The Sharp Football Analysis crew has been hard at work on the Sharp Fantasy Football Draft Kit, a premium resource packed with rankings, projections, tiers, team previews, and much, much more.
After diving deep into all 32 NFL teams, our fantasy football analysts are ready to answer an important question:
Which fantasy football players should be avoided in 2023?
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Fantasy Football Player to Avoid: Josh Jacobs
Even prior to the contractual turmoil between Josh Jacobs and the Raiders and the unknown time frame of that coming to an end, I was hesitant to add Jacobs to rosters this offseason.
First, we should talk about how we are now buying high on Jacobs a year after buying in on the lowest cost of his career.
These situations are always tricky and rarely pay out from a value standpoint. There is a strong chance that 2022 was the best season we have from Jacobs.
Jacobs only ran 21 pass routes on third down all of last season with just one reception, so he still was not a true three-down player despite his high touch totals.
Over the past 10 years, Jacobs is just the 13th running back to clear 375 touches in a season. Just one of those running backs came back and scored more PPR points per game in the following season. Just three matched their per-game touch totals.
Going back to 1992, there have been 71 seasons in which a running back has cleared 375 touches.
67.7% of those running backs had a decline in points per game the following season with an average loss of -2.7 points per game. 77.5% of those backs averaged fewer touches per game the next season with an average loss of -3.2 touches per game.
Fantasy Football Player to Avoid: Joe Mixon
Even with Joe Mixon finishing as a top-12 running back in each of the last two seasons, he is a player to avoid in redraft leagues.
The main reason is he consistently does not meet expectations for where he is being drafted.
As of this writing, Mixon has an average draft position that places him in the mid-to-late third round.
That mid-third-round pick could prove to be a headache. Mixon has had a tendency to feast or famine for fantasy. Looking at a week-to-week basis, delivering games of 20+ points has been easier said than done.
Over the last four seasons, Mixon has recorded fewer than three 20+ fantasy point games in all but one season.
- 2022: 2
- 2021: 7
- 2020: 1
- 2019: 2
Along with that, his carries on a per-game basis dropped from 18.5 in 2021 to 15 this past season.
It should be noted that his passing targets increased to a career-high 75. Considering that his average number of targets in the previous five years was 41.6, one has to wonder if last year’s total is sustainable.
I’m not saying that Mixon will fail to finish inside the top 12 when it is all said and done. What I’m stressing is that the ride there won’t be as smooth as other running backs being drafted in the first three rounds.
Fantasy Football Player to Avoid: Brian Robinson
The goal in fantasy football is to score more fantasy points than the opposition.
This can be done by identifying good players or players on good offenses or undervalued offenses, and drafting running backs who catch passes provides more value in PPR leagues.
Brian Robinson, although a great story playing last season after being shot in the leg, provides little in terms of fantasy identifiable characteristics (other than he's got that dawg in him).
Robinson is a prototypical early down grinder with minimal athletic characteristics that jump off the page. In his rookie season, Robinson had nine targets and averaged -0.92 air yards per target.
The Commanders enter the season with a fifth-round sophomore quarterback who did not beat out Carson Wentz or Taylor Heinicke last season.
In addition to the question mark at quarterback, the Commanders face the third-largest jump in rushing defense strength of schedule compared to last season.
The offensive line which the Sharp Football staff ranked 30th in the league ranked 24th with 1.23 yards before contact on running back rushes, despite playing the easiest schedule of opposing rush defenses.
Washington's new offensive coordinator has already been thrown under the bus by head coach Ron Rivera early in camp, and early struggles could lead to some internal change now that the team is under new ownership.
Drafting an unathletic, early-down grinder on a team with offensive concerns is not a strategy I'd recommend if the goal is winning your fantasy league.
As an offense that played well in a standalone pre-season game, I believe recency bias will lead to Commanders being overdrafted.
Fantasy Football Player to Avoid: Deebo Samuel
Deebo Samuel was sidelined for a large chunk of Brock Purdy’s run last season, but he returned to average nearly nine touches per game in the playoffs.
Including that playoff run, he finished 2022 with 1,109 yards from scrimmage and six touchdowns in 16 games.
His 13.1 PPR points per game including the playoffs would have ranked 27th among wide receivers last season.
That is a big step back from his WR3 finish in 2021, but that is not a huge surprise.
Samuel scored around eight more touchdowns than expected given his usage in 2021.
His touchdown total returned to expected last season, and both his yards per touch (8.8) and yards per route run (1.69) fell to career lows.
Those lows give some hope of a bounceback – the efficiency numbers looked better in a very small sample in the playoffs – but it is tough to see another massive touchdown season for Samuel, especially with McCaffrey on the team.
Without those consistent touchdowns, Samuel looks much more like a spike week WR3 than the clear WR2 he is being drafted as this season.
Especially with several quality receivers around the same ADP, Samuel is an easy fade this year.
This is a FREE PREVIEW of the Sharp Fantasy Football Draft Kit, one of the best resources to get you prepared for the 2023 fantasy football season.
