20 bold predictions for the 2022 season

Sleepers, league-winners, fades

It’s been a blast to do some work with CBS over the past week to reconnect with some of my buddies over there, and when I jumped on their Draft-a-thon Wednesday night, and my old podcast host Adam Aizer asked me to identify my five biggest bold predictions for the 2022 season to bring on the show. I got a little feedback that I should have those written up for my Substack subs, but I mean, five isn’t enough, right?

You guys have been awesome lately — I’ve gotten a chance to do a handful of one-on-one calls and those are always so much fun. I feel like I’m talking with my people. The comments on Substack and in Discord are incredible. Obviously there’s the financial element of your support. It’s really pretty amazing to get to do this on my own and have so many of you along for the ride.

That’s not really a lead-in to anything other than I want to fire off a bunch of bold predictions for you guys. Before we jump into that, I want to remind anyone who might have been waiting for the start of the season about Stealing Lines, my new sports betting Substack/Discord service with Dalton Kates. Dalton has been smashing the full-season prop numbers, and I’ve thrown a few picks in as well, but this service is really about ways to play the weekly markets throughout the NFL season, so now is a great time to dive in. Dalton and I drafted a Main Event team last night from the 12 hole, and while that’s a difficult position to be in, we built a very fun team that’s anchored by Saquon Barkley and Kyle Pitts, got really nice value on a stacked Trey Lance, and otherwise ate up some really nice WR values to build out something of an ideologically perfect draft for me in this format.

The RB2 situation isn’t ideal, but we mixed in some high-upside plays like Kenneth Walker, Jaylen Warren, and the duo of Chiefs backs with some hopefully more stable plays in Ameer Abdullah and Rex Burkhead. Zack Moss was a pick because in this format we’ll get to decide whether to start him after we see his Thursday night performance, so if the rumors of his goal-line role materialize with two touchdowns in Week 1, we’ll get to slot that in, and if he only scores like three points, we can opt for someone else (likely Abdullah or Burkhead).

I got a good question on yesterday’s post about identifying floor plays in your RB build, and this is a decent example with Abdullah and Burkhead. To be clear, this is definitely not an RB build I would avidly defend in terms of the specific names we got — we are thin because we got great value through the Round 7-12 range building out our WR room, and weren’t willing to pass on Garrett Wilson at 11.12, so we only hit one more RB (Ken Walker) before the Round 13/14 turn. When that Round 13/14 turn came up, not only had we missed the Darrell Henderson and Rachaad White types by multiple rounds, but even the Tyler Allgeiers and Eno Benjamins of the world were off the board. Raheem Mostert was a guy I wanted to consider at the Round 11/12 turn, but we needed to hope could get back to 13/14 considering what we were able to take at 11/12 — he also didn’t make it back.

So it wasn’t ideal, but it still shows the idea. With respect to the idea of floor plays in your late-round RB build, in some ways I just mean short-term projectable snaps. Mostert and Burkhead for example are guys I wouldn’t plan on relying on throughout the year, but with the releases of Sony Michel and Marlon Mack, it seems pretty likely Mostert and Burkhead will play plenty of Week 1 snaps, which should bring with it at least a floor of a handful of touches or so. In that regard, Abdullah might be even less stable, because we’re not entirely sure what will happen with the Raiders’ backfield, but Abdullah is a bit more of a long-term floor play in that if he really does take the James White role in Josh McDaniels’ offense, his route numbers in Week 1 should indicate a passing-down role that makes him a nice guy to have around as a plug-and-play that might last all year.

The idea of the Walker and Warren type plays is if the chaos of an NFL season breaks in their favor — in this case, if a backfield mate suffers an injury — they could be really strong plays on a weekly level at some point down the road. Samaje Perine is another of my favorite widely available backs of this ilk, and we would have liked to get him last night but he went somewhat early in Round 14. We discussed San Francisco backs like Jeff Wilson and Jordan Mason pretty extensively late, and basically any back has weekly upside in Kyle Shanahan’s backfield.

You want to draft a few of these guys and ideally have multiple chances to hit some spot starts that are really nice plays, but then you need to build around that upside in your RB room with some likelihood of an early role and in deeper leagues, the potential for a long-term floor like in Abdullah. In shallower formats, the floor plays you can look to might include guys like the two New England backs, veterans like Melvin Gordon or maybe Jamaal Williams, interesting pass-catchers like Michael Carter or Nyheim Hines, etc. One of Damien Williams or Tyler Allgeier probably gets 8-10 touches in Week 1; Allgeier is the way to play that with some long-term upside built in, but Williams is a dirt cheap option that I’d argue is a better version of the Mike Davis and Kenyan Drake plays that have become popular and went in the 14th and 15th round of this draft I did last night (Williams went undrafted even in this deep league). I wouldn’t play either of those Falcons backs in Week 1, but either could be viable as soon as Week 2.

Some of these “floor” plays I’ve mentioned might not be great bets for much more than 5-7 points, but part of the bet is you’re playing a guy that is getting snaps and some touches, and that at least carries with it the possibility of a random TD or big play (or for the passing-down backs, a game script that leads to 6-8 catches with the bulk coming in the fourth quarter). Dontrell Hilliard’s 68-yard TD run against the Patriots in the weeks after Derrick Henry’s injury last year comes to mind.

I’m not saying accepting 5-7 points is the goal, but on a roster like this where we have a big bet on Barkley as our RB1, have an elite TE and a QB with elite upside, and have the requisite WR depth to post some big scores through our Flex spots from that position, our early-season goal is just to keep pace as much as possible at RB2 with a long-term goal to find something that sticks (really hoping Walker is the truth).

Alright, let’s get to the bold predictions.

1. Kyle Pitts goes for 1,300 yards and 8 TD

For context, there have been only six TE seasons since 2000 that hit 1,300 yards, with Travis Kelce doing it twice, and Mark Andrews, George Kittle, Jimmy Graham, and Rob Gronkowski all doing it once. Only five WRs did it last year. Also, the league leader in TE touchdowns was at nine last year.

And yet, I feel like I’m underselling Pitts’ upside a bit here. I started with 1,500 and 10, but then I looked at historical numbers and felt like I should be just slightly more reasonable. Pitts is going to smash.

2. Saquon Barkley catches 75 balls and finishes as a top-three RB

Barkley’s injuries have concerned many folks, but Brian Daboll is going to have the Giants throwing more on early downs, and Barkley’s past target shares don’t get enough hype. He’s going to catch a ton of balls this year, and when you add in his athleticism and the big-play potential that carries with it — plus an almost certain goal-line role given the lack of RB depth behind him — you understand why he’s been in my top-five RBs since the initial release of my rankings when he was still going in the third round with some frequency.