32 Teams, 32 Questions: The NFC North
Much like Chris Mortensen of ESPN, we are touring all 32 teams in the NFL featuring what we’re looking for in the 2013 season and beyond – only DLF hasn’t chartered a bus for anyone, no pro will actually talk to us and we’ll be focusing completely on dynasty fantasy football. Other than that, it’s totally the same. In this new series, we will cover all 32 teams and ponder a question we have for each of them in relation to dynasty leagues. Each edition covers one division – in this case, we cover the NFC North.
Past Editions
Chicago Bears
“Can the passing game be more than Cutler to Marshall?”
Unless you are a Bears fan like I am or you were a fantasy owner of Brandon Marshall or Jay Cutler, you might not realize exactly how large of a share that connection made up. If you break it down, Marshall accounted for 46.3 percent of Cutler’s completions, 49.7 percent of his yardage, and 57.9 percent of his touchdowns. Those numbers just aren’t sustainable in a healthy, balanced offense and new head coach Marc Trestman fully realizes that. This might be a bit of bad news for the owners of Marshall as he is likely to see a bit of a dip in his fantasy numbers, but I still expect him to be safely in the top 1ten for fantasy wide receivers. Fortunately for the Bears and their fans, there are several players who can step up and not only take some of Marshall’s load but also help the passing game grow from its bottom five ranking.
The Chicago media has been reporting over and over that one player who will see an increased role in the passing game is Matt Forte. While Forte did have a respectable 44 receptions for 340 yards last season, both marks were career lows for him. He is one of the best pass catching running backs in the league and I would expect him to be one of the focuses. It wouldn’t surprise me if he actually approaches or breaks his career highs of 63 receptions and 547 yards through the air.
The other likely source of increased production in the passing game is going to be through the free agent signing of Martellus Bennett. Bennett laps the field talent-wise when you compare him to what the Bears featured at the position last year. After being a backup for four years in Dallas, he took his talents to New York where he had 55 receptions and over 600 yards with five touchdowns last year when he was behind Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz in the pecking order. He could very easily be the second down field option in the Bears’ offense and while Forte might have more receptions, I expect Bennett to set a career high in yardage.
At the receiver position, things are a little bit murkier. Second year receiver Alshon Jeffery is going to get the first chance to step up and be the man opposite Marshall. In order to do that, he is going to need to stay out of the training room and learn how to use his big frame without drawing all of the penalties that he did last season. Should he fail, rookie Marquess Wilson might get a shot. Earl Bennett and Devin Hester are still there as well, but neither will ever be more than the third wide receiver on an NFL team.
The Bears will be making a conscious effort to get more people involved in the passing game. This is good news for fantasy owners as while it might hurt Marshall’s value by a slim amount it will benefit the rest of the players (including Cutler) by a much greater margin.
Detroit Lions
“Who can take advantage of the double and triple teams on Megatron?”
Much like the Bears, a very large portion of the Lions’ passing offense also ran through one player. You can’t really blame them given that player is in the form of the all world talent of Calvin Johnson. The issue is even with Megatron breaking the single season mark for receiving yards, they were still a 4-12 team. The major reason is they lacked balance with no one else in the offense topping 600 receiving yards, even though Matthew Stafford threw for just shy of 5,000 passing yards.
Brandon Pettigrew will be entering his fifth season in the league this year. Last year was a bit of a step back from his career highs of 83 receptions and 777 yards in 2011. At this point in his career, he is starting to look more and more like a good, but not great talent. He does a nice job over the middle of the field, but he doesn’t stretch it and he doesn’t make defenses game plan for him. He’s definitely an NFL starter talent-wise, but it’s looking like he isn’t someone who can punish defenses for focusing on Johnson.
Second year receiver Ryan Broyles is probably the most likely player to be able to make defenses pay for focusing too much on the other side of the field. Broyles definitely has the talent to be a fantasy asset, but I am obviously concerned about his health. He slid in the NFL draft due to an ACL injury in college, then he went on to tear his ACL again during his rookie season. If he can come back and regain the speed and agility he had pre-injury, he is someone to watch. He just needs to stay on the field. Outside of those two, Reggie Bush will definitely catch more than his fair share of passes, but he isn’t the down field threat the Lions need. Nate Burleson will be 32 when the season begins and on the downward swing of his career. If you’re a premium member, you already know about my sleeper pick if Broyles doesn’t grab a hold of the role. Outside of them, there really aren’t many other options currently on the roster to step up, but the Lions desperately need someone to do so.
Green Bay Packers
“How will the backfield shake out?”
If you were to look at the Packers’ backfield before the 2013 NFL Draft and compare it to after the draft, you would almost think they are two different teams. Prior to the draft we were talking about a backfield that was going to be a mix of the much hyped DuJuan Harris, Alex Green and James Starks. When you throw in John Kuhn and Aaron Rodgers stealing goal line touches, the backfield was partially a land of opportunity and partially a huge mess.
Then the draft came and the Packers took Eddie Lacy in the second round before turning around and drafting Johnathan Franklin in the fourth. These choices took all three of the incumbents, placed them not only on notice, but possibly the roster bubble or trade block. However, it didn’t really clean up the mess that is the backfield that much. About the only things we know are that Lacy and Franklin will split the load and that Kuhn and Rodgers will still get some work in the red zone – that makes both Lacy and Franklin a bit of a gamble that could either pay off big or be a waste of a high rookie pick.
If I had to guess, I would say the backfield will be more of an even split than most people want to admit. Lacy is definitely the better power back and inside runner of the pair, but he leaves some to be desired when it comes to speed and the passing game – those just happen to be the areas Franklin excels at. For this reason, I think they will both see the field quite a bit.
Given that the offense of the Packers definitely runs through the arm of Rodgers and the split that will likely happen between the two rookies, it makes it tough to stand up and strongly advocate for either of them. Without an injury to one or the other, I see neither Lacy nor Franklin as being anything more than a weak RB3 in fantasy leagues. Long term, I do like Franklin to slowly take more and more of the workload, but it will take some time.
Minnesota Vikings
“Can Ponder take the next step to make the offense viable?”
You know you have a problem at the quarterback position when your running back gets more yards on the ground than your quarterback gets through the air not once, not twice, but a grand total of five weeks during the season. It is even worse when you look at the numbers and realize the majority of the time it was nearly double the yards for Adrian Peterson than it was for Christian Ponder. In two cases, it was almost triple. If you can’t throw the ball downfield when defenses are doing everything they can to stop Peterson, you might not be an NFL quarterback.
Lots of people have very high hopes for the likes of Kyle Rudolph, Greg Jennings and rookie Cordarrelle Patterson. The problem is they will only go as far as Ponder can take them. When you have a quarterback who has less than 175 passing yards in half of his games, it means that pretty much every pass catcher on the team needs to be on fantasy benches. You just can’t trust that any of them will give you consistent results and produce at a level that won’t sink your team.
I have some bad news for Vikings fans and the fantasy owners of those players – I just don’t see Ponder getting a whole lot better. While he did show some limited improvement from his rookie season, it just wasn’t enough. You can’t really say it is just because young quarterbacks take a while to develop either when you look around the league and see at least six teams being led by very successful quarterbacks who were drafted in either 2011 or 2012. Considering that Ponder probably faced fewer downfield defenders than any of them, it doesn’t bode well for him.
Ponder is going to need to show some major improvement in his third year or he’ll likely be facing some true competition in 2014. I’m not very hopeful for the fantasy outlooks of any Viking not named Peterson for 2013. I think the entire receiving group should be viewed as a long term investment at this point in time.
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