game average projected over an entire 16-game season would have been good for 108 receptions, 1,230 yards and 12 touchdowns, all of which would have been career highs.
As with any player, Edelman’s success hinges on his ability to stay healthy, but there is real Wes Welker 2.0 potential here. Going back to the 2011 and 2012 seasons when the Patriots ran a two-tight end system, Gronk and Hernandez were the Patriots’ Nos. 2 and 3 receivers. The No. 1 receiver was Welker, who accounted for a per-season average of 120 receptions for 1,461 yards and 7.5 touchdowns over the two years. Having only one ball to go around is a very real problem in a lot of fantasy scenarios, but not in New England for Brady’s three best targets.
With Danny Amendola on the Physically Unable to Perform list and new/unproven receivers Chris Hogan and Malcolm Mitchell filling out the Patriots’ receiver depth chart, Edelman has a big opportunity to accumulate an obscene number of targets, given his reliability and chemistry with Brady and the pace at which the offense plays. Edelman is being priced as a WR2 ($6,100 on DraftKings), but make no mistake about it: He’s a high-floor WR1 on a weekly basis when he’s healthy.
Chris Hogan
Hogan has been in the league for five seasons and with the Bills he was actually targeted an average of 60 times per season over the last two years — but he’s always going to be remembered as ‘7-Eleven’: The lacrosse player who decided to pick up football his final season of college. And Hogan definitely has the ahtleticism of a guy who played two sports in college. With a SPARQ-x score of 135.4, Hogan is in the 99th percentile among all wide receivers as an all-around athlete. He’s big (6’1” and 220 lbs.), fast, and agile. Now, Hogan is yet to surpass 500 yards or five touchdowns on a season, but it’s safe to say that Brady will be an upgrade from E.J. Manual and Tyrod Taylor.
It’s not a certainty that Hogan will win the No. 2 receiver spot, but he has the ability to be a 2014 Brandon LaFell-esque weapon in this offense. Unfortunately, Hogan will likely not see enough opportunity to be a consistent fantasy option as long as the Patriots have their full arsenal of running backs and tight ends. Be he could absolutely be the type of guy who occasionally has the big games that are sought in GPPs.
Malcolm Mitchell
Mitchell is a rookie receiver with great speed (4.45-second 40-yard dash) but not much college production to show for it. His senior season with the Georgia Bulldogs resulted in underwhelming career highs of 58 receptions, 856 yards and five touchdowns. Still, Mitchell has a chance to open the season as the starting X receiver. Still, even if he wins the job it’s hard to imagine him stealing enough targets from the other players to warrant much fantasy consideration.
Danny Amendola
Currently on the PUP, Amendola faces an uphill climb to get back into the starting lineup. He has played in all 16 games just once in his seven-year career and has never scored more than three receiving touchdowns in a season. Still, Amendola showed that he can thrive in the Patriots offense if given enough opportunity. In the six 2015 games in which he was targeted at least eight times he averaged 18.08 DraftKings points per game. If Edelman suffers an injury and Amendola assumes his role, he will likely be a player who is more than just viable . . . until he suffers an injury himself.
Aaron Dobson
After an encouraging rookie season saw Dobson produce over 500 yards, he has suffered an array of leg injuries that have limited him to just 12 total games played over the last two season. Dobson is Brady’s largest wide receiver at 6’3” and 210 lbs. Of course, who needs a big wide receiver when Gronk and Bennett are on the team? Still, Dobson has excellent speed, and he showed big-play ability as a rookie with two receptions going for over 50 yards. Dobson’s upside makes him a receiver to keep an eye on if given a role in the Patriot’s offense. His downside makes it likely that he won’t ever be given a consistent role.
Two-Minute Warning
Brady’s early absence and their somewhat difficult schedule means that the Patriots are more vulnerable than they have been in years past. It’s hard to imagine Taylor, Ryan Fitzpatrick, or Ryan Tannehill, seizing the AFC East crown, but weirder things have happened.
The Patriots have been a top-five scoring offense every year since 2010. Don’t expect that to change in 2016. Brady has always gotten the most out of his weapons, but this year’s trio of Gronk, Edelman, and Bennett may be the best he has had since 2012. The Patriots are poised to inflate fantasy football totals everywhere in 2016.
