Heading into the 2020 draft season, you need to be prepared to dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge the players who will tank your season because you spent too high of a pick, or didn’t get the expected production from. Below, we’re dissecting some of the biggest fantasy football busts for the 2020 season.
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Awesemo’s Fantasy Football Busts: Top Three Busts 2020
Joe Mixon (RB – CIN)
Every season we come across a handful of fantasy darlings who have garnered consensus high praise from across the industry. Many times it’s warranted, and those players go on to have memorable statistical seasons. Other times the excessive hype drives up their ADP and the results never materialize. That could be the case with Mixon in 2020, who possesses elite skills but might have more forces working against him than for him this season.
There’s a lot to break down here, so let’s start with the Bengals as a whole. Cincinnati’s win total of 5.5 is tied for third-lowest in football ahead of only Jacksonville and Washington. They’ll be in an unenviable position again this season, tasked with facing Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Cleveland twice each. And while Joe Burrow is the face of the Bengals’ future, is he, in his rookie campaign, ready to take this offense to a level Andy Dalton couldn’t?
Mixon’s rushing yards prop on DraftKings Sportsbook is 1,150.5, a solid number, no doubt. But he can’t be expected to see the same scoring opportunities as other running backs with similar rushing projections given the paltry outlook for Cincinnati. There’s also limited pass-catching upside with Mixon, who has never recorded a 300-yard receiving year in his three seasons with the Bengals.
Here’s where things get interesting: All four of Mixon’s 100-yard games from 2019 came in the second half of the season, where he averaged 102.1 yards on 22.1 carries and 4.6 yards per carry over his final eight starts. His first eight games were a colossal disappointment, however, averaging 40.1 yards on 12.6 carries and 3.2 yards per carry. There’s reason to believe the Bengals offensive line improved considerably over the course of last season and should pick up in 2020 where they left off last year, but they still ranked bottom 26 in adjusted line yards (FootballOutsiders) and running back yards after 16 games.
There are a lot of question marks here, including whether or not A.J. Green can stay healthy and how the offensive line will hold up after showing signs of improvement late in the year.
Ultimately, Mixon’s success will live or die on Burrow’s ability to produce in his inaugural year. If Burrow struggles to move the ball downfield, Mixon will have a much more difficult time getting anything going each week. Conversely, Mixon could finish as a top-five running back if Cincinnati’s offense shows improvement. Nevertheless, and despite the clear first-round upside, Mixon makes for a very risky pick with an ADP of eighth overall.
Amari Cooper (WR – DAL)
Cooper will have a few weeks each season where he carries you to a win. He’s recorded a 200-yard game in each of his last three seasons and is one of the more explosive downfield threats in football, sporting a 12.5 average depth of target and hauling in the second-most receptions (15) and touchdowns (5) on deep attempts last year. He’s also liable to completely disappear; Cooper was targeted five or fewer times on six different occasions in 2019, while finishing with less than 50 receiving yards in seven of 16 weeks.
There were several weeks where Cooper was virtually invisible, and almost all of them came against strong opposing corners. In Week 6 Cooper caught one of two targets for three yards against the Jets. In Week 11 he hauled in three of eight targets for 38 yards against Darius Slay and the Lions. He was completely blanked in Week 12 by Stephon Gilmore and managed one reception on two targets for 19 yards against the Rams in Week 15.
We shouldn’t overlook Cooper’s productive season as a whole (79/1189/8), but we should be apprehensive when it comes to drafting him in the early-to-middle third round. Not only is Cooper subject to pulling a Houdini on any given Sunday, but he’ll now have more competition for targets after the Cowboys spent a mid-first round pick on CeeDee Lamb.
Dak Prescott proved in 2019 that he’s not afraid to spread the ball around. While Cooper led the team with 119 targets, he was also an afterthought in more than a third of Dallas’ games. Maybe Randall Cobb’s departure will mitigate the arrival of Lamb, but we should still be searching for more consistency at such a high ADP. Furthermore, a dominant run game in Dallas has been known to suppress Cooper’s workload in games where he isn’t needed.
When we project for a player to not live up to his ADP, it’s critical to evaluate the players being drafted immediately before and after him — in this case at the wide receiver position. Allen Robinson is being drafted in a near identical position to Cooper despite seeing 34 additional targets, 19 more receptions and only 42 fewer receiving yards and one fewer touchdown than Cooper last year. Robinson finished with 254.9 PPR points to Cooper’s 246.5, and the Bears receiver was hamstrung by poor quarterback play from Mitchell Trubisky all season long. Nick Foles will never replicate his miraculous 2017 Super Bowl run, but he is unquestionably better for Robinson than Trubisky ever was. The Bears aren’t exactly teeming with wide receiver talent either, opening the door to another big season from Robinson.
Cooper Kupp is another example of a wide receiver being drafted after Cooper despite finishing fourth in PPR points last season. Jared Goff tied with Jameis Winston for most pass attempts in 2019, and we can’t predict by any measure that the Rams’ run game will ever return to its 2018 dominance, or even come close. Kupp was 13th in red zone targets (18) and caught more than 71 percent of his targets. He’s undervalued, while Cooper’s price tag still appears a bit too high.
More Fantasy Football Busts
- Awesemo’s Do-Not-Draft QBs
- Awesemo’s Do-Not-Draft RBs
- Awesemo’s Do-Not-Draft TEs
- Awesemo’s Top Overall Busts For 2020
Clyde Edwards-Helaire (RB – KC)
The Edwards-Helaire hype is very real heading into the 2020 season. The 21-year-old LSU product was drafted 32nd overall by the Chiefs, and the rest was history after that — or at least that’s how everyone is behaving.
Let’s be clear: Edwards-Helaire finds himself in a fantastic career position with the Chiefs. Andy Reid turns running backs into fantasy gold, and there will be no shortage of scoring opportunities so long as Patrick Mahomes is under center. Edwards-Helaire is a clear top pick in dynasty leagues and presents considerable upside in his rookie campaign.
The issue with Edwards-Helaire is his ever-rising draft position — you’ll be forced to use a third-round pick on the rookie if you want to land him on your fantasy teams this season.
While Edwards-Helaire couldn’t have found a better home in terms of offensive efficiency, it’s difficult to envision a scenario where Reid tosses him into the deep end of the swimming pool in Week 1. Kansas City isn’t desperate for scoring, and they certainly weren’t hindered by a running game that produced the 23rd-most rushing yards on the fifth-fewest attempts in 2019.
We shouldn’t confuse the Chiefs’ ability to win a Super Bowl despite an unremarkable run game with their dispassion for improving it this year, but it speaks to a larger point that they won’t need to make Edwards-Helaire a three-down back right away.
It is a bit unsettling, though, as someone who doesn’t think Edwards-Helaire warrants his third-round ADP, that Reid drafted him in the first round, albeit 32nd overall. Reid had never drafted a running back in the first round before Edwards-Helaire. In fact, the only two skill players he’s ever drafted in the first round were Freddie Mitchell and Jeremy Maclin.
Notable running backs drafted by Reid were LeSean McCoy (53rd) and Brian Westbrook (91st), both of whom produced modest numbers in their rookie season. Kareem Hunt, who Reid drafted 86th overall, exploded as a rookie with 272 carries for 1,327 and eight touchdown and 53 catches for 455 yards and three touchdowns, but only after he was thrust into the starting role when projected starter Spencer Ware went down for the season. This isn’t to say Reid won’t use Edward-Helaire in a similar fashion, but we can’t say that with any certainty knowing he planned on using Hunt as the backup as a rookie.
Things can change rapidly throughout the summer and leading up to Week 1, but Reid has already stated that Damien Williams has earned the right to be the Chiefs’ “full-time starter throughout the year.” Williams, who totaled 133 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns in Kansas City’s — and Andy Reid’s first — Super Bowl victory, isn’t likely to be forgotten by Big Red.
So while Edwards-Helaire will likely be around in this league for quite some time, drafting him in the third round as a rookie might not be the prudent move. Rookie running backs are far more likely to succeed than rookie wide receivers and tight ends, but they’re also drafted much earlier than their counterparts on average. DraftKings Sportsbook has Edwards-Helaire with a 750.5-yard rushing prop and a 1,100-yard rushing+receiving prop for 2020. He’ll almost certainly require those big receiving yards to pay off his lofty price tag.
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