2020 NFL Projections: Arizona Cardinals and Los Angeles Rams
It is almost that time of year again – that glorious time when 22 people line up on a 100-yard long field and see who wants it more. The NFL season is upon us and for the purposes of this series, we will assume things go off without a hitch. That means drafts are here and it is time to project out the teams in an attempt to give fantasy football degenerates like yourselves an idea of what to expect. There are a lot of different ways to attack this beast of a project but here is a bit about my process.
A Brief Look At The Process
One of the first steps I take when projecting a team out is looking at what they have done in the last few seasons. Are there any consistent trends we can look to for a baseline or have there been inconsistencies? If there have been inconsistencies, is there a factor involved that we can point a finger at and say, that is why A and B happened? Coaching changes, injuries, trades, and draft selections can all play a major role in an up-and-down offensive trend.
Next, we can look at the upcoming schedule for the team. Be careful putting too much stock into something like a schedule though, as injuries and all the other things listed above can turn a good defense into a bad one and vice versa. Put more stock in the talent on the offense overall. There is so much variance in this game we play that predicting good weeks and bad this far out is kind of a futile exercise. Take present injuries and things that are known now into consideration but do not try to predict injuries in a given year. There are players who may be at greater risk but there is no tell-all sign pointing us towards being able to accurately project a future injury. Again, a futile exercise. Only focus on the known at this point.
I will make this last part short. I use three years of data from each player in the projections and as with the teams, look at the context of why A and B happened. This forms their baseline projection. Then the research done on the team is used to adjust the player into their projected range of outcomes as best as possible. There is a bit more to it but that is the gist. You can then tally up the fantasy points and sort them out for the starting point of your season-long ranks.
In this series, we will briefly go over each team as a whole and follow that with a deeper look at one of the more interesting players in the projections. Let us start at the bottom of the NFC West. But, with an exciting team on the rise!
Arizona Cardinals
Kyler Murray is in line for a great season. He was just handed one of the best receiving weapons in the league in the form of DeAndre Hopkins and based on research which you can find here, his primary weapons are in line for a bump from last year’s production based on the recent history of young first and second-round QBs. Murray has top-five upside in his potential range of outcomes.
Kenyan Drake took the second half of the 2019 season by storm. From week nine through 16, Drake was the RB5 (RB4 in weeks nine through 17) while averaging 18.9 touches with 4.4 targets with 101.8 total yards a full touchdown per game. Drake did only score on the ground which is concerning but likely just one of those things as he was used often enough in the passing game (70 targets 16-game pace). He never saw fewer than 14 touches and the only added competition was a seventh-round pick in Eno Benjamin.
Hopkins may have some hiccups with wide receivers sometimes taking a bit to catch on to a new team’s scheme and COVID-19 possibly affecting the learning process but “Nuk” will be himself by season’s end. If you have a chance to check out the “We All Need Someone To Lean On” series, you will see that the top option for a second-year quarterback sees a slight bump in volume and production. Also, if there is one receiver who can make the best out of a bad situation, it is Hopkins. He has seen a target decrease for two straight seasons though, so expecting 150 again may be optimistic assuming health for the other receiving threats.
We will get to the second option progression shortly, but first: Larry Fitzgerald. The future Hall Of Famer will likely play the third WR role and the addition of Hopkins will pull drastically from his potential volume. The move for Hopkins also tells us a lot about the team’s feelings on their three 2019 rookie WRs.
Christian Kirk
Now to that potential second option. Again, check out the series linked above for the finer details but the short version is that the second favorite option for a second-year quarterback sees the biggest overall jump in production and volume percentage-wise. They also see an increase in the overall target distance which can result in a lower catch rate but my projections have him with a career-high in targets, yards, and TDs. The addition of Hopkins will pull coverage away and Fitzgerald will be primarily in the slot drawing his own coverage. With Murray’s mobility and the receiving corps, we could see some big plays down the field ala Seattle and Russell Wilson.
Using DLF’s Trade Analyzer we see what Kirk’s value range may be in a trade.
Single Quarterback
Super Flex/ 2QB
Based on this data I put together focusing on the value that can be gained by using DLF’s ADP and consensus ranks compared to consensus 2020 ranks, we see that Kirk is not going to be a great value to a win-now team based on these factors. My projections have him about 10-15% higher than consensus depending on the format.
Note: From the angle of a competitive team in 2020, view the tags as such. (Buy – Return value expected, Hold – Close to equal value expected, Sell – Loss in value expected)
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams were a curious case in 2019. They had the closest rushing and receiving touchdown ratio in the league and Jared Goff saw about a two percent drop in touchdown efficiency from his previous two seasons. He saw a similar jump in interception rate. Both were the worst since he has been in the Sean McVay system. We should expect some regression back towards the mean in 2020. The use of 12 personnel (two tight ends) toward the end of the 2019 season seemed to have a large impact on the offense as a whole. Goff threw as many TDs in the last five weeks as he did the rest of the season.
Cam Akers is largely expected to be the first of the top five rookie running backs to force his way into the starting role. My projections see it similarly but Darrell Henderson and Malcolm Brown could factor in largely especially at the start with the strange off-season. This is likely to be a theme throughout the league. None of the Rams backs averaged more than 3.8 yards per attempt but we do know that offensive line is largely responsible for running back efficiency and that O-line was bad in 2019. Akers has a bit of experience running behind one of those.
Robert Woods should benefit greatly from the potential TD regression for Goff. Woods had an interesting season, to say the least (90 rec/139 targets, 1,134 yards, two TDs)…
Since 1994, there have been 932 wide receiver seasons in which they received 100+ targets.
In terms of TD rate, 33 of those receivers have been below 1.5% on their targets.
Robert Woods 2019 season ranks 899th/932 on this list as the first guy to dip below 1.5%
Its time for…
— David Willsey (@willson8tor) June 20, 2020
…and it is time for some regression. Very few receivers have caught that many passes on that many targets yet scored so few times. Cooper Kupp has consistently been the trusted option for Goff when nearing the end zone. If you look at season totals, it appears the trend continued which it did if you are just looking at the TDs. Kupp did see a massive drop in targets in the second half of the season which is concerning but he was still just as big of a scoring threat. There could be room for rookie Van Jefferson or Josh Reynolds to step into relevance but the moves they have made may signal something else entirely.
With McVay, the Rams have traditionally run 11 personnel (three WR, one TE) more than any team in the league. They became, in a sense, predictable. Week 11 was the week in which things changed. LA ran more 12 personnel (two TE) than we had seen at any time. This could explain the dip for Kupp as he failed to reach more than 72% of the snaps in four of the final six weeks. Brandin Cooks saw a similar fall but Woods stayed on the field. Now it is just Kupp and Woods as the primary options. We will also be another year removed from Kupp’s torn ACL. Another reason he could have seen a drop is his knee not being able to take on the full load over the whole season just yet. He has had more time to heal and should be at 100%.
The Tight Ends
We saw Tyler Higbee explode in the second half of the season but can we trust it? Well, yes and no. Is Higbee going to be the number one TE in PPR and number three in standard like he was for the final six weeks of the season? The answer there is probably no. But, can he potentially be the TE5 in PPR and TE7 in standard as he was for the final nine weeks of the season? Maybe…
A few things will need to happen for this to carry over from 2019 to 2020. Firstly, Higbee saw his volume jump from 2.3 targets per game for the first 11 weeks and to 10.3 targets per game to finish the season. Gerald Everett, who had three double-digit target games in the first 11 weeks but caught just 0.75 passes per game in his last four and played just 37 total snaps (including special teams). This comes down to whether or not you believe Higbee garnered all those targets or if there was just not a better option available. Again, Everett was the TE targeted by far the most through 11 weeks.
Secondly, the Rams need to follow through with the rumor of more 12 personnel. They have two talented TEs who will likely split the work when the team has 1 TE on the field. For Higbee to reach his projection as long as Everett is healthy, they will both likely need to be on the field. They clearly liked Everett as the primary receiving option at the position until injury but they also found something good in Higbee.
Neither is projected to provide a great deal of value in 2020 based on their current DLF ADP.
Thank you for reading the first of 16 projection articles. Stay tuned for more and follow me on Twitter (@willson8tor).
