Contributions from Joshua Hudson, Chris Molina, Joe Zollo, & Chris TylerI really liked the Bills draft class. Ed Oliver is so good, HC Sean McDermott should find ample ways to deploy his new defensive centerpiece. Cody Ford was equal parts need and value, and should help immensely in clearing ways for the team’s running game. Devin Singletary was a workhorse at FAU who scored a ton of touchdowns. Dawson Knox should see the field plenty as newly-signed Free Agent TE Tyler Kroft is already sidelined due to injury. Vosean Joseph and Jaquan Johnson were great value picks to enhance an already outstanding defense. The Bills should contend for a playoff spot and are setting themselves up for success once Tom Brady finally rides off into the sunset. – The Hudsonian, Joshua HudsonThe offense will live and die at the hands of second-year QB Josh Allen. The Bills spent the off-season surrounding him with enough weapons to help him flourish. They added Frank Gore (the Ageless One), T.J. Yeldon, and rookie Devin Singletary to boost the running game; John Brown and Cole Beasley to compliment the improving Zay Jones and Robert Foster; and Tyler Kroft and Dawson Knox to provide stability in the short to intermediate passing game. It will be fun to watch Allen mature as his upside in 2019 is nothing short of mesmerizing. – The Hudsonian, Joshua HudsonAfter returning to fantasy relevancy after several injury-plagued seasons in Arizona, John Brown started off hot during his one-year audition in Baltimore. His 2018 is a Tale of Two Quarterbacks.During the first half of 2018 when Joe Flacco was guiding the Ravens offense, Brown had 67 targets, leading to 34 catches, 601 yards, and four touchdowns. He was WR22 over the first nine weeks of the fantasy season. Then came Flacco’s injury and their bye week. From Week 11 through season’s end, Brown had 30 targets leading to eight catches, 114 yards, and one touchdown. Brown was a forgotten piece of the offense with Lamar Jackson and the Ravens moving more toward a ground-and-pound approach. Brown heads to Buffalo where their QB (Josh Allen) also is mobile and has no issue throwing the football, but his cannon leads me to the upside of Brown in Buffalo.Josh Allen, had he qualified, would’ve led the NFL in aDOT (average depth of target) at 11.2. Buffalo receivers had some of the highest aDOT in the league as a result. Robert Foster, who came on late in 2018 with Allen from Week 12 on, had an aDOT of 22.9. He also averaged 14.9 fantasy points a game from Weeks 12-16, putting him at WR15. Brown, among WRs with more than 50 targets, was fifth at 16.0 aDOT in 2018. Do you see where I’m going with this? The Bills don’t have a de facto number one receiver, but they have guys like Brown and Foster who can get down field and break a game open. Brown’s current ADP is WR64 in Round 17 (meaning, in a lot of drafts, he’s not even being drafted). Brown was top 25 for the first half of last year. He’ll be streaky, but for a late round flyer with top 30 upside, how can you go wrong? – The Hudsonian, Joshua HudsonLeSean McCoy is on his way out, and not just from Buffalo. Given his age, his career could be coming to a close soon as well. If anything, Karma will surely get the best of him after he deliberately spoiled Avengers: Endgame within the first weekend the movie was out. What a douche. A prominent fantasy football pundit, one who actually had a cameo in the movie, decided to point out all of Shady’s worst stats from a year ago. I guess I now have to find a few more reasons to convince you that Shady is a hard pass during this year’s fantasy drafts.Shady’s current ADP on Sleeper is RB37 at 88 overall, so in the ninth round of 10-team leagues. Last season, the worst starting RB finished as RB31 (Peyton Barber). If Shady plays the whole season, I’m sure you’ll get top 30 numbers from him and in the ninth or tenth round; you could do worse. He has finished the last two seasons with the lowest yards per carry averages of his career. In 2017, his age 29 season, he took his 4.0 YPC and still finished as RB7. It was also the only year in his four seasons in Buffalo he managed to play a full 16 games. He limped through 14 games a year ago, after an off-season that saw the Bills trade a stud left tackle (Cordy Glenn) and lose two others (Eric Wood & Richie Incognito) to retirement . (Incognito has since returned to the league after a year-long hiatus.) Losing three-fifths of your starting line is an easy way to predict regression. At least Shady’s 2018 was (somewhat) predictable. With the arrival of rookie QB Josh Allen, Shady should’ve had more room to run. Remember his glory days in Philly with Michael Vick? Running QBs have helped Shady out for years, and yet his best game with Allen at QB yielded 12.8 fantasy points (in Week 5). Abysmal.The Bills spent the off-season bringing in offensive talent to help out their young QB, and three of those additions (Frank Gore, T.J. Yeldon, and rookie Devin Singletary) were at the running back position. They also added C Mitch Morse in free agency and drafted OL Cody Ford in the second round. Shady is in the last year of his contract with no bonus money due. If the Bills decide to move on from him in Training Camp, it won’t cost them anything this year and only $2.65 million in dead money in 2020 (according to overthecap.com). The three new RBs are more than capable of carrying the load for the Bills, leaving Shady’s present and future very cloudy. These are all reasons I won’t be drafting Shady this year. – The Hudsonian, Joshua HudsonWho is familiar with Roulette? It’s a game where you have a choice of betting on the color of a number, numbers themselves, sections, rows, or any combinations thereof. The dealer then launches the ball on the spinning wheel, and you wait to see which number it lands on. That was kind of the Bills offense last year. For the majority of the season, you had nobody to trust, so when you called your shot on a certain player, your odds resembled the low odds of betting on a number in roulette. What about this year? The last five games of the year for the Bills, and the offensive acquisitions made in the off-season, signal a candidate for this year’s trust fall: QB Josh Allen. He finished last year as QB28, but let me tell you why you can trust (or “bet”) on him this year.Last year, Allen passed for 2,074 yards and 10 touchdowns. He also ran for 631 yards and eight touchdowns. The sub-par passing statistics and outstanding rushing output were a result of only starting 11 games (he played in 12). Sure, he was QB28 in 11 starts, but in 16 starts those numbers would have extrapolated into 2,766 passing yards, 13 passing touchdowns, 832 rushing yards, and 11 rushing touchdowns. That’s 348 fantasy points in Club Fantasy scoring, putting him at approximately QB11 (Philip Rivers was QB10 with 351.98 points). Seems pretty trustworthy on a team where it might be hard to trust anyone, right?Allen also got off to an extremely slow start. Seven of his ten passing touchdowns were in the last month of the season. In fact, Josh Allen came back in Week 12 after missing four games. From week 12 to week 16, he was the QB5 in fantasy (1,082 passing yards/7 TDs/377 rushing yards/4 TDs). If you extrapolate those numbers into a 16-game season, he would have had 3,490 passing yards, 22 passing touchdowns, 1,216 rushing yards, and 13 rushing touchdowns. That would have contended with Patrick Mahomes for the QB1 title (449.2 fantasy points, not accounting for potential bonus points).I am not arguing he will be a 1,000-yard rusher or will throw for 3,400 yards through the air. I am not arguing he will be QB1 next year (but I’m hopeful though), QB6, or anywhere in between. This year, he’s going as QB18 in mock drafts (ADP: 11.12). I am arguing, for that price, he has a better chance of being a top 10 QB, as opposed to his draft position. I mean, he’s going behind Jimmy Average (Garoppolo), for crying out loud. If you find yourself without a QB in the 11th/12th round and Josh Allen is on the table, then trust you are likely taking a top 10 QB. There is absolutely no risk involved. – Chris MolinaVirtually unstoppable in college as a runner, Devin Singletary rushed for 4,287 yards and scored 66 times in his career. For him to be a three down back in college for his size is crazy, but what’s crazier is how patient he is when reading his offensive line. Combined with his patience, the game speed Singletary has is very impressive. Over the course of last season, he had five games of over 100 yards, including one against UCF. As a receiver, he caught 51 passes for 397 yards, which means he can make plays out of the backfield as well. With the teachings of Lesean McCoy and Frank Gore, Devin Singletary will be an impressive back in NFL next season and for many seasons to come. – Chris TylerOne of the best receivers to start the 2018 fantasy season, and one of the worst to end the 2018 fantasy season. John Brown joins his third team in three years, and he is most known for his straight-line speed and big play ability. While he may not scream “prototypical deep threat,” as he is only 5’11 and 178 pounds, he certainly knows how to produce. Last season, he caught 42 passes for 715 yards and five touchdowns, which equates to 17 yards per reception. Remember, Joe Flacco was his Quarterback to start the year, and we all know Flacco. Even though he has fallen off, he still has one of the best downfield arms in the NFL, and that is where John Brown made his living in fantasy. Add Josh Allen, who can only throw the ball 20+ yards downfield, and it is a perfect marriage. Cole Beasley may not have a single catch due to Josh Allen’s ineptitude of throwing the short pass, but John Brown is lined up for a career season in Buffalo. He is currently averaging WR63 in drafts right now. That is criminal. – Joe ZolloArguably one of the best young defenses in the NFL, the Buffalo Bills have talent in all areas of the field. Does that talent translate to fantasy points? On the defensive line, rookie Ed Oliver begins his next step after playing at Houston, but I do not see immediate fantasy impact out of him. The name everyone knows is long-time veteran Jerry Hughes. Hughes was once a 100+ point scorer, but he has not been like that since 2015. If you want to take a chance on Ed Oliver, do it as a backup; there isn’t much to look at on the defensive line for fantasy football. Looking at the Linebackers, second-year man out of Virginia Tech, Tremaine Edmunds, made his mark as a rookie raking in 214 fantasy points, good enough for LB16 in 2018. He will continue this momentum into 2019, and could possibly crack the Top 10 if he continues to be the incredible force he was in his rookie season. In the secondary, Micah Hyde takes the cake as the name everyone knows, but the guy who will get you more fantasy points is Jordan Poyer. He had a career year with over 100 tackles, and he tacked on four interceptions with a couple sacks. He has scored 190+ points the past two seasons, and I don’t see why he couldn’t continue to do that again. Micah Hyde had a fantastic 2017, but he still did not have as many points as Poyer did that same season. Hyde is definitely not a bad pick due to his punt returning ability and ball-hawking nature, but Poyer is more consistent and will give you a better option every week.
I really liked the Bills draft class. Ed Oliver is so good, HC Sean McDermott should find ample ways to deploy his new defensive centerpiece. Cody Ford was equal parts need and value, and should help immensely in clearing ways for the team’s running game. Devin Singletary was a workhorse at FAU who scored a ton of touchdowns. Dawson Knox should see the field plenty as newly-signed Free Agent TE Tyler Kroft is already sidelined due to injury. Vosean Joseph and Jaquan Johnson were great value picks to enhance an already outstanding defense. The Bills should contend for a playoff spot and are setting themselves up for success once Tom Brady finally rides off into the sunset. – The Hudsonian, Joshua Hudson
The offense will live and die at the hands of second-year QB Josh Allen. The Bills spent the off-season surrounding him with enough weapons to help him flourish. They added Frank Gore (the Ageless One), T.J. Yeldon, and rookie Devin Singletary to boost the running game; John Brown and Cole Beasley to compliment the improving Zay Jones and Robert Foster; and Tyler Kroft and Dawson Knox to provide stability in the short to intermediate passing game. It will be fun to watch Allen mature as his upside in 2019 is nothing short of mesmerizing. – The Hudsonian, Joshua Hudson
After returning to fantasy relevancy after several injury-plagued seasons in Arizona, John Brown started off hot during his one-year audition in Baltimore. His 2018 is a Tale of Two Quarterbacks.
During the first half of 2018 when Joe Flacco was guiding the Ravens offense, Brown had 67 targets, leading to 34 catches, 601 yards, and four touchdowns. He was WR22 over the first nine weeks of the fantasy season. Then came Flacco’s injury and their bye week. From Week 11 through season’s end, Brown had 30 targets leading to eight catches, 114 yards, and one touchdown. Brown was a forgotten piece of the offense with Lamar Jackson and the Ravens moving more toward a ground-and-pound approach. Brown heads to Buffalo where their QB (Josh Allen) also is mobile and has no issue throwing the football, but his cannon leads me to the upside of Brown in Buffalo.
Josh Allen, had he qualified, would’ve led the NFL in aDOT (average depth of target) at 11.2. Buffalo receivers had some of the highest aDOT in the league as a result. Robert Foster, who came on late in 2018 with Allen from Week 12 on, had an aDOT of 22.9. He also averaged 14.9 fantasy points a game from Weeks 12-16, putting him at WR15. Brown, among WRs with more than 50 targets, was fifth at 16.0 aDOT in 2018. Do you see where I’m going with this? The Bills don’t have a de facto number one receiver, but they have guys like Brown and Foster who can get down field and break a game open. Brown’s current ADP is WR64 in Round 17 (meaning, in a lot of drafts, he’s not even being drafted). Brown was top 25 for the first half of last year. He’ll be streaky, but for a late round flyer with top 30 upside, how can you go wrong? – The Hudsonian, Joshua Hudson
LeSean McCoy is on his way out, and not just from Buffalo. Given his age, his career could be coming to a close soon as well. If anything, Karma will surely get the best of him after he deliberately spoiled Avengers: Endgame within the first weekend the movie was out. What a douche. A prominent fantasy football pundit, one who actually had a cameo in the movie, decided to point out all of Shady’s worst stats from a year ago. I guess I now have to find a few more reasons to convince you that Shady is a hard pass during this year’s fantasy drafts.
Shady’s current ADP on Sleeper is RB37 at 88 overall, so in the ninth round of 10-team leagues. Last season, the worst starting RB finished as RB31 (Peyton Barber). If Shady plays the whole season, I’m sure you’ll get top 30 numbers from him and in the ninth or tenth round; you could do worse. He has finished the last two seasons with the lowest yards per carry averages of his career. In 2017, his age 29 season, he took his 4.0 YPC and still finished as RB7. It was also the only year in his four seasons in Buffalo he managed to play a full 16 games. He limped through 14 games a year ago, after an off-season that saw the Bills trade a stud left tackle (Cordy Glenn) and lose two others (Eric Wood & Richie Incognito) to retirement . (Incognito has since returned to the league after a year-long hiatus.) Losing three-fifths of your starting line is an easy way to predict regression. At least Shady’s 2018 was (somewhat) predictable. With the arrival of rookie QB Josh Allen, Shady should’ve had more room to run. Remember his glory days in Philly with Michael Vick? Running QBs have helped Shady out for years, and yet his best game with Allen at QB yielded 12.8 fantasy points (in Week 5). Abysmal.
The Bills spent the off-season bringing in offensive talent to help out their young QB, and three of those additions (Frank Gore, T.J. Yeldon, and rookie Devin Singletary) were at the running back position. They also added C Mitch Morse in free agency and drafted OL Cody Ford in the second round. Shady is in the last year of his contract with no bonus money due. If the Bills decide to move on from him in Training Camp, it won’t cost them anything this year and only $2.65 million in dead money in 2020 (according to overthecap.com). The three new RBs are more than capable of carrying the load for the Bills, leaving Shady’s present and future very cloudy. These are all reasons I won’t be drafting Shady this year. – The Hudsonian, Joshua Hudson
Who is familiar with Roulette? It’s a game where you have a choice of betting on the color of a number, numbers themselves, sections, rows, or any combinations thereof. The dealer then launches the ball on the spinning wheel, and you wait to see which number it lands on. That was kind of the Bills offense last year. For the majority of the season, you had nobody to trust, so when you called your shot on a certain player, your odds resembled the low odds of betting on a number in roulette. What about this year? The last five games of the year for the Bills, and the offensive acquisitions made in the off-season, signal a candidate for this year’s trust fall: QB Josh Allen. He finished last year as QB28, but let me tell you why you can trust (or “bet”) on him this year.
Last year, Allen passed for 2,074 yards and 10 touchdowns. He also ran for 631 yards and eight touchdowns. The sub-par passing statistics and outstanding rushing output were a result of only starting 11 games (he played in 12). Sure, he was QB28 in 11 starts, but in 16 starts those numbers would have extrapolated into 2,766 passing yards, 13 passing touchdowns, 832 rushing yards, and 11 rushing touchdowns. That’s 348 fantasy points in Club Fantasy scoring, putting him at approximately QB11 (Philip Rivers was QB10 with 351.98 points). Seems pretty trustworthy on a team where it might be hard to trust anyone, right?
Allen also got off to an extremely slow start. Seven of his ten passing touchdowns were in the last month of the season. In fact, Josh Allen came back in Week 12 after missing four games. From week 12 to week 16, he was the QB5 in fantasy (1,082 passing yards/7 TDs/377 rushing yards/4 TDs). If you extrapolate those numbers into a 16-game season, he would have had 3,490 passing yards, 22 passing touchdowns, 1,216 rushing yards, and 13 rushing touchdowns. That would have contended with Patrick Mahomes for the QB1 title (449.2 fantasy points, not accounting for potential bonus points).
I am not arguing he will be a 1,000-yard rusher or will throw for 3,400 yards through the air. I am not arguing he will be QB1 next year (but I’m hopeful though), QB6, or anywhere in between. This year, he’s going as QB18 in mock drafts (ADP: 11.12). I am arguing, for that price, he has a better chance of being a top 10 QB, as opposed to his draft position. I mean, he’s going behind Jimmy Average (Garoppolo), for crying out loud. If you find yourself without a QB in the 11th/12th round and Josh Allen is on the table, then trust you are likely taking a top 10 QB. There is absolutely no risk involved. – Chris Molina
Virtually unstoppable in college as a runner, Devin Singletary rushed for 4,287 yards and scored 66 times in his career. For him to be a three down back in college for his size is crazy, but what’s crazier is how patient he is when reading his offensive line. Combined with his patience, the game speed Singletary has is very impressive. Over the course of last season, he had five games of over 100 yards, including one against UCF. As a receiver, he caught 51 passes for 397 yards, which means he can make plays out of the backfield as well. With the teachings of Lesean McCoy and Frank Gore, Devin Singletary will be an impressive back in NFL next season and for many seasons to come. – Chris Tyler
One of the best receivers to start the 2018 fantasy season, and one of the worst to end the 2018 fantasy season. John Brown joins his third team in three years, and he is most known for his straight-line speed and big play ability. While he may not scream “prototypical deep threat,” as he is only 5’11 and 178 pounds, he certainly knows how to produce. Last season, he caught 42 passes for 715 yards and five touchdowns, which equates to 17 yards per reception. Remember, Joe Flacco was his Quarterback to start the year, and we all know Flacco. Even though he has fallen off, he still has one of the best downfield arms in the NFL, and that is where John Brown made his living in fantasy. Add Josh Allen, who can only throw the ball 20+ yards downfield, and it is a perfect marriage. Cole Beasley may not have a single catch due to Josh Allen’s ineptitude of throwing the short pass, but John Brown is lined up for a career season in Buffalo. He is currently averaging WR63 in drafts right now. That is criminal. – Joe Zollo
Arguably one of the best young defenses in the NFL, the Buffalo Bills have talent in all areas of the field. Does that talent translate to fantasy points? On the defensive line, rookie Ed Oliver begins his next step after playing at Houston, but I do not see immediate fantasy impact out of him. The name everyone knows is long-time veteran Jerry Hughes. Hughes was once a 100+ point scorer, but he has not been like that since 2015. If you want to take a chance on Ed Oliver, do it as a backup; there isn’t much to look at on the defensive line for fantasy football.
Looking at the Linebackers, second-year man out of Virginia Tech, Tremaine Edmunds, made his mark as a rookie raking in 214 fantasy points, good enough for LB16 in 2018. He will continue this momentum into 2019, and could possibly crack the Top 10 if he continues to be the incredible force he was in his rookie season.
In the secondary, Micah Hyde takes the cake as the name everyone knows, but the guy who will get you more fantasy points is Jordan Poyer. He had a career year with over 100 tackles, and he tacked on four interceptions with a couple sacks. He has scored 190+ points the past two seasons, and I don’t see why he couldn’t continue to do that again. Micah Hyde had a fantastic 2017, but he still did not have as many points as Poyer did that same season. Hyde is definitely not a bad pick due to his punt returning ability and ball-hawking nature, but Poyer is more consistent and will give you a better option every week.