2024 NFL Draft: Dynasty Fantasy Football Winners and Losers from the NFC West

Jaxon Smith-Njigba | Credit: Joseph Maiorana

Tim Riordan Posted On May 16, 2024

With the 2024 NFL Draft now over, we can accurately re-assess the depth charts of teams around the NFL. In this series, we’ll be taking a look at players who either gained or lost value based on what their team did during the draft.

Arizona Cardinals

Draft Class

Round 1, Pick 4: Marvin Harrison Jr., WR Ohio State
Round 1, Pick 27: Darius Robinson, EDGE Missouri
Round 2, Pick 11: Max Melton, CB Rutgers
Round 3, Pick 2: Trey Benson, RB FSU
Round 3, Pick 7: Isaiah Adams, OT Illinois
Round 3, Pick 18: Tip Reiman, TE Illinois
Round 3, Pick 27: Elijah Jones, CB Boston College
Round 4, Pick 4: Dadrion Taylor-Demerson, S Texas Tech
Round 5, Pick 3: Xavier Thomas, EDGE Clemson
Round 5, Pick 27: Christian Jones, OT Texas
Round 6, Pick 15: Tejhaun Palmer, WR UAB
Round 7, Pick 6: Jaden Davis, CB Miami

Winner: Kyler Murray, QB

Murray is a winner of the NFL Draft after the Cardinals kept the fourth overall pick and selected wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr. After DeAndre Hopkins moved on to the Titans last off-season, and Marquise Brown left for the Chiefs, Murray was facing a season with Michael Wilson as his WR1. It was wholly expected that Arizona would select a wide receiver with their first pick, but they made the right choice, didn’t trade back, and selected Harrison.

Harrison immediately jumps to the top of the wide receiver depth chart in Arizona, but that isn’t saying much when you look at the rest of the team. Michael Wilson, Greg Dortch and newly-signed Zay Jones will most likely be the top targets outside of Harrison and tight end Trey McBride.

Murray’s dynasty ADP is down to the number 10 quarterback. If he can stay healthy for the first time since 2020, then he shouldn’t have any problem paying off that ADP. When Murray has played 16 games in the past, he finished as the sixth and third-ranked quarterback in those seasons. The Cardinals are committed to him and building around him. He may not be the perfect quarterback for the NFL, but in fantasy the amount of production he adds with his legs is a game-changer.

Loser: James Conner, RB

The Cardinals used the second pick in the third round on running back Trey Benson out of Florida State. While Conner came into the Draft as the unquestioned bellcow, he has some serious competition joining the team in the rookie.

Benson was considered by many to be the best running back in the draft. He’s a strong runner with burst and a nose for the big play. Conner has had an outstanding career, but he’s never been one of the top running backs in the league. Benson has the potential to be the better running back in this committee as early as this year.

Conner is going into the final year of his contract with the Cardinals. It’s easy to see a path to Benson being the team’s primary back by the end of this year, and Conner could be on his way to another team on the wrong side of 30. His ADP is 115.17, the 34th-ranked running back. If your team isn’t winning a title this season, now could be the last time to move on from Conner to get any value from him.

james conner | credit: eric hartline

Los Angeles Rams

Draft Class

Round 1, Pick 19: Jared Verse, EDGE FSU
Round 2, Pick 7: Braden Fiske, DT FSU
Round 3, PIck 19: Blake Corum, RB Michigan
Round 3, Pick 36: Karmen Kinchens, S Miami
Round 5, PIck 19: Brennan Jackson, EDGE Washington State
Round 6, Pick 20: Tyler Davis, DT Clemson
Round 6, Pick 33: Joshua Karty, PK Stanford
Round 6, Pick 37: Jordan Whittington, WR Texas
Round 6, PIck 41: Beaux Limmer, C Arkansas
Round 7, PIck 34: KT Leveston, OG Kansas State

Winner: Demarcus Robinson, WR

Demarcus Robinson had a rare eighth-year breakout campaign for the Rams last season. From weeks 13 to 17, he averaged 15.44 PPR points per game and played over 90% of the snaps in three of those games. His breakout came while Puka Nacua was injured, but he showed enough to earn the number three wide receiver job behind Kupp and Nacua.

The Rams didn’t address the wide receiver position until the sixth round, when they took Jordan Whittington out of Texas. Last year, the Rams struck gold drafting Puka Nacua in the fifth-round, but it’s unlikely that lightning would strike twice in back-to-back years at the position. The Rams will go into the season with Kupp, Nacua and Robinson as their top three wide receivers.

Robinson is a low-end option, but he could be worth a stash in deeper leagues, especially if you have Kupp or Nacua on your team. Both of the Rams stud wide receivers missed time with injuries last year, and Robinson proved that he is capable of filling in quite well if one, or both, of them go down. He’s extremely cheap in dynasty right now, with an ADP of 219, or wide receiver 94. You won’t see many 29 year-old receivers with 2,508 career receiving yards earning dynasty value, but Robinson may be the lone outlier.

Loser: Kyren Williams, RB

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Image of Kyren Williams’ Startup Dynasty ADP History

Kyren Williams was the dynasty darling of the 2023 season, but the Rams dealt a major blow to his volume when they selected Blake Corum in the third round of the NFL Draft.

Image Courtesy of RAS.Football.

Blake Corum, on paper and on film, is a better running back than Kyren Williams. The word out of Rams camp is that they drafted Corum to spell Williams at times, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Corum overtake him in the running back pecking order as early as this season. Sean McVay has a history of leaning on a bellcow running back in his offense, so it’s possible that the team really did draft Corum just to be their backup running back, but I’m not buying it. Williams’ ADP is too high right now at 30 overall in dynasty startups.

San Francisco 49ers

Draft Class

Round 1, Pick 31: Ricky Pearsall, WR Florida
Round 2, Pick 32: Renardo Green, CB Florida State
Round 3, PIck 23: Dominick Puni, OT Kansas
Round 4, Pick 24: Malik Mustapha, S Wake Forest
Round 4, Pick 29: Isaac Guerendo, RB Louisville
Round 4, Pick 35: Jacob Cowing, WR Arizona
Round 6, Pick 39: Jarrett Kingston, OG USC
Round 7, Pick 31: Tatum Bethune, LB FSU

Winners: Ricky Pearsall, WR

For the most part in this series, we try to focus on the veteran players who saw their dynasty value change the most during the NFL Draft. For the 49ers, it was a rookie who saw his value change the most, and there wasn’t a clear winner amongst the veterans. Ricky Pearsall was a very popular sleeper pick in the pre-draft process. He is an outstanding route runner and plays with a great attitude and motor. The 49ers weren’t sleeping on Pearsall, they saw him as the weapon that he is and made sure they got their guy with the 31st pick of the first round.

With the first-round draft capital, Pearsall’s future in the NFL is all but assured. With Brandon Aiyuk, Deebo Samuel, George Kittle and Christian McCaffrey ahead of him in the pass-target pecking order, it may not happen in his rookie season. But, the future of Aiyuk and Samuel are up in the air with the Niners, and there will be a point in the next four years where this team will have to rely on Pearsall as a major target.

Pearsall is an early second-round pick in Rookie Draft ADP, going off the board as the WR9. He’s jumped up a tier of value and he is still a good value in rookie drafts.

Loser: Deebo Samuel, WR

Deebo Samuel is a loser of the NFL Draft, but mostly because of the reports that circulated during that weekend. Samuel has already signed a long-term extension with the 49ers, so one would think he’d be safe from trade rumors. That wasn’t the case. While everyone was talking about a potential Brandon Aiyuk trade, reports surfaced that said Samuel was also on the table to be moved. On top of that, some reports said that the Niners would rather keep Aiyuk than Samuel long-term.

If Samuel does get moved, it likely wouldn’t be until after this season. But, if he does move on, it will be a pretty serious dip to his value. Samuel is a unique wide receiver that has fit like a glove in Kyle Shanahan’s creative offensive system. Outside of that system, even if he ends up with one of the many Shanahan proteges around the league, his value needs to take a dip. He needs to be used creatively to live up to his value as a top-30 dynasty wide receiver. It also doesn’t help that the Niners used a first-round pick on Ricky Pearsall, who plays a similar type of game to what Samuel plays.

Seattle Seahawks

Draft Class

Round 1, Pick 16: Byron Murphy II, DT Texas
Round 3, Pick 17: Christian Haynes, OG UConn
Round 4, Pick 18: Tyrice Knight, LB UTEP
Round 4, Pick 21: AJ Barner, TE Michigan
Round 5, Pick 1: Nehemiah Pritchett, CB Auburn
Round 6, Pick 3: Sataoa Laumea, OG Utah
Round 6, Pick 16: D.J. James, CB Auburn
Round 6, Pick 31: Miachael Jerrell, OT Findlay

Winner: Jaxon Smith-Njigba, WR

The Seahawks focused mostly on the trenches during the NFL Draft, only using one pick on a skill position player. With that, most of the values on the Seahawks remain the same after the Draft. Zooming out to focus on the offseason as a whole up to this point, the biggest change to the offense was the hiring of Ryan Grubb as Offensive Coordinator.

Tyler Lockett returns to Seattle, but Jaxon Smith-Njigba is still an offseason winner because of this move. JSN was completely misused by Shane Waldron and the Seahawks offense. For some reason, Waldron decided JSN was a receiver that couldn’t stray too far from the line of scrimmage. His ADOT was abysmal, 6.1 yards, 95th best in the league. He also took 433 snaps out of the slot, the 9th highest in the NFL.

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Image of Smith-Njigba’s ADP History.

Grubb knows how to use elite wide receivers, we saw that last year in his championship run with Washington. Rome Odunze, Ja’Lynn Polk and Jalen McMillan were all NFL Draft picks this year. Going into his sophomore season, in a new offensive system that will hopefully use him correctly, this is a great buying opportunity for Jaxon Smith-Njigba. The ADP doesn’t show it, but JSN has been an under-the-radar winner of the Seahawks off-season.

Loser: Noah Fant, TE

It was mentioned earlier that the Seahawks only used one pick on a skill position player. That player was tight end AJ Barner out of Michigan in the fourth round. Barner isn’t a major needle-mover, but he’ll join the competition at tight end with Noah Fant and Pharaoh Brown.

Fant certainly didn’t have much dynasty value before the draft, and he still doesn’t have much now. His ADP is 31st at the tight end position and, even though he’s a starting tight end in the league, he’s likely on many dynasty waiver wires this off-season. The tight end position just hasn’t been a focus of the Seahawks passing game for years. With a new head coach and offensive system, that could change this year, but with this group of tight ends it doesn’t seem likely. Barner didn’t flash as a playmaker in college, but he is a solid athlete and could have some unrealized pass-catching upside in the pros.

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Tim Riordan

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

Tim has spent over a decade in sports radio as a host, analyst, play-by-play broadcaster and a producer. He’s been called the Tom Brady of dynasty commissioners and an expert of player values.