Clyde Edwards-Helaire
Current ADP: 21.3 | RB15
Was drafted at like 1.06 last year. Shit hurted.
Everyone's like WELL HE HAD 1100 YFS AS A ROOKIE AND YOURE SAYING HE HAD A BAD YEAR??
I mean yeah.. it was terrible for a top 5-6 fantasy pick... 1100 yards?
You say 1100 yards from scrimmage like 14 running backs didnt do it last year...
BUT IT WAS A ROOKIE.... 1st round rookie running backs are expected to go nuts first year... Kenyan Drake, Miles Sanders, David Johnson, Chris Carson, obviously Ekeler, Cmac, Barkley all would have done it if they didnt miss time. Yall say 1100 YFS as if the MAJORITY of starting RBs in the NFL aren't doing it. It's weirder if you dont do it.
In 2019: 20 Backs did it, 2018: 18, 2017 - 17
As every other rookie running back got better as the year progressed, became a bigger part of the offense, got more touches and became their respective workhorses, JT, Swift, Akers, Gibson, Dobbins. Clyde did the opposite.
They brought in Le'Veon Bell. Excuse me, they brought in the corpse of Le'Veon Bell and took 8.5 touches away from Clyde to give to him. Clyde's touches dropped big time
We all saw that first game, Week 1 - clyde go 25-138-1.... and that was it. and now we can see it was against HOU one of the worst defenses ever. After week 1's 138 yard blow up, clyde averaged 55 rushing yards/game.
My argument here isn't against draft Clyde in 2021, but if you're going to be one of the cornballs that pretend like he was good last year, he wasn't. Both can be true. He can have been wildly disappointing and also be a good pick this year.
What I'm saying is, there's a chance Clyde just isn't good. But his floor will be high.
Which is where that leads us to.
There's no backfield competition for him this year. It's Darrel Williams, he's not competition, he's just depth.
He saw 54 targets last year in 13 games, thats a little 66 over the course of 16.
Here's the thing. He's playing with patrick mahomes tyreek hill and kelce in the lord's year of 2021. this offense will never, ever run through CEH. not going to be a ground and pound team, and Mahomes isn't a guy whose 1st, 2nd or 3rd read is to dump off, he's as pure of a slinger as Stringer.. most of yall young heads wont catch what i just said right there.
He's got a good receiving floor, but the ceiling might be capped.
What can be exciting for Clyde are two things:
the offensive line was almost a mess. they lost their starting tackles in eric fisher and mitchell schwartz. but they signed austin blythe, used their 2nd round pick on o-line, they signed former Pats LG Joe Thuney to a massive deal. They signed Kyle Long, but he's already hurt. But they traded for Orlando Brown, giving their first to Baltimore. So essentially, using both of their first two draft picks on o-line, one being a proven veteran already. Expect this to be good for Clyde.
The other thing is the GL work.
Clyde scored just 4 rushing touchdowns last year... Four.
He scored on 1-of-9 GL carries. Leonard Fournette would be proud.
We all remember that week one game, where he got stuffed like a zillion times.
He had 6 GL carries in that game.
Do you want to know how many GL carries he saw for the rest of the year? 3. Le'Veon Bell saw the same amount and he played in four fewer games.
I do think the job, at least partly goes byke to CEH, but it's just another thing worth noting.
anddd this is what the patrick mahomes effect does
At the end of the 2nd, Clyde is a good value this year given his situation and given the things that went wrong last year, COULD go right this year.
Brandon Aiyuk - San Francisco 49ers
WR27 | 63
Aiyuk is a wicked strange case.
A lot of people didn't like him coming out of ASU because of his late breakout age. He had to wait for, wait for it, N'Keal Harry to leave for the NFL draft before he turned the burners on.
What we found out quickly is that whatever the reason for Aiyuk breaking out late was, it was the Arizona State's coaching staff's fault.
He was awesome as a rookie, he took over as the alpha when asked to, and that's all you can ask for. You have plenty of rookies that had the chance to over the 2H of the season: Reagor, Pittman, etc. - you want to talk about late and early breakout ages in college, why wouldn't we weight them the same, or even moreso in the NFL??
Aiyuk played in 12 games, 96-60-748-5 || 6-77-2, averaging nearly 13 half ppr FPPG. You want to take away week 16 where he injured his ankle after his first catch and that number gets more impressive.
The question becomes, what can Aiyuk be for fantasy with a healthy Deebo & Kittle on the field - bc that's what we don't know. Deebo played in 7 games, two of which he left with injuries, Kittle played in 8 games. Aiyuk had almost no target competition for half the year.
Deebo left Week 7 vs NE with the hamstring injury, and from Week 7-Week 15, Aiyuk was averaging 11 targets, 7.5 catches, 95 yards and he scored 4 times.
You also have to remember Deebo came into the year with a significant injury in which he suffered a setback in the summer. We can't forget just how good Deebo is as a player
Deebo is currently WR36 off the board, 81st overall.
Kittle of course missed significant time.
I looked back at their games and we have a sample of 4 games in which all 3 guys played together (Weeks 4-7). And I'm hesitant to count Week 4 bc Deebo only played 34% of their snaps bc it was his first week byke from the very long injury layoff.
During that span Deebo led the NFL with 9 screen targets, catching all 9 for 115 yards (12.8 ypr) and averaging 17.1 YAC on those. During that span Kittle & Aiyuk both saw 2 screen plays.
Deebo - 65% outside, Aiyuk 87%
It's pretty clear to me at least, their plan is for Aiyuk to be the outside guy.