10 Players You Should Be Targeting in Fantasy Football Drafts
Cameron Meredith, WR, New Orleans
The Saints needed a better slot receiver last year. The player running the most routes from that spot on the field for them in 2017, per Pro Football Focus, was Brandon Coleman, who's yet to exceed 500 yards receiving in the NFL. He looks the part of New Orleans' "big slot" role, but he's yet to play it well.
Even still, New Orleans ranked 11th in slot receiver yards and 17th in slot receiver targets last year, which is kind of impressive given their run-friendly nature and the personnel involved.
Enter Cameron Meredith.
Meredith's coming off a significant knee injury, but he's participating in training camp and is already being viewed as the Saints' number-two receiving option. In his single productive NFL season -- he's played only two -- Meredith ran over 52% of his routes from the slot. That's likely where he'll be lined up a lot in the Saints' offense.
And I want a piece of that.
Willie Snead played that role in the Saints' offense two years ago, when he saw a 15.43% target share and ranked as fantasy football's 31st-best receiver while playing 15 games.
I hear you, though. New Orleans isn't running the same type of offense they were in 2016.
| Year | Pass-to-Rush Ratio | Pass TD | Rush TD |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 1.28 | 23 | 23 |
| 2016 | 1.78 | 38 | 17 |
Since 2011, we've seen 17 NFL offenses finish a season with as many or more rushing touchdowns as passing ones. Of those 17 instances, 4 happened last season (one being New Orleans), so we've got 13 occurrences with next-season data.
In each of those 13 cases, the offenses ended up with a higher passing touchdown to rushing touchdown ratio the following year. The average increase in ratio was a significant 1.30. If we were to attribute that number to New Orleans, who had a 1.00 ratio last year, then we'd expect them to have 2.30 times the amount of passing touchdowns as rushing touchdowns here in 2018.
There's some variance with the way teams score touchdowns, and we can use that to our advantage when projecting team output.
It's also not like Drew Brees is all of a sudden bad at football. That's not why New Orleans was able to run the ball last year. Brees actually had the fourth-highest adjusted net yards per attempt of his career in 2017.
The expectation shouldn't be that the Saints all of a sudden revert back to their pass-happy days. But it would make sense to see their pass-to-rush ratio rise in 2018 to go along with their uptick in passing-to-rushing touchdown ratio. And with less competition as a slot receiver than Willie Snead saw -- remember, Brandin Cooks was in New Orleans when Snead was balling out two years ago -- Meredith has a great opportunity to become a fantasy football starter this season.
