Football is back. We've waited months for this moment and it's finally here. Our drafts are done and we finally get to turn over the cards and find out which players we were right and wrong about. Let's enjoy these last few days of optimism before fantasy football inevitably humbles us. 

Quick programming note before we dive in. During the season I'll be writing up weekly regression candidates with the goal of identifying players who are running too hot and too cold before their results regress back toward the average.

Since we don't have 2024 results to analyze yet, this week I've got two more positive regression and two more negative regression candidates from a season-long perspective. Be sure to check back next week for the first edition of the in-season series.

Good luck this year, go win your league.

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Positive Regression

Hollywood Brown, Kansas City Chiefs 

It's never great when a player is going to miss Week 1 due to injury, but as I said in the intro, these are season-long regression candidates. After starting his career with three solid seasons in Baltimore, Brown's efficiency plummeted during his two years in Arizona. He's been below 1.5 YPRR each of the last two seasons and has posted his two worst YAC per reception totals as well. 

At just 27 years old, Brown shouldn't be past the age cliff and he is now in the best offensive situation possible playing with Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City. Brown won't be a target hog while playing alongside Travis Kelce, Rashee Rice, and Xavier Worthy but he doesn't need to be. The two easiest paths to a bounceback season for Brown are improved efficiency and positive TD variance. 

Over the past two regular seasons combined the Arizona Cardinals' QBs have thrown for 35 total TDs and Brown scored 7 of those. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Mahomes throws for 35+ TDs in 2024 alone. 

Early in his career, Brown was averaging 13+ yards per catch and turned in back-to-back seasons of 4.7+ yards after the catch per reception in his first two seasons. During his two seasons in Arizona those metrics plummeted. Any meaningful improvement in yards per reception or yards after the catch would make a 1,000-yard season attainable for Brown.

Now that he goes very late in drafts (WR49 on ESPN) it won't take much for Brown to outperform his cost. Heck, with him missing the first game you might see him on waivers in some of your leagues. He may not be as exciting to roster as the Chiefs younger receivers like Rice and Worthy, but Brown will have enough of a role to be fantasy relevant on a weekly basis and will always be a threat to deliver spike weeks in this Chiefs offense. 

Terry McLaurin, Washington Commanders

The Washington Commanders are one of the biggest mystery-box teams heading into Week 1. I could see their range of outcomes including anything from taking a Houston Texans-esque leap to completely bottoming out as one of the NFL's worst teams. How it plays out will largely depend on how good rookie QB Jayden Daniels is. 

The two things we can say pretty confidently about Daniels' game are that he is a dynamic rusher and throws a good deep ball. His college production and preseason tape make those skills pretty safe bets to translate to the NFL. That should mean good things for his top receiver. McLaurin has had to deal with subpar QB play for his entire career, which has held back his fantasy production. He's topped 115 targets and 1,000 receiving yards each of the last four seasons, but he hasn't been able to score more than 5 receiving TDs during any of those seasons.

McLaurin is a good bet to see 120+ targets again and they should be higher quality targets than he saw last season, when he set a career-worst mark in yards per reception. This makes it easy to project a ceiling scenario where McLaurin gets 2023 volume (128 targets) and converts it at his 2022 efficiency rates (67% catch rate, 15.5 yards per reception) to put up the best season of his already-impressive career. Connecting on a few deep bomb TDs, or just getting more end-zone targets in general would push McLaurin even closer to the upper echelon of fantasy WR production. 

Negative Regression

David Montgomery, Detroit Lions

It feels odd to write about Montgomery in the negative regression category when I have been actively drafting him all summer. But just because he is a negative-regression candidate doesn't mean that he is overvalued in drafts. 

Montgomery put up the best season of his career in 2023 and set new career highs in rushing yards, YPC, missed tackles forced, rushing TDs, and explosive runs (10+ yards). The only category his production declined was in the passing game, where he posted career lows in receptions and receiving yards.

The efficiency and TDs propelled him to an RB12 finish in half PPR points per game and RB13 in total scoring. He is now being drafted as the RB23 on ESPN. Montgomery's situation hasn't really changed from last year so calling for a meaningful decline in production seems like asking for trouble. However, there are reasons to be concerned.

Most importantly, Montgomery ran hot in the TD department last year. The PFF Expected Points model had Montgomery at 10.8 expected TDs in 2023 and his 17 carries inside the 5-yard line were tied with Christian McCaffrey for fourth most in the NFL. In other words, he had one of the most valuable goal-line roles in all of football. I don't expect Montgomery to lose that role entirely, but the Lions' offense has plenty of young, ascending weapons who could command a larger share of the looks when near the end zone. 

Assuming he doesn't get more involved in the passing game this season it will be very difficult for Montgomery to repeat his fantasy production from last year unless Gibbs misses time. Thankfully, if you drafted him around his ADP this year you shouldn't need him to. He can still be a solid RB2 for a fantasy team even with some regression in the TD department.

Kyren Williams, Los Angeles Rams

No, this negative regression prediction has nothing to do with Kyren Williams being named the Rams' primary punt returner. It does have to do with him playing 82% of snaps and handling 74% of carries in his healthy games. Both of those totals would have led all RBs if he played the full season, but he managed to play in only 12 games. 

The Rams undoubtedly want to keep Williams on the field as much as possible this year, but that will mean easing up on his workload a little bit. To that end, they spent significant draft capital to bring in Blake Corum to serve as a capable second back. McVay and Co. have raved about Corum all summer and specifically stated that they like Corum because he is a complete back who can do everything that Kyren does. This reads to me as a situation where Kyren and Corum will rotate whole drives rather than have specific roles within the offense. 

The logical conclusion to Williams playing fewer total snaps and rotating drives is that he doesn't have a lock on the high-value touches the way he did last season. Hopefully Williams can stay healthy in 2024, and if he does he can easily match his raw production numbers from last year, but his per game stats would almost certainly take a hit in that scenario. He's unlikely to average a TD per game the way he did last season, and there is a real danger that the backfield split could shift more toward Corum over the course of the season if he proves to be a good NFL player.

The market did discount Kyren for this possibility because he was going as the RB8 in drafts after finishing as the RB2 last year, but only time will tell if that was enough of a discount or if he was still overpriced. 

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