👌 Free Agency's Remaining Marquee WRs
In today's Fantasy Life newsletter, we cover the best free-agent WRs still available, the Buccaneers 2023 outlook, and more.
OBJ watch is more tiresome than Ron Burgundy’s panda watch…
In today’s Fantasy Life Newsletter Presented by Mad Props:
- The best free-agent WRs still available
- Buccaneers country, let’s Bake?
- Free Agency Takeaways: 22 things you NEED to know
- Betting Futures: Don’t sleep on the Falcons in 2023
- It's 3/21. Take it away, Ian Hartitz...
The 2023 free agent WR class was never expected to be anything to write home about.
With all due respect to recently-signed Raiders WR Jakobi Meyers’ friends and family, it’s a bit depressing that the ex-Patriots talent was unironically considered the crown jewel of the group.
Still, three of the four best teams in the NFL last season (Bengals, 49ers, and Eagles) proved that one offense can never have enough high-quality pass-game weapons. Credit to the Chiefs for having Patrick f*cking Mahomes, but the other 31 teams aren’t so lucky, pending the ability to clone him (imagine the ratings!).
A handful of the position’s top talents still find themselves all too free more than a week after “legal tampering” began.
Law and Order music: These are their stories.
🦈 Former Jaguars and Lions WR D.J. Chark
The 26-year-old veteran stands 6-foot-3, weighs 198 pounds and clocked a 4.33-second 40-yard dash back in the day (2018). Injuries have limited Chark to just 15 total games over the past two seasons, but his 2022 average of 16.7 yards per reception (5th among 80 qualified WRs) demonstrated the reality that the former second-round pick remains plenty capable of taking the top off the defense.
Talks with the Panthers led to Chark following a bunch of potential future teammates on social media, but he remains an unrestricted free agent.
Getting the future 2023 NFL Draft’s No. 1 overall pick a field-stretching talent like Chark would certainly be nice for their development, although it’s hard to not dream about adding this size-speed freak into the Chargers offense and finally giving Justin Herbert a true deep threat.
🕺 Former Giants and Rams WR Odell Beckham Jr.
OBJ free agency reports started around November and haven’t stopped. Credit to the veteran for making his stance clear by tweeting through his issues (one of us!), but it’d sure be a lot cooler if the man responsible for the greatest catch in NFL history could make up his mind already.
Of course, it makes sense why teams haven’t lined up to hand the 30-year-old veteran a ridiculous sum of money for something he achieved nearly a decade ago (we’re getting old); just realize Beckham proved plenty capable of being one helluva Robin to Cooper Kupp’s Batman during his time in Los Angeles.
Overall, Beckham’s average 4.2/52.3/0.6 receiving line in 11 full games with the Rams was good for 13.4 PPR points per game, which would have ranked inside the position’s top 30 WRs in 2022.
The dominance displayed in the postseason was the closest thing we’ve seen to prime OBJ in quite some time:
- Wild Card: 4 receptions-54 yards-1 TD (4 targets)
- Divisional Round: 6-69-0 (8)
- AFC Championship: 9-113-0 (11)
- Super Bowl: 2-52-1 (3)
💨 Former Chiefs WR Mecole Hardman
As the late, great Eleanor Roosevelt once said: “America is all about speed, hot nasty bad-ass speed.”
Well, Hardman is about as fast as they come as evidenced by his official 4.33-second 40-yard dash and unofficial 4.22-second mark. The only problem is that the 25-year-old talent needs to prove capable of being more than just a speedy gadget: 36% of Hardman’s career receptions and 26% of his receiving yards have come on targets behind the line of scrimmage (both top-five marks among 125 qualified wide WRs).
The early-career Tyreek Hill comps were certainly a bit much, but it’s hard to believe that Hardman’s game-breaking speed wouldn’t help out more than a few WR-needy offenses in a major way.
My personal dream spot: The Bills. Just keep the man away from those tables.
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👕 Most players only wear one or two different NFL uniforms in their entire career. And then there’s Brandin Cooks.
❓ Can you name the best WR the Patriots have drafted since 2010? Hint: The bar is not high.
👎 Kevin Cole has tracked every team’s Improvement Index during the offseason. Last place might surprise you.
😮 The Panthers signed Adam Thielen to a 3-year deal. He said what?
👨🍳 Tired: Broncos country, let’s ride. Wired: Buccaneers country, let’s Bake.
💾 We’re catching up on Free Agency. One move at a time.
🤯 Ex-swaggy Raiders P Marquette King did something truly incredible in the XFL. Has this ever happened before?
💰 NFL commissioner Roger Goodell got a contract extension. -5000 odds, it’s fully guaranteed.
MB FantasyLife Senior Fantasy Analyst Ian Hartitz had 22 free agent takeaways to get off his chest. You can read them all over at FantasyLife.com, but below are three especially big ones…
🏃♂️ The Giants are building around Vanilla Vick
New York locked down Daniel Jones with a four-year, $160 million deal that includes $82 million guaranteed, but it was their auxiliary moves that really add credence to the idea that their rising fifth-year signal-caller could take a leap as a passer in 2023.
You see, the 2022 Giants boasted a rather brutal group of pass-catchers entering Week 1. PFF ranked them 22nd, and that seems generous; either way, that was before their projected Week 1 three-WR set wound up providing next to nothing all season:
Kenny Golladay: Drew mannequin comps out of training camp and made exactly one notable catch during his 6-81-1 campaign in 2022.
Kadarius Toney: Played a total of 35 snaps due to a “hamstring injury” prior to being traded to the Chiefs before Week 9 and doing his best Kevin Nash impression.
Sterling Shepard: Tore his ACL in Week 3 because God refuses to turn injuries off for whatever reason.
Credit to the likes of Darius Slayton, Isaiah Hodgins, and Richie James for picking up the slack throughout the season, but sheesh.
While the Giants chose to bring back workhorse RB Saquon Barkley (franchise tag), Slayton (2 years, $12M), and Shepard (1 year, $1.165M), their decision to influx the offense with newfound playmakers like former Raiders TE Darren Waller (90-1145-3 and 107-1196-9 receiving lines in 2019 and 2020) and Colts WR Parris Campbell (he’s fast fast) marks a good start to improving Jones’ supporting cast in 2023 with an entire NFL Draft still to play out.
🎨 She came, she drew, she conquered.
Thank you Rita Oak. You are truly a legend.
Best of luck to Jimmy Garoppolo’s next chapter with the Raiders. Fantasy Life director of analytics and all-around baller Dwain “The Rock” McFarland and myself broke down all the implications of him reuniting with Josh McDaniels on the March 16th edition of The Fantasy Life Podcast.
🐻 The Bears are done messing around
And by messing around I mean relatively sucking at professional football.
First, they received quite a haul (2023 1st (No. 9), 2024 1st, 2023 2nd (No. 61), 2025 2nd, WR D.J. Moore) from the Panthers in exchange for the 2023 NFL Draft’s No. 1 overall pic.
Next, general manager Ryan Poles did a great job addressing the league’s reigning 32nd-ranked scoring defense by adding the likes of LB Tremaine Edmunds, LB TJ Edwards, DL DeMarcus Walker and DL Andrew Billings.
And guess what: The Bears still have more available cap space than any other team in the league to go along with four draft picks inside of the 2023 NFL Draft’s top-64 selections.
It remains to be seen if these new additions will be able to turn around a franchise with just nine wins to its name over the past two seasons, but at least Bears faithful have a reason to be optimistic about their future for arguably the first time in the post-double doink era (too soon?).
Finding values on NFL future bets is a year-round venture, but most of us don't have the time to birddog all of the options. That is why we are lucky to have our resident futures expert, LaMarca, constantly sniffing for value...
With the first week of free agency in the books, it’s a good time to circle back around to the NFL futures market.
While free agency might not be the best long-term way to build a franchise, it can have a drastic effect on how teams are perceived. For example, the Jets are all the way up to +1400 to win the Super Bowl, giving them the sixth-shortest odds on BetMGM. They haven’t even actually secured Aaron Rodgers yet!
However, one area that can be undervalued by the public and the sportsbooks is when a poor team from the previous year spends big in free agency.
Handing out large chunks of money in the offseason to completely overhaul your roster has the potential to have a massive impact on your franchise. The Jaguars spent an NFL record in free agency last year and went from the No. 1 overall pick in the draft to a playoff squad.
The Patriots had a similar turnaround as the biggest spenders in the league in the year prior.
Those teams don’t stand out as outliers.
The 2016 Giants, 2016 Raiders, 2017 Jaguars, and 2018 Bears also spent big in free agency, and those four teams increased their win totals the following year by an average of six wins.
From 2012 through 2021, 70% of the teams who finished as one of the three biggest spenders in the offseason increased their win total the following season.
💰 The Falcons to win the NFC South +400
The Falcons have spent the third-most money in free agency thus far and still have the fourth-most cap space. They could easily continue to pile on a few more free agents before the start of the year.
The way they’ve spent their money has also been encouraging. We’ve seen plenty of teams find success recently with a cheap quarterback and plenty of supporting talent, and that’s the direction that the Falcons are headed in.
They landed one of the top defensive players available in safety Jessie Bates, and they’ve brought in five other players on the defensive side of the ball. They also agreed to new deals with two of their top offensive linemen.
We still don’t know if second-year quarterback Desmond Ridder will be any good, but he will have much more help than last season.
The best thing the Falcons have going for them is their division. Ridder may not be a world-beater, but he doesn’t have to be in the NFC South.
The other starting quarterbacks in the division figure to be Derek Carr, Kyle Trask, and whoever the Panthers draft with the first overall pick (likely C.J. Stroud).
With so much uncertainty, the Falcons should not be priced at +400 to win the division. The Bucs won the NFC South win just eight wins last year, and the Falcons were just one win back. If they can improve similarly to how other big-spending teams have done in recent years, they are very live to capture the division crown.
